THE SOCIAL UNREST
 
 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 STUDIES IN LABOR AND 
 SOCIALIST MOVEMENTS 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN GRAHAM BROOKS 
 
 gorfe 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. 
 1907 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 81 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1903, 
 BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 Set up, electrotyped, and published January, 1903. Reprinted 
 March, May, July, 1903. Special edition April, 1904 ; April, July, 
 1905; April, 1906; June, 1907. 
 
 J. 8. Cashing & Co. Berwick & Smith Co. 
 Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
 
 go 
 
 HELEN LAWRENCE BROOKS
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 FACE 
 
 PERSONAL AND INTRODUCTORY i 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. SOME GENERALITIES 17 
 
 II. POLITICS AND BUSINESS 46 
 
 III. SOCIAL UNREST 68 
 
 IV. THE SOCIAL QUESTION AND ITS ECONOMIC SIG- 
 
 NIFICANCE 107 
 
 V. THE INEVITABLENESS OF THE SOCIAL QUESTION 144 
 
 VI. MAN AND SOCIETY versus MACHINERY . .169 
 
 VII. THE MASTER PASSION OF DEMOCRACY . . 222 
 
 VIII. SOCIALISM: HISTORY AND THEORY . " . . 258 
 
 IX. SOCIALISM IN THE MAKING 287 
 
 X. FROM REVOLUTION TO REFORM . . % . . 298 
 XI. SOCIALISM AT WORK 313 
 
 XII. NEXT STEPS 344 
 
 XIII. A FINAL QUESTION 373 
 
 APPENDIX 381 
 
 INDEX 385
 
 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 PERSONAL AND INTRODUCTORY 
 
 THE nature of a good deal of the evidence in this 
 volume is such as to require an explanation that is 
 more personal than I could wish. This evidence 
 may, perhaps, be less sharply criticised if a frank 
 statement about it is made. I began, as do most stu- 
 dents of social and economic questions, with a too 
 exclusive study of books. It was several years before 
 I learned that for one branch of economic and social 
 study, the " live questions," like strikes, trade unions, 
 the influence of machinery, etc., very few books 
 existed that had more than slight value. Their treat- 
 ment of the subject was too general. Much of the 
 literature is scarcely in print, before it is out of date 
 because of the extraordinary mobility and change of 
 our commercial order. The reaction of this swiftly 
 changing mechanism upon our entire life gives us a 
 series of problems but partially expressed in books 
 and differing in important ways from anything that 
 Europe offers. 
 
 For instance, we are always perplexed by the ques- 
 tion, why distributive cooperation should be so suc- 
 cessful in England but so dreary a failure here. 
 There are many reasons, but the main one is found 
 in the conditions that have been brought about by
 
 2 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 our material prosperity, accompanied by carelessly 
 extravagant habits, together with our system of rapid 
 transportation. We have not yet been forced to the 
 pettier economies. Our working classes are con- 
 temptuous of saving one cent or two cents. The 
 excursion train from a distance and the marvellous 
 development of the city and suburban trolley take the 
 crowd to the great stores where the customer is served 
 better, more cheaply, and more quickly than any co- 
 operative store has any present hope of doing. The 
 great store touches the imagination, especially of the 
 poorer people. I was for several years member of a 
 cooperative store. It failed, partly because the wives 
 of labor men among whom it originated would not 
 continue to patronize it. One of them told me: "Oh, 
 but it's no fun to go to that stuffy place. When I go 
 to R. H. White's, it's like going to a theatre, and my 
 fare in and out of the city costs me nothing, for I can 
 get things cheaper there." Here are cheapness, a 
 satisfied imagination, and an exhilarating ride all for 
 the same money. American invention has made it 
 possible, and not until an entirely new set of condi- 
 tions has been thrust upon us is there a breath of 
 hope for the English cooperation. 
 
 In la grande Industrie the same forces are produc- 
 ing a form of cooperation that is beyond anything that 
 Europe has reached. The democratization of indus- 
 try is slowly coming from the top into a forced 
 cooperation with organized labor. The "joint agree- 
 ment " between employer and employed has begun. 
 It compels a kind of partnership between capital and 
 labor. Every step in its development will destroy 
 the old individualistic and arbitrary doctrine of the
 
 PERSONAL AND INTRODUCTORY 3 
 
 employer that is expressed in such terms as " This is 
 my business," " I will not arbitrate," " I will deal only 
 with individuals," etc. Every extension of the joint 
 agreement will bring the great business into closer 
 unity with the best ideals of our political life. Yet 
 no book begins to describe the mechanism that makes 
 these great changes possible. Only in trade and 
 technical journals does one find even a partial account 
 of them. 
 
 Again, of our trade unions, there is almost no litera- 
 ture. The close and exhaustive study of Mr. and 
 Mrs. Webb is admirable for the English trade-union 
 tradition. It but partially describes the organization 
 of labor in the United States. The mobility that ap- 
 plied invention has brought about has given us a 
 unionism distinct in important particulars from that 
 which any foreign country can show. 
 
 The effect of foreign leadership (especially of the 
 Irish) in our unions is one real difference, but the 
 mobility and the chances this offers to leave one's 
 position for a better, modifies our trade union in 
 many ways. No sooner is the labor leader trained for 
 his duties than he is likely to leave his union and " go 
 into business." I can count from memory thirteen 
 men in Massachusetts, who were in their time and place 
 leaders, who now occupy positions in politics or in busi- 
 ness. A friend who always defends the trade union 
 tells me that in Chicago he knows of more than thirty 
 men, formerly at the front in their respective unions, 
 who now hold political office in that city. " They are 
 always on the watch," he adds, " for better positions 
 in other occupations, after they have struggled some 
 years with the external, and more especially with the
 
 4 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 internal, difficulties of the unions." I asked one of the 
 prominent leaders how he stood the strain which I 
 knew was brought to bear upon him. " I can't stand 
 it long," he said ; " I shall keep my eye out for a busi- 
 ness position, and when I can leave my present place 
 honorably, I shall do it" 
 
 In Pittsburg, during the steel strike, I tried to find 
 some of the ex-presidents of that strong trade union. 
 The most important of the former officials had gone 
 into other occupations. That more solidified group 
 consciousness that constitutes a class feeling of which 
 radical socialism makes so much, is thus difficult to 
 maintain in this country. Such dangers as there are 
 in this fighting class-spirit in the unions is kept more 
 keenly alive by those employers who think it the 
 part of wisdom to defeat the real ends of organized 
 labor. 
 
 During six years of weekly economic lectures before 
 a trade-union audience, I learned that any trade-union 
 literature accessible was upon the whole misleading. 
 An academic student, who has read never so faithfully 
 all the books, has to learn his entire lesson over again 
 by contact with the actual concrete struggles of 
 unions among themselves and with their employers. 
 I had been taught to believe, for example, that the 
 limitation of the number of apprentices by the unions 
 was an inexcusable tyranny over American liberty. 
 In spite of the abuses of this limitation, one finds that 
 it is an integral part of a common effort characteriz- 
 ing our entire business system. It is in its nature in 
 no way peculiar to the trade union. I once saw the 
 establishment of a new union in a Massachusetts shoe 
 town. At first there was no thought of opposing any
 
 PERSONAL AND INTRODUCTORY 5 
 
 number of young men who cared to come in, but in a 
 slackened period of work, it was found that eight and 
 nine per cent of their own trade-union members were 
 without work. At that time the rule was made limit- 
 ing the number of those learning the trade. " Why," 
 I was asked, " should we let a lot of young fellows 
 come in to compete against our old members who 
 can't get work ? " There is often a steady average 
 of two, three, and four per cent of older members 
 thus out of work in half our unions. This explana- 
 tion does not meet all the difficulties in the limitation 
 of those permitted to learn the trade at a given time. 
 It does enable us to see the reasons why the attempt 
 is made and to see further that it is as natural as any 
 of those checks to lessen competition which fill our 
 commercial life. I have heard this reply from an in- 
 dignant agent of the union : " They ask us to put in 
 more apprentices when there is no shortage of work- 
 men; when we can furnish first-rate men who are 
 now out of work. That would mean that we were to 
 help train new men to compete with our own members 
 out of work." This action of the union to meet the 
 competing forces that endanger its common life is at 
 least as intelligent as the tariff, or the limitation of 
 output by a great corporation. This check upon 
 competition in the trade union is a superior morality 
 as compared with that large part of business which 
 uses the tariff to sell our products to foreign com- 
 petitors twenty per cent cheaper than to our own 
 people. 
 
 This limitation of apprentices is, however, a very 
 elementary difficulty. The attitude of the trade 
 union toward the new inventions presents a problem
 
 6 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 as delicate as it is fundamental in character. In 
 the chapter on machinery it is considered at length. 
 It is mentioned here solely for the purpose of show- 
 ing how helpless a student is who trusts to the cur- 
 rent economic books for light. The hackneyed 
 charge that trade unions " oppose new machinery " 
 carries an unhappy fact in it, but unless carefully 
 explained, it holds far more error than truth. If 
 exception be made of the more ignorant members, 
 the better unions in the United States do not fight 
 the machine as such. Their opposition is against the 
 way in which the machine may be made to readjust 
 the wage scale within the labor group whose interests 
 are immediately affected. In the conflict between 
 employer and employed, the " storm centre " is largely 
 at this point where science and invention are applied 
 to industry. 
 
 The hard lesson which the employer has to learn 
 is that he cannot alone and arbitrarily decide this 
 question of machinery. The instinct of the trade 
 union to have some " say " about this is a perfectly 
 sound instinct. Yet the union has also to learn its 
 lesson, that the new inventions must be put to their 
 tasks without any of the stupid hindrances which 
 discredit many of the English unions and which are 
 far too prevalent in certain American unions. 
 
 It seems again on its face very senseless for a union 
 to oppose piece-work. But when one sees that piece- 
 work may be used like a new invention, to change 
 the wage scale, keep down wages, and increase the 
 stint of work, the reason for this opposition appears. 
 There are shops in which piece-work results in chang- 
 ing the wage scale three times in a year. It so fre-
 
 PERSONAL AND INTRODUCTORY 7 
 
 quently happens that the readjustment lowers the 
 wage that piece-work becomes an object of suspicion. 
 I have had the plainest admissions from employers 
 that the trade-union resistance to piece-work was 
 wholly justified if the resistance could be guarded 
 from abuses. 
 
 So also the " un-American way " of restricting the 
 ability of exceptional men, the " levelling down to 
 inferiority," and other confident charges made against 
 the unions are seen to have so much justification in 
 actual experience as to leave the student far more 
 tolerant even of the abuses connected with them. 
 
 These illustrations may make clear why I have 
 been led in the following chapters to use with so 
 much freedom purely personal opinions that have 
 been expressed to me during twenty years of inves- 
 tigation and lecturing upon the topics here con- 
 sidered. It has not, in most instances, seemed to me 
 fair to give names. The opinions were in many in- 
 stances given on the express condition that the name 
 be not used. That this is open to censure and may 
 be thought to constitute a weakness in the book, I 
 readily admit. The responsibilities for the weakness 
 I must accept. I trust that some corresponding 
 advantages may appear in the result, as I report 
 from responsible men on the labor side, from social- 
 ists, business managers, engineers, and capitalists 
 alike. 
 
 It was another inexcusably slow discovery that 
 most men do not put their deepest opinions into print, 
 or state them before the public. My first clear con- 
 ception of this was in listening during a semester to 
 a German professor. From these lectures and from
 
 8 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 a stiff volume that he had already published, I be- 
 lieved myself in possession of his most important 
 opinions. In later and more personal conversations 
 with him, I found another and very different man, of 
 whom no printed utterance would have given me a 
 glimpse. He was far more radical, far bolder in his 
 critical restrictions about the institutional life about 
 him, and far more willing to welcome great changes 
 in our social organization. 
 
 I do not impeach this man's sincerity. He was 
 giving to me the freer and more extemporaneous 
 opinions that are habitual in private intercourse. In 
 those moments he was unconcerned about the matu- 
 rity or coordination of his views. I yet believe there 
 was more of the real man in his conversations, more 
 even of his real thought, than in the elaborated and 
 guarded utterances as publicly expressed. In the 
 whole class of socially disturbing topics the freest 
 and deepest opinions are not usually printed in a 
 book, and, so far as this is true, one has to go else- 
 where for full evidence. 1 
 
 Many of the socialists who make the best litera- 
 ture for the propaganda, do not, any more than the 
 professor, put all their real opinions into their pub- 
 lications. Like the respectabilities among the bour- 
 geois, they have opinions for dress parade opinions 
 that are safe and orthodox for the cause they rep- 
 resent. They may publicly maintain with great 
 vehemence the essential integrity of Karl Marx's 
 
 1 Professor J. W. Jenks tells me that in his long and exhaustive 
 investigation of the "trust,"' by far the most important facts about the 
 purposes and methods of these combinations were only secured in 
 private conversation.
 
 PERSONAL AND INTRODUCTORY 9 
 
 theory of socialism. In private they may admit to 
 you, as the best-trained French and German social- 
 ists have admitted to me, that Marx's fundamental 
 doctrine of surplus value is unsound. Another 
 may have philosophic training enough to challenge 
 Marx's fatalistic theory of history. I asked a culti- 
 vated Belgian socialist why he did not openly pro- 
 claim these doubts about the " master." " We 
 can't yet afford," he said, "to embarrass our cause 
 by displaying doubts about the theories on which 
 it is believed to rest." The value of these private 
 opinions is priceless because they point the way 
 along which the less enlightened mass of socialist 
 thought will follow. A collectivist editor in Paris 
 gave this reason why he should not expose these 
 doubts about the sacred traditions: "You must have," 
 he said, " a certain unity and completeness of form in 
 your exposition, or it loses literary effectiveness. I 
 must have this, or I could get no scholars to read 
 what I write." It is precisely this vanity for what 
 will excite academic or conventional approval that 
 devitalizes so many books. To appear "scientific," 
 " to display unity of treatment," to have showy classi- 
 fications in which new technical names are given to 
 very well-known and commonplace facts, is the subt- 
 lest form which temptation puts on for these ambi- 
 tions. This is not harmful among subjects where a 
 " synthesis " is possible, where " form and complete- 
 ness " are in any way attainable ; but in those studies 
 that have to do with the vastness and complexity of 
 human society and its reorganization, the craving for 
 these literary and scientific graces has left a great deal 
 of our printed sociology chillingly empty of result.
 
 10 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 For this very reason our need is the greater foi 
 genuine opinions and simple facts, even if the time is 
 not yet come for their more systematized exposition. 
 
 Not only socialists but many of our most influen- 
 tial trade-union leaders have grown into larger 
 opinions than they can yet enforce upon their fol- 
 lowers. They are as a unit upon the importance of 
 keeping every contract their unions sign with em- 
 ployers. They are as a unit against all violence 
 against non-union men. They are often helpless 
 before the impulsive action of some local union, but 
 their unquestioned policy is to strengthen their 
 organization at these weaker points. There are other 
 issues upon which they are forced to be as politic as 
 a "dynamic clergyman with a static congregation." 
 Too many of the workmen are not yet enlightened 
 enough to take the larger view. There are unions, 
 for example, in which the amount of work done is 
 deliberately restricted as a matter of principle. I 
 have talked at length recently with the head of such 
 an organization. He said to me, "I know perfectly 
 well that the policy is suicidal. I know that a smaller 
 output means, upon the whole, less comfort all round. 
 The men are under the illusion that there is only 
 about so much work to be done and they want to 
 'stretch it out,' or 'not use it up too quick.' I have 
 several times got a lot of men together and explained 
 to them why the policy is a bad one. But if I were 
 to be too strict I should lose my place, and a man 
 would be put in who wouldn't try to educate them 
 into better sense. In time we can teach them better. 
 When the employers lecture them about this they all 
 think he is simply trying to get more work for the
 
 PERSONAL AND INTRODUCTORY II 
 
 same money. When I lecture them they at least 
 begin to talk it over and think about it." 
 
 Another source of penetrating criticism comes from 
 a certain contemplative type of successful business 
 man who can rarely be induced to put his strictures 
 in print. I have, for instance, never heard an abler 
 defence of Henry George's theory of the single tax 
 than from a man who had made a fortune in city 
 land speculation. He did not like to apply the 
 theory to the country at large, because he thought 
 that the practical difficulties would be too great ; but 
 for municipal areas he came to believe that we are 
 simply stupid not to turn the enormous land values 
 created by an increasing population into the public 
 treasury. 
 
 In gathering evidence for a report on German 
 workingmen's insurance, I found that the published 
 opinions of many business men in that country had 
 upon the whole a very different and certainly a far 
 lower value than opinions one could get from them in 
 conversation. One of our own trust organizers has 
 published valuable opinions on the subject of the trust. 
 In private, I heard him analyze the actual dangers of 
 the trust with a searching skill that I have not seen 
 equalled. I asked him why he put none of these 
 views into print. He replied : " Those are things a 
 wise man doesn't say in public. I am not advertising 
 the weakness of the trust." 
 
 Now it is the very things " the wise man does not 
 say in public " that I wish to get in as evidence. I 
 would not exclude the soberer and more cautious pub- 
 lic or printed view, but the further emphasis which 
 I venture to give to the open and unreserved opin-
 
 12 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 ions which men express when free from the shadow 
 of an audience, or when they are not expected to 
 stand by the temporary stock interests of their class, 
 may at least supplement other forms of testimony. 
 More than this I will not claim for it. 
 
 If this evidence seems like a too irresponsible sort 
 of gossip, I can only answer that the volume contains 
 no reference that is not the honest expression of 
 opinion by men whom the investigator would naturally 
 seek as most likely to throw light on his subject. 
 
 It is true that these critics are exceptions. The 
 prevailing commercial opinion is that which justifies 
 the methods under which one's wealth is gathered. It 
 is doubtful if any bias exists at the present day that 
 acts with more blinding power upon men than the 
 bias associated with their money income. There is 
 scarcely any rich source of pecuniary profit for which 
 the average citizen will not find ethical justification. 
 During my first visit to the anthracite coal fields, I 
 found a coal operator who was making large profits 
 from a private bar to which his miners were expected 
 to come for their drink, as they were expected to 
 patronize his company store. He had no difficulty in 
 defending this retailing of liquor on what he insisted 
 were moral grounds. The miners could be more 
 easily guarded against excesses. They would spend 
 less money than in the low groggeries of the town. 
 Certain miners' wives had expressed their gratitude 
 to him for these benefits. There was perhaps no 
 conscious humbuggery in this, but the profits on his 
 gin and whiskey were so alluring as to bias his judg- 
 ment. The proof of this came in abundance from 
 his fellow-employers who did not or would not keep
 
 PERSONAL AND INTRODUCTORY 13 
 
 a bar. Free from the bias, they were unqualified 
 in their condemnation of this source of income for 
 one in this employer's position. In the same way 
 practically every business abuse against the miners is 
 condemned by those employers who have got rid of 
 the abuse. The " company store " began as a neces- 
 sity for the miners, but when the town grew and pri- 
 vate stores everywhere sprang up, the miners naturally 
 preferred to buy, as the rest of us do, where they 
 liked. The company store from this time on was a 
 reproach to the best business management. Yet I 
 never knew an operator, still maintaining one, who 
 did not argue with unction and fervor that they were 
 very beneficial to the miner and his family. 
 
 If one to-day go through those regions, asking right 
 and left among those who have discontinued the 
 company stores, he will hear the frankest admission 
 that it had long since come to be a nuisance and with- 
 out any justification. In 1900, when operators were 
 indignantly defending their method of selling powder 
 to their miners greatly above the market price, I 
 found that the operators who did not do this, had 
 only sarcasm for the ingenious reasons which the 
 other employers were giving. The president of a 
 company told me : " The miners are perfectly right 
 in their contention. It is true that the higher price 
 entered into an older agreement, but this clumsy 
 method of paying wages is one that any first-rate 
 business man ought to be ashamed of." 
 
 The miners in the recent strike (1902) asked among 
 other things, to have the coal weighed as it comes 
 from the mine, and to be paid by weight rather 
 than by car-load. They honestly believe that they are
 
 14 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 cheated out of a portion of their earnings. The em- 
 ployers, who still pay by this rough and elastic car 
 measurement, would make the inquirer believe that 
 the miners' demand is as ignorant as it is absurd. 
 Fortunately a small proportion of the coal now mined 
 is paid by weight. Among employers who have 
 adopted this method, I found the strongest convic- 
 tions that the miners were in the main right about 
 this issue. 
 
 Again, when one sees the conditions under which 
 the " pumpmen " work for twelve hours daily in the 
 mines, he is curious to hear what defence can be made 
 for such slavish toil. The first employer I asked, 
 said: "The pumpmen are not overworked. They 
 would be perfectly contented if the trade-union bullies 
 would let them alone." The mine boss and the super- 
 intendent know what the pumpman's life means. 
 When they were convinced that their names would 
 not be used, I got from them the most pronounced 
 opinions that eight hours a day is long enough for 
 pumpmen to work. The superintendent said, "The 
 man who denies the grievance of the pumpman 
 either does not know or does not care how men are 
 used." 
 
 There is no great business that does not thus open 
 to the investigator, from its own inner circles, the 
 most trustworthy evidence concerning abuses. From 
 evidence of this character, we may get invaluable hints 
 as to general industrial tendencies and to possible im- 
 provements. There is invariably a small minority of 
 men who in speculative discussion will freely take the 
 larger social point of view, even if against their 
 interests. A far larger class must first have thrown off
 
 PERSONAL AND INTRODUCTORY 15 
 
 the abuse before unbiassed judgment becomes easy. 
 In most business communities may be found a type 
 of business man who has retired long enough from 
 active work to look with a certain largeness upon 
 these labor questions. They are among the best of 
 witnesses. A retired shoe manufacturer in Massa- 
 chusetts, who now ranks among the rich men in his 
 community, has told me that the whole problem had 
 entirely changed to him as he looked back upon the 
 thirty years of chronic struggle with the trade union. 
 " They make a good many stupid mistakes," he said, 
 " but an organization strong enough to fight the em- 
 ployer is a necessity to labor. Competition so forces 
 many of the best employers to copy the sharp tricks 
 of the worst employers in lowering wages, that the 
 trade union must be equipped to fight against these 
 reductions, or for a rise in wages when business is 
 more prosperous. I have fought the union in more 
 than twenty strikes, but I can now see that they were 
 at least as right and as reasonable as I was." It is 
 this kind of evidence of which I make very free use 
 in this volume. It has the competence wrought out 
 of long experience. It is dispassionate and disin- 
 terested. This man had been separated from the tug 
 and warfare of practical affairs long enough to see 
 them in their larger social relations. Any one who 
 had gone to him in earlier days, when he was in the 
 heat and turmoil of his occupation, would have got 
 simply a snap-shot judgment based upon the sup- 
 posed business interests of that moment. It would 
 have its value even then, but not the value of the 
 later and calmer mood. 
 
 There is in this volume very frequent reference to
 
 1 6 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 problems arising in the coal industry. This is done 
 partly because of many visits to the soft- and hard- 
 coal regions. It is further due to the fact that no 
 business presents a better point of view for study, 
 either of practice or of theory, in the labor question. 
 I have excluded the soft-coal interest from the pres- 
 ent discussion because the very immensity of area 
 covered leaves it still open to general competitive 
 influence. With the exception of the remarkable 
 common organization at this moment existing between 
 the federated trade union and the employers, it throws 
 far less light on the subjects herein treated. The 
 hard or anthracite coal is lodged by nature in so com- 
 pact a pocket; it has so much the character of a 
 monopoly, in spite of soft-coal rivalry, that it stands 
 out in admirable relief for investigation. During the 
 last eighteen years I have visited every important 
 strike in these regions. Nowhere can one see quite 
 so clearly the relation between business proper and 
 the various harassing problems that are more and 
 more to challenge our corporate good sense. This 
 business is on the competitive outskirts where the 
 merits or demerits of further state interference and 
 regulative legislation are likely to be forced upon us 
 at no distant day. The last strike marks an epoch 
 in the development of socialistic thought in this 
 country.
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 SOME GENERALITIES 
 
 THOUGH the tides of business prosperity are just 
 now at their height, a plague of embittered strikes 
 has fallen upon our industries. Especially have they 
 fallen upon interests that are partly of public charac- 
 ter or (what is fast becoming the same thing) upon 
 those that have grown great by combination. Over- 
 topping all others has been the prolonged and mo- 
 mentous strife in Pennsylvania. In the anthracite 
 coal regions the miners won in the struggle of 1900, 
 but the victory brought little contentment. It was 
 followed by more than a hundred local strikes, only 
 to break out at last into a strife that has stirred public 
 opinion as no other event in our labor history. 
 
 From the time when the government first began in 
 1 88 1 to make record of labor controversies, the list 
 swells to more than 3000 strikes in the coal industry. 
 Between 1881 and 1900 there were 2515. 
 
 This has led to the common assertion that labor 
 disturbances are in some way peculiar to coal mining. 
 Very special features attach to the extraction of coal, 
 but the unrest as marked by strikes is precisely what 
 one finds, for example, in the metal, clothing, and 
 building trades ; strikes in the building trade are in- 
 deed highest in the list. It is yet true that no industry 
 offers the student of social unrest a fitter field for study 
 c 17
 
 1 8 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 than that small patch of country in Eastern Pennsyl- 
 vania lying between the Delaware and Susquehanna 
 rivers. Nowhere can one get nearer to the heart of 
 the conflict. Every question that socialism will more 
 and more force upon the political stage can here be 
 read as upon an open page. Nowhere has competi- 
 tion among private owners worked more relentlessly 
 to its own final undoing. Not even from socialist 
 critics does one anywhere hear more fault-finding 
 with unrestricted competition than from the lips of 
 employing operators. Here are priceless "royalties" 
 for absentee owners. Here in recent years may be 
 seen that high capitalization which gives the hard- 
 pressed operator his excuse for paying low wages. 
 Here competition among the laborers is so unremit- 
 ting that the 147,000 workers are occupied hardly 
 190 days in the year. Including Sundays, this means 
 some 175 days of enforced average idleness. For the 
 masses of breaker boys, as well as for the less sturdy 
 among the adult miners and their helpers, this habit- 
 ual irregularity of employment breeds the habits that 
 make the excesses of the strike inevitable. 
 
 Among the employers the old chaos of competition 
 has been overcome by organization, but a forced chaos 
 remains among the miners. An absurd surplus of 
 some thirty thousand men hangs about the mines, 
 and every attempt that they have made to secure the 
 real advantages of organization among themselves 
 has been fought with obstinate ill will by the masters. 
 When individual and local unions were established, 
 the natural and necessary impulse was to federate 
 them into an organization strictly comparable to that 
 which capital had won at the top. The masters left
 
 SOME GENERALITIES 19 
 
 no device unused to defeat this new step. At first 
 their formula ran thus, " I will deal with my men one 
 by one ; I will not deal with them as a union." Later 
 one heard, " I will deal with the union in my own 
 business; I will not recognize any one who comes 
 from another union." 
 
 In 1900, when the unions of the hard-coal region 
 were so strongly organized that the fact could not be 
 ignored, I heard a few employers grudgingly admit 
 that they should be compelled to do business with 
 this group of unions, but never would they at any 
 cost recognize the representative of the soft-coal 
 miners. In 1901 I heard the details of a plan by 
 capitalists to bring both the soft coal and the anthra- 
 cite together into one common organization. I asked 
 how it was possible to control the thousand loosely 
 scattered bituminous mines. He answered : " Simply 
 because we have got the railroads. Through rail- 
 road control we have got the anthracite where 
 no independent operator can trouble us a bit. To 
 control the soft coal is of course far more difficult, 
 but it is not difficult if we have, as we shall have, 
 proper control of transportation." I have seen 
 few more uncompromising enemies of trade unions 
 than this gentleman. Yet he had come to see that 
 some sort of general organization among the miners 
 must be tolerated among the hard-coal workers. I 
 submitted the question, " If you are, as you say, to 
 extend the principle of organization over both bitu- 
 minous and anthracite, why should you object to the 
 common union of labor in both regions ? " His reply 
 was that business could not be carried on under such 
 a tyranny as this would imply. Unified control was
 
 20 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 necessary for capital, otherwise, he said, " we shall 
 always be fighting our competitors in the soft-coal 
 business just as we used to fight each other in the 
 hard coal." 
 
 Like many another employer who urges the neces- 
 sity of capitalistic organization, he denies this corre- 
 sponding right to his miners. You ask if the reasons 
 for combination are less strong upon one side than 
 upon the other, if competition works less incessantly 
 among laborers than among employers ; the answer 
 is, " No, but the miners have come to be so bad a lot 
 that organization is unsafe in their hands ; the trade 
 union destroys all discipline in the mines." It is 
 true that the presence of sixteen nationalities, many 
 of them with the lowest standard of living, is an 
 extremely annoying fact, but the employing class has 
 its definite responsibilities for the present quality of 
 miners. Such as they are, they have been expressly 
 encouraged to come, in order to keep wages low. 
 
 Many of these facts are common to other indus- 
 tries. For the social investigator they get, however, 
 an added significance from the monopolistic char- 
 acter of this business made possible by the cen- 
 tralized control of tide-water facilities and railway 
 transportation. Ownership and control of this busi- 
 ness has been transformed. The determining factor is 
 now the railroad a semi-public corporation. When 
 the employer now says, " I will not arbitrate ; I shall 
 run this coal business as I like, because it is my prop- 
 erty," even the miner has come to see that this atti- 
 tude is incongruous and out of date. 
 
 During the strike of 1902, hundreds of papers of 
 both political parties met this refusal of arbitration
 
 SOME GENERALITIES 21 
 
 with every degree of picturesque denunciation. 
 Those of the future will look upon this strike as a 
 landmark in the rapid crystallization of socialistic 
 opinion in this country. But the effect upon the 
 miner and his fellows has been just as marked. He 
 is receiving more socialistic instruction from his em- 
 ployer than from all the agitators combined. 
 
 It is this new consciousness of difference betweei. 
 a really private business, like a corner grocery store, 
 and one that has ceased to be private in that sense, 
 which so heightens the value of this type of industry 
 as a social study. If the socialistic spirit is to be 
 held in abeyance in this country, businesses of this 
 character must be handled with extraordinary cau- 
 tion. The attitude expressed by, " I refuse to arbi- 
 trate because this is alone my business," is foolhardy 
 in proportion as the business is obviously semi-public, 
 as the hard-coal business with its dependence on the 
 railroad now is. 
 
 The essence of arbitration in a business of this 
 character and magnitude is an acknowledgment that 
 the public is concerned in the dispute. With the 
 multitude of smaller industries freely open to com- 
 petition, we are not shocked that they should be 
 treated as strictly private, but in the exact measure 
 that their service to the public rests upon special 
 privileges granted by public authorities, shall we 
 rightly demand from them responsibilities that are 
 not merely private. If those who have this busi- 
 ness in charge are not strong and adroit enough to 
 hold these chronic disorders in check, the call for 
 some form of state control will steadily increase 
 among us. The public has learned that to run the
 
 22 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 railroads, together with the chief portion of the min- 
 ing area, is to get a monopolistic advantage under 
 which the consumer may be made to pay in higher 
 prices every penny that the strikes cost. 
 
 In Lattimer, when an awkward squad of Hazelton 
 citizens, hastily extemporized into constables, had 
 shot a score of miners, I asked an operator about 
 the probable cost of the strike. " But you don't 
 suppose," he answered, "that we coal men are to 
 pay the bill ? Anthracite coal is a luxury, more 
 and more in demand. The people must have it. 
 We mine forty million tons a year, and an addition 
 of even fifty cents a ton means money enough to 
 pay big bills ; but if we added a dollar a ton, the 
 coal would be used." 
 
 The difficulties of socialistic administration are seen 
 to be so great, that the business sense of the American 
 people will be careless of monopoly privilege in private 
 hands so long as it is free from conspicuous abuses. 
 As this coal business is now managed, abuses are in- 
 evitable. The railroads have a double business. They 
 mine coal, as well as transport it. A given road, at 
 one moment, may be apparently losing money as a 
 miner, but making rich profits as a carrier of coal. 
 I have known a man with special training for this 
 work to exhaust all his resources in efforts to dis- 
 cover how accounts in this double business are kept. 
 His conclusion was that this shifting relation not only 
 could be, but had been, used to keep wages down. 
 Even if untrue, it has become a source of angry sus- 
 picion which is felt, not only by the independent in- 
 vestigator, but has at last reached the miner himself. 
 
 At the strike in the summer of 1902, among the
 
 SOME GENERALITIES 23 
 
 grievances which the miners enumerated, I heard for 
 the first time this common complaint : "The operators 
 told us in 1900 that the business couldn't possibly 
 afford the ten per cent advance, but they gave it to 
 us when they had to, and still made good money. 
 Prices have gone up so much since then, that this 
 ten per cent advance has been swallowed up. We 
 ask for more, and are told that profits are so low that 
 no higher wages can be paid, but we can see that the 
 railroad side of it is making plenty of money, and it 
 looks as if they were taking it out of us." 
 
 For the first time I heard among the miners the 
 talk of "overcapitalization." "They put so much 
 money and water in here, and then have to pay 
 dividends off the whole of it. That makes an 
 excuse for squeezing us. President Baer says he 
 must look out for the interests of his stockholders, 
 and so can't give us an advance. If they hadn't 
 put so much water in it, they could have treated us 
 decently." The miner is merely saying what half 
 our papers print, and what many competent business 
 men believe. 
 
 Here is the exact ground why, for business of this 
 character, the intelligent demand for " publicity " and 
 uniform and intelligible methods of bookkeeping, is 
 more and more insisted upon by the public, by stu- 
 dents, and even by some of our foremost business 
 men. The highest business administration cannot 
 afford to be carried on in an atmosphere of justi- 
 fied suspicion that angers the public and the laborers 
 alike. This atmosphere of justified suspicion is the 
 direct source of the most threatening unrest now in 
 our community. It is certain that a great deal of it
 
 24 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 can be removed by an open and fearless recognition 
 that these half-public corporations have become so far 
 " socialized," that the old rights of secrecy have lost 
 their warrant. 
 
 It is at this point that the first real difficulty ap- 
 pears. There is no way to make this principle of 
 " publicity " effective without an extension of legal 
 regulation. 
 
 The reasons for this extended activity of govern- 
 ment are not fewer in the United States than among 
 any other people, but the practical difficulties are far 
 greater here, because of the divided authority be- 
 tween the central government and the states. But 
 the practical embarrassments in which this divided 
 authority leaves us, constitute a very breeding ground 
 for the growth of socialistic sympathy. The ordeal 
 which we cannot escape is, that, in spite of these 
 added perplexities, the battle has to be fought out on 
 an area that is essentially an area of politics. 
 
 Yet powerful business interests will fight the pro- 
 visions that constitute this social politics wherever its 
 aim is to raise the standard of the workingman's 
 life. They will oppose them as they oppose the 
 really effective organization of labor ; as they oppose 
 the legislation that would eliminate the child from 
 industry, or give to those stricken by industrial acci- 
 dents a properly organized method of compensation. 
 
 In the long struggle before us to learn to use these 
 principles of regulation with unflinching fairness to 
 the weak as well as to the strong, we are beset by two 
 difficulties, one that has come to be temperamental, 
 the other economic and political. 
 
 No people was ever born so gayly and so confidently
 
 SOME GENERALITIES 25 
 
 indifferent to history and experience as the people of 
 the United States. During the Civil War, Charles 
 Sumner was patronizingly assured at a London din- 
 ner table that the North could not conquer, "there 
 was no history extant to warrant such a hope." With 
 a humor he rarely showed, Mr. Sumner replied, "Thank 
 God, we do not know any history over there." 
 
 A foreign scholar, knowing the United States well, 
 himself equipped by large experience in English 
 colonial affairs, does his best in Washington to put 
 his knowledge at the service of those upon whom the 
 heavy burdens of our new dependencies had fallen. 
 Our lack of experience and consequent ignorance 
 were complete. Why should not the Congressional 
 committee having these things in charge delight to 
 listen ? England's long mastery of colonial policy 
 is known to all. A man ready to interpret this expe- 
 rience is at hand, but he finds that no soul in Wash- 
 ington has the slightest curiosity about this almost 
 greatest of English achievements. He says to a 
 friendly member of the Cabinet, " But you Americans 
 do not even want to know the experience that would 
 throw light on your own present problems." One of 
 the best and most skilled of our politicians tells him, 
 " You are right ; those that need the knowledge most 
 would not even cross the street to listen to your expo- 
 sition, or if they did they would not take you very 
 seriously. We shall blunder through it in our own 
 way." 
 
 There is much to be regretted in this unconcern, 
 but perhaps, for the special problems involved, some- 
 thing that we should approve. This good-natured 
 contempt of experience means sad waste in duplicated
 
 26 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 experiments ; it means costly delay in administrative 
 adjustments, but it also means a carelessness of pre- 
 cedent, as precedent, that is often the very condition 
 of brilliant accomplishment. An English engineer 
 said in this country, " Because a thing has been 
 done in a certain way in England is still reckoned 
 among the reasons why it should continue to be done 
 in something like the same manner, but with you 
 in the States it is reversed. To tell an American 
 machinist how a thing has been done, actually seems to 
 him a reason for not doing it in that way any longer." 
 Whatever of speedier advantage comes to us from 
 this adventurous spirit in the sphere of mechanical 
 contrivance, there is consequent loss and embarrass- 
 ment for the whole remedial side of the social ques- 
 tion. This experience has been dearly bought, and 
 much of it has failed, but that which has succeeded 
 is very precious as a model. 
 
 It is conceivable that impatience and unconcern 
 about past experience may be a gain to the inventor, 
 but they cannot be a gain in developing the kind of 
 legislation of which the English Factory and Truck 
 acts are an example. Uniform legal protection 
 against certain capitalistic abuses on the one side, and 
 against the exploitation of certain low-class labor on 
 the other, stands for the next step toward social 
 safety. We cannot skip the definite and successful 
 experience of other nations in dealing with a class of 
 evils of which industrial accidents and child labor 
 may be taken as examples. 
 
 The shrewdest foreign observers who have ever 
 visited us, like Herbert Spencer, have noted what 
 Lowell called the " divine patience of my fellow-
 
 SOME GENERALITIES 2/ 
 
 countrymen under abuses." This temper coupled 
 with a commanding material progress makes us 
 impatient with the fault-finder. Yet a promiscuous 
 optimism about everything in particular may be 
 just as harmful as a uniform pessimism. We have 
 to learn the full meaning of specific sources of social 
 weakness in the elimination of which legislation has 
 to play a part. This leads from the temperamental 
 to the business and political difficulty. 
 
 It will appear in the clearest light if seen through 
 an illustration about which every reader may easily 
 acquire trustworthy information. 
 
 In 1902, I saw in Georgia and Alabama troops of 
 children, many under twelve, working the entire night. 
 I had previously heard every detail of this ugly story, 
 in which northern capital is implicated as much as 
 southern, yet nothing but personal observation would 
 have made me believe the extent to which this 
 blunder goes on in our midst. Whether one finds 
 this evil in New Jersey industries, among Illinois 
 glass-blowers, on the Chicago streets at night, or 
 in the merciless sweating of the clothing trade, it 
 is an excuseless wrong for which no extenuating word 
 can be uttered. It is a source of disease, crime, and 
 social weakness. That it is not a purposed cruelty, 
 does not change the fatality of the result. A kindly 
 employer in Alabama tells me, " Yes, it is bad, but 
 the parents of these children will have it." Every 
 argument reproduces to the letter the excuses of 
 employers two generations ago, when Shaftesbury 
 began his great struggle against child labor in 
 England. 
 
 This stunting use of the child in industry is but a
 
 28 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 part of what is perhaps the most threatening fact of 
 the new century, the wider and more relentless use 
 of every known agency to keep wages (and therefore 
 the standard of life) as low as possible. This purpose 
 is not malicious or even quite conscious of its end. 
 It results from the enlarged world area on which a 
 fiercer competition now acts. The practical exigency 
 of this commercial struggle will appear to justify 
 every competitive use to which lower and cheaper 
 standards of living can be put. Women, children, 
 negroes, the inhabitants of our new dependencies 
 and every shade of immigrant, will one and all be 
 used like pawns in the great game of immediate 
 business advantage in the markets of the world. 
 
 I asked one of the largest employers of labor in 
 the South if he feared the coming of the trade union. 
 " No," he said, " it is one good result of race preju- 
 dice, that the negro will enable us in the long run to 
 weaken the trade union so that it cannot harm us. 
 We can keep wages down with the negro, and we 
 can prevent too much organization." 
 
 It is in this spirit that the lower standards are to 
 be used. If this purpose should succeed, it has but 
 one issue, the immense strengthening of a pluto- 
 cratic administration at the top, served by an army 
 of high-salaried helpers, with an elite of skilled and 
 well-paid workmen, but all resting on what would be 
 essentially a serf class of low-paid labor and this 
 mass kept in order by an increased use of military 
 force. 
 
 If there is any escape from this peril, it is in the 
 slow building up of that system of labor protection 
 known first as factory legislation. What is best in
 
 SOME GENERALITIES 29 
 
 this legislation is not something standing apart from, 
 or in antagonism to, the forces of public opinion, but 
 the deliberate and express record of that opinion 
 about the hours and conditions under which it would 
 have a large part of society work and live. In 
 countries like England and Switzerland, no existing 
 agencies have done so much as this form of legisla- 
 tion to save the labor standard from sinking to lower 
 levels. In our own country the same legislation in 
 Massachusetts, incomplete as it is, has worked with 
 admirable results. 
 
 The precedent of experience is in all this the only 
 possible guide. Most of the horrors connected with 
 sweating in the making of clothes could be stopped 
 if other states had enforced a legislation as good as 
 that of Massachusetts. The law holds this special 
 evil in check in the city of Boston. The rivalry 
 among our states to attract business or to prevent its 
 escape makes a difficulty which no other nation feels 
 in giving shape to this legislation. A speaker before 
 a committee on child labor in Alabama says, "We 
 get a great advantage over the North, if we work 
 twelve hours and have child labor." For every im- 
 mediate business interest this appeal is dangerously 
 effective and will long constitute a baffling perplexity 
 in creating that body of regulative measures which 
 is now recognized to be as necessary for the " trust " 
 as for those conditions under which multitudes of 
 women and children work. 
 
 It was once believed that the strife of multitudi- 
 nous private interests, if freely followed, would lead 
 to the maximum of common gain. It was believed 
 that the essence of economic wisdom was merely to
 
 3O THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 keep hands off. This position of the extreme indi- 
 vidualist, as of the philosophic anarchist, has a rare 
 intellectual fascination. For speculative enchant- 
 ment, it is easily supreme among social theories. 
 But the moment we touch the world of human 
 action, the moment we arrive where people are hard 
 at work, it appears that this policy of " let alone " is 
 as definitely discarded as the whale-oil lamp. Neither 
 tory nor liberal, republican nor democrat, pretends 
 any longer to "let things work themselves out." 
 Every government, democratic and monarchical as 
 well, deliberately adopts a policy of elaborate legal 
 regulation. Nor is there anywhere a hint that this 
 is to lessen. Communities differ as to the emphasis 
 that shall be placed on social regulations. New Zea- 
 land goes to greater lengths than Denmark ; Switzer- 
 land, in many things, further than England, but all 
 alike accept it as a practical working finality that 
 competitive forces cannot be trusted to work them- 
 selves out alone. They are brought under some meas- 
 ure of permanent social regulation. Among men with 
 responsibilities there is now no dispute except as to 
 the forms which this regulation shall assume and 
 the degree to which it shall be carried. 
 
 We need no longer call in the socialist to testify 
 against the uncurbed struggle in industry. The last 
 twenty years have taught the lesson so thoroughly to 
 our foremost business men that they are becoming 
 our instructors. Not alone with transportation, but 
 with iron, with textiles, with insurance, with banking, 
 and with many of the commonest products, the un- 
 restrained scramble of private interests is now seen 
 to be intolerable. Good business now sets the limit
 
 SOME GENERALITIES 31 
 
 to competition by organizing cooperation. To check 
 and control the excesses of competition has become 
 the mark of first-class ability. A railroad president 
 has been dismissed because " he insists upon fighting 
 other roads instead of working with them." Accord- 
 ing to his own account, the head of another road owes 
 his appointment to the fact that (in his own words) 
 " I was known to have some aptitude for working with 
 rival interests." Yet the term " legal regulation," as 
 applied to industry, is still an offence to the Ameri- 
 can. He has not learned that this regulation is but 
 a factor in what we all now agree is the capital fact 
 of industry organization. The term "industrial 
 organization " carries no offence, but is seen to be 
 the next great step even in further material progress. 
 On the side of capital, organization began for the 
 sake of safer dividends. As business enlarged, and 
 came finally to touch the wide and permanent wants 
 of the consumer, organization from the public point 
 of view was also found to be necessary. This com- 
 pleted organization is impossible without the as- 
 sistance of legal regulation that is superior to every 
 separate interest. 
 
 What is now forced upon every critical observer is 
 the degree and extent of purely chaotic forces on the 
 industrial field. Competition as such has no ten- 
 dency to remove this mischief, rather indeed to 
 aggravate it when business has reached a given 
 stage of development. The great lesson that em- 
 ployers have to learn is that organization has done 
 but half its work when their own end alone is sys- 
 tematized. Organization has to pass straight through 
 from top to bottom, including labor as well. A part
 
 32 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 of this lesson for the employer is that the sym- 
 pathetic cooperation of the labor group is an absolute 
 necessity if industrial peace is to be won. 
 
 In the recent strike (1902) of the hard-coal mines, 
 an employer said to me, " I have been in this business 
 more than twenty-five years, and it seems to me I 
 have been in the strike business rather than the coal 
 business." I asked him if he and his friends had any 
 policy about the disorders ; he replied, " No, only to 
 smash 'em." For many years in these mining towns 
 I have heard this answer from employers. As long 
 as coal operators were fighting each other and fight- 
 ing the railroads, there was more excuse for this gue- 
 rilla warfare with the unions ; but now that combina- 
 tion has come, " smashing 'em " cannot conceivably 
 remain the method of directors competent to manage 
 the business as the public will demand. It is cheer- 
 ing to find younger men now prominent in these 
 affairs who see this. 
 
 After the miners had won their strike of 1900, some 
 of the companies began to put stockades about their 
 breakers. I asked why, in time of peace, this should be 
 done. " Oh, we shall soon enough have another fight, 
 and we propose to be ready for it. To make a conces- 
 sion to a trade union means a fight at the end." I later 
 spoke of this with one of the younger, but admittedly 
 one of the most competent, company presidents in 
 Pennsylvania. He said : " This whole policy with the 
 trade union is out of date. There must be an end to 
 a situation that breeds warfare as regularly as the 
 seasons come. The trade union is now here, and we 
 shall not get rid of it; I, for one, believe that we ought 
 not to get rid of it. It has got to be recognized in
 
 SOME GENERALITIES 33 
 
 spite of all that this means. It will make our work 
 for a long time harder and more disagreeable, but the 
 truth is that we employers have got to learn the lesson 
 of working harmoniously with organized labor." I 
 asked him how this should be done. " We must do 
 it by a slow process of education, we must meet their 
 representatives in a systematic way, and teach them 
 about our business so far that they will learn to act 
 reasonably. That is the task before us." This gen- 
 tleman acknowledged that a good deal of publicity 
 would be necessary in this relationship with trade- 
 union committees. "We cannot educate them," he 
 added, " without letting them know more about our 
 business than they have ever known. They must 
 study the market conditions, freight rates, and the 
 great difficulties like irregularity which bother us as 
 much as it bothers them, and we must help them to 
 do this wisely and fairly." 
 
 Returning to New York, I took these words to 
 a railroad president upon whose opinion every stu- 
 dent sets high value. " I would not," he said, 
 " change a word in that statement. To assume 
 that we have got to go on spasmodically fighting 
 the unions, is tactless and unintelligent. The truth 
 is that the kind of man who is not strong enough 
 to work with organized labor has not the qualifica- 
 tion for his position. It is silly for powerful corpora- 
 tions to say, ' We will deal with individuals, not with 
 representatives of unions.' Organization of labor 
 has got to be recognized as such, and dealt with as 
 such, and the problem now is to get men with the 
 qualities and capacities to do this." On the other 
 hand, the unions have to learn their own lessons. 
 
 D
 
 34 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 The public is at present very free with advice. " Let 
 them incorporate and give proper guarantees that 
 contracts will be kept, then employers will know 
 where they stand." Somewhere in the future, incor- 
 poration may come, but, as I shall try to show later, 
 the employers and the public have certain duties to 
 perform before incorporation is safe for the union or 
 wise for society. 
 
 So ingrained has become the suspicion in the trade 
 union that it sets its face against incorporation. It 
 fears to trust its funds to ordinary court decisions. 
 Judge Jackson of West Virginia uses these words : 
 " A professional set of agitators, organizers, and walk- 
 ing delegates, who roam all over the country as 
 agents for some combination, who are vampires that 
 live and fatten on the honest labor of the coal miners 
 of the country, and who are busybodies, creating 
 dissatisfaction among a class of people who are quiet, 
 well disposed, and who do not want to be disturbed 
 by the unceasing agitation of this class of people." 
 The labor papers print these words with comments 
 like the following : " Can we trust ourselves and our 
 friends in the hands of a man who shows such tem- 
 per as this upon the bench ? " They say : " Incorpo- 
 ration in time of trouble involves legal penalties 
 which the courts must enforce. We do not trust 
 their fairness on such issues." Good lawyers are 
 very indignant at this, but no man who will look 
 through the labor press of the last three or four 
 years will doubt 'the fact, however silly the opinion 
 may appear to him. 
 
 I have heard a lawyer, often called the leader of 
 the bar in his state, say that he did not dare to quote
 
 SOME GENERALITIES 35 
 
 the corporation law of Pennsylvania, because it bore 
 such marks of gross partiality to capitalistic inter- 
 ests. All that organized labor in the United States 
 does, is to enlarge the lawyer's judgment. 
 
 There are few unpleasanter facts than this honest 
 suspicion of organized labor that capitalistic organiza- 
 tion means to use against it every weapon that public 
 opinion will tolerate. 
 
 This suspicion appears inexcusable to those who 
 do not know the history of the union. In its long 
 struggle against the hard practices of certain employ- 
 ers, the trade union has been taught its worst abuses. 
 President Eliot justly puts down the boycott among 
 the sins of the union, but for a quarter of a century 
 in Massachusetts the employers used the boycott of 
 the "blacklist" so effectively, that the unions took 
 the hint. Labor leaders of such influence as Ira 
 Steward, George E. McNeil, and George Gunton were 
 trained in this school of the employers' blacklist. It 
 was this same spirit that made the necessity of the 
 walking delegate. A class of men like the paid secre- 
 tary had to be created in order to protect the union 
 in those early days when the agitation for an ele- 
 mentary factory legislation began. Scores of labor 
 men prominent in the ten-hour campaign were black- 
 listed. It is this long memory that now plagues us in 
 these problems. Behind the " restriction of output," 
 behind the dislike of new machinery and piece-work, 
 is the memory of days when new inventions were so 
 freely and rapidly introduced that no check upon the 
 speed was possible. The union did not exist or was 
 too weak to protest. The " pace setter " flourished, 
 and piece-work, like the machine, could be used to
 
 36 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 quicken the step. I have heard older men tell of 
 these days, when every device was used to set the 
 standard by the fastest workmen in the room. Even 
 where the " pace setter " has wholly disappeared, the 
 recollection of this is vivid. Labor organizations are 
 not to be judged apart from those early struggles. 
 Side by side with errors and abuses is a story of hero- 
 ism and self-sacrifice. 
 
 People eager to know the truth are perplexed by 
 the evidence in the great coal strike, but that conflict 
 cannot be understood apart from its history. I asked 
 a pastor to give me a list of his older and best family 
 men out on strike. In a single parish, I talked with 
 eighteen of these law-abiding miners. As if one man 
 spoke for an experience common to all, it was the 
 memory of long years of hardship, of greater and 
 pettier wrongs, which nerved the striker in that strug- 
 gle. These memories may be very harmless in their 
 individual expression, but the trade union guides them 
 into a new channel where their force becomes serious 
 enough. A degree of strength and independence of 
 labor organization has now been reached in the United 
 States which makes a new danger. It cannot be 
 fought on the assumption that the union is to be de- 
 stroyed, without intensifying every bad quality in it. 
 The trade unionist knows that he has helped to raise 
 wages; that more than any other, he has brought 
 about the best of our labor legislation. He knows 
 that the main struggle now is to raise the standard of 
 living in his entire group. Every determined effort 
 to crush the union, therefore, appears to the members 
 an attack on their own aspiration for improved social 
 life. Yet it is the determination of many of the
 
 SOME GENERALITIES 37 
 
 strongest business men in this country to cripple 
 these organizations if it can be done without the in- 
 dignant protests of public opinion. 
 
 It is customary to speak fair words about " the 
 right of labor to organize," about the usefulness of 
 the trade unions "when they keep to their proper 
 business," etc. Employers spoke very friendly words 
 of this kind before the recent industrial commission, 
 but the labor organization which most employers 
 approve is a docile, mutual-benefit association. It is 
 a trade union that makes no trouble for them. The 
 actual trade union which exists to maintain what it 
 believes to be its group rights, to make its bargains 
 collectively and struggle for every advantage it can 
 get, few employers would tolerate an instant if they 
 could avoid it. A great packer in Chicago is on 
 record as a friend to unions, but in that vast establish- 
 ment the union was ruthlessly crushed. Mr. Carnegie 
 writes thus in his "Gospel of Wealth," p. 114: 
 
 " The right of the workingmen to combine and to 
 form trade unions is no less sacred than the right of 
 the manufacturer to enter into associations and confer- 
 ences with his fellows, and it must sooner or later be 
 conceded. Indeed, it gives one but a poor opinion of 
 the American workman if he permits himself to be 
 deprived of a right which his fellow in England long 
 since conquered for himself. My experience has 
 been that trade unions, upon the whole, are bene- 
 ficial both to labor and to capital. They certainly 
 educate the workingmen and give them a truer con- 
 ception of the relations of capital and labor than they 
 could otherwise form. The ablest and best workmen 
 eventually come to the front in these organizations."
 
 38 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 This passage requires attention. Mr. Carnegie has 
 had long experience with unions. He here finds 
 them "beneficial both to labor and capital." He 
 says they educate labor and that the ablest and best 
 come to the front in them. This is the polar opposite 
 of what so many employers are now telling us. This 
 was written in the Forum in 1886, and reprinted in 
 1900. In spite of this fine tribute, the actual unions 
 in the great shops where he made his millions were 
 destroyed. I was told by one of the strongest men 
 in that company, "We would use every resource 
 within our reach rather than have a trace of unionism 
 in our shops." 
 
 Neither did Mr. Schwab (though practical conces- 
 sions have since been made) conceal his opinion about 
 the unions before the industrial commission. These 
 men know they may get an economic advantage over 
 England if they are free from the restraints of 
 unionism. Every one is now told that the English 
 union checks production ; that unions will not drive 
 at full speed. There is much truth in this, and the 
 inference we are expected to draw is that, if we had 
 no unions, a still hotter speed of production could be 
 maintained. It is beyond question that labor in 
 some sense interferes at this point 
 
 The employer objects to "interference," but a 
 strong labor union can scarcely exist without what 
 most employers would call interference. To apply 
 the collective principle in fixing the wage scale, low- 
 ering the labor time, improving sanitary or other 
 conditions for the whole body of men in any mill is 
 interference. When unions are federated, a member 
 is necessarily chosen to represent the combined labor
 
 SOME GENERALITIES 39 
 
 interests. This is disliked by the employer more 
 cordially still, but it is a condition essential to feder- 
 ated labor. If there is added to these issues the most 
 burning of them all, the manner in which wages are 
 readjusted by the introduction of new inventions, we 
 shall see why employers set so high a price on free 
 dom from all these annoying inconveniences and de- 
 lays. With the exception of certain industries, these 
 vexations are inherent in the relations between feder- 
 ated trade unions and the employer. The signs are 
 many that our industrial managers will not brook the 
 hindrances incident to well-organized trade unionism. 
 The new attitude throughout the South reflects the 
 less outspoken feeling of the North. One among 
 many clippings may show the form which this oppo- 
 sition takes. 1 
 
 It is not probable that employers can destroy 
 unionism in the United States. Adroit and desper- 
 ate attempts will, however, be made, if we mean by 
 unionism the undisciplined and aggressive fact of 
 vigorous and determined organizations. 
 
 If capital should prove too strong in this struggle, 
 the result is easy to predict. The employers have 
 only to convince organized labor that it cannot hold 
 its own against the capitalist manager, and the whole 
 
 1 New Orleans, August 30. " In view of the numerous strikes here 
 and the still greater number threatened in the building trades, the archi- 
 tects, builders, and contractors have taken preliminary steps to protect 
 themselves against further disturbances by calling a mass meeting of 
 master builders and of employers in affiliated trades. It is openly an- 
 nounced that the purpose of the meeting is to declare war against the 
 unions, and to begin the war at once instead of waiting for the unions 
 to strengthen themselves and precipitate a strike when they get ready, 
 which it is understood is their plan."
 
 4O THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 energy that now goes to the union will turn to an 
 aggressive political socialism. It will not be the 
 harmless sympathy with increased city and state 
 functions which trade unions already feel; it will 
 become a turbulent political force bent upon using 
 2very weapon of taxation against the rich. 
 
 Those who represent the interests of capital must 
 make the choice. With magnificent energy they have 
 created an industrial organization that no other na- 
 tion now matches. Will they use some fair portion 
 of this strength to complete this principle of organiza- 
 tion so that it includes those who help them do their 
 work ? or will they, in the fighting spirit of compe- 
 tition under which they were bred, insist upon an 
 unrestrained and unmodified mastery? No skill in 
 ornamental institutions of the Cash Register type 
 will suffice. It is conceivable that a genuine applica- 
 tion of profit-sharing, or a systematized distribution 
 of safe stock among the men, would go far to free 
 industry from much dangerous friction. Two of our 
 foremost business men have given special attention to 
 this last proposal. Neither is likely to try it from a 
 lurking fear of ugly reaction among the men in case 
 the stock should depreciate. Both think the scheme 
 of profit sharing too sentimental and too difficult to 
 put upon a secure business basis. They admit that 
 many experiments of this character are possible with 
 semi-public corporations like the railroads and street 
 cars, but with private industries subject to all manner 
 of unforeseen fluctuations on the market, together 
 with the suspicious opposition of the trade union to 
 all plans for binding the laborer to the employer's 
 business, the difficulties appear too great. One of
 
 SOME GENERALITIES 4! 
 
 them said : " The truth is, modern business is a fight, 
 and is likely to remain so. At bottom it is a ques- 
 tion of strength and courage, with as much tact as 
 we can get into it." It has, alas ! to be added to this, 
 that the strain of the competitive struggle (now that 
 it has taken on an international character) is so inex- 
 orable that they have neither time nor strength for 
 projects that are not quite business, and the results of 
 which are at best uncertain. 
 
 The conduct of the employers in the recent coal 
 strike has gone far to convert thousands of hard- 
 headed men to the necessity of some form of com- 
 pulsory arbitration to supplement what voluntary 
 arbitration can effect. At the point where the help- 
 lessness of the voluntary principle grows clear, the 
 public, if once roused, turns to the state. 
 
 Yet, one by one, other communities are yielding to 
 New Zealand's example. Victoria adopts it after 
 most critical examination. Sir Edmund Barton, re- 
 cently in this country, says, " I think that we in Aus- 
 tralia are very much in advance of your country in 
 the matter of dealing with industrial conditions. By 
 the terms of our arbitration law great strikes are 
 made practically impossible. Arbitration is compul- 
 sory . . . and since the enactment of this compul- 
 sory arbitration law, strikes in New South Wales are 
 unknown." 
 
 Even if we are driven to this, the same perplexity 
 rises as in the case of trade-union incorporation; 
 the suspicion of the trade union already shows itself 
 in opposition. 
 
 The trade union in New Zealand is not afraid of 
 the government or of the courts. Our own trade
 
 42 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 unions are suspicious of the courts, and will not trust 
 their verdicts in arbitration cases. 1 
 
 If, then, it is " a fight and is likely to remain so " ; 
 if the great forces of capitalism are to be so used as 
 to defeat the complete organization of labor along 
 lines that capital is taking for its own protection ; if 
 the devices of applied profit sharing, stock distribu- 
 tion, and arbitration are to be narrowed to the excep- 
 tional and less important instances, must we in the 
 last resort trust to the educated magnanimity of the 
 rich ? 
 
 The Le Play societies in France, as well as the brill- 
 iant group of English positivists, have urged this 
 remedy for a generation, "the moralization of the 
 employer." The masses, they tell us, are too difficult 
 to manage, therefore concentrate upon the employer. 
 Teach him that he is a trustee of public as well as of 
 private interests. There is great nobility in this teach- 
 ing, and signs are everywhere that individual magnates 
 are responding to this public expectation. Hospitals, 
 colleges, libraries, largesses of all sorts, add rare dis- 
 tinction to our age. 
 
 Two observations must however be made, (i) If 
 one go to that list, which all have seen, of four thou- 
 sand multi-millionnaires whose combined possessions 
 are believed to be beyond sixteen thousand millions, 
 it will be found that a startlingly small minority has 
 apparently ever heard of this fair gospel of public 
 trusteeship. In many other cases of princely grants 
 to public objects, it is certain that, at most, but a part 
 
 1 In a copy of the National Labor Tribune I find these words, 
 " Compulsory arbitration is a dream of fools when it is not a pawn of 
 knaves."
 
 SOME GENERALITIES 43 
 
 of the yearly income has been parted with. (2) The 
 other observation, weightier still, is that no possible 
 munificence in public donations affects or has any 
 relation to the sources of trouble in which the social 
 question has its origin. We suffer for want of a wise 
 and patient organization between employer and em- 
 ployed by means of which labor shall have the same 
 rights as capital. The managers tell us that free 
 competition is their ruin. They must have federated 
 organizations to protect them from capricious and un- 
 manageable cutting of prices. Economist and busi- 
 ness man alike admit upon the whole the justice of 
 the claim. But if the facts of the labor market are 
 really faced, the immensity of our immigration chok- 
 ing the avenues of unskilled labor, who can deny 
 that competition among laborers may be turned 
 against them with the same killing effect as that 
 under which capital suffers ? Labor's need of some 
 conscious control of competition is in every point as 
 true and as easily justified as that of capital. For 
 this the trade union stands. The man who defeats 
 this right with one hand, while he builds with the 
 other a public institution, does not render the service 
 for which our need is most urgent. We are glad of his 
 charity and good will; we should rejoice far more, if 
 he were to recognize among his helpers every right of 
 combination which he himself claims, and give of his 
 superior strength to make the complete organization 
 effective. 
 
 It is the writer's belief that, for reasons already 
 given, efficient and regulative legislation will be too 
 long defeated by competing local interests and by 
 consequent political timidities. If, then, we are to
 
 44 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 expect so little from the other remedies noted; if these 
 failures are likely to be the occasion, and even the 
 instigator, of an unceasing social unrest, to what hopes 
 can we look ? It is here assumed that the unrest will 
 become more consciously and more definitely social- 
 istic. Socialism will become an influence among us 
 that will compel much more than dilettante curiosity 
 and academic discussion. Whether its increase is to 
 bring us blessings or curses turns largely upon the 
 spirit in which it is met. No strong people will yield 
 to it without a long and desperate struggle. But with 
 what weapons shall the conflict be waged ? It is the 
 writer's chief hope in these studies to show that every 
 claim of socialism may be challenged and opposed 
 in ways that are not only free from danger, but are 
 in their very nature educational and fortifying at the 
 very points where our citizenship is weakest. For 
 the first time in history it is possible to subject so- 
 cialistic experiments to the tests of experience. To- 
 ward the close of the nineteenth century something 
 like a final judgment had been passed upon the 
 socialism of the Utopias. None more than the abler 
 socialists now condemn the "dream excursion " of the 
 separate colony. 
 
 During the last twenty years, experience has been 
 accumulating which enables one to reach another 
 and still more important judgment about collectivist 
 ideals. At least seven countries have now entered 
 upon a conflict with those whose propaganda is to 
 substitute the collective ownership of the means of 
 production for private ownership. In every instance 
 where socialists have been given or have won for 
 themselves specific and continuous responsibilities,
 
 SOME GENERALITIES 45 
 
 some remarkable results are now clearly observable. 
 It is with these, and with conclusions based upon them, 
 that the final chapters on Socialism deal. 
 
 But every radical change that socialistic reorgani- 
 zation implies, cannot be understood apart from its 
 relation to certain questions of fact and of speculation. 
 These will therefore first claim our attention.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 POLITICS AND BUSINESS 
 
 THERE are roughly three points of view in the social 
 question : that of the employer, that of the laborer, 
 and that of the public which includes them both. 
 " Social politics " takes for granted that the social 
 welfare is above either of these partial interests. It 
 is politics of the common good rather than that 
 of any class or party. Into it has entered all those 
 regulative measures which extend and adapt what 
 was first called factory legislation. 
 
 In no country of the first rank is this legislation 
 so weak as in the United States. Nowhere is there 
 such fatal lack of unity, and nowhere is it so easy to 
 discredit sound legislative proposals by the fear that 
 local business will suffer. This half paralysis of 
 legislation that is really social ; that guards labor as 
 carefully as it guards capital, is the more unhappy in 
 its results because large commercial interests never 
 used the government for its private ends with more 
 unconcealed audacity than among ourselves. Here, 
 too, the laborer is learning the uses to which govern- 
 ment and politics may be put. Looking to the city 
 and government for help has been taught to the com- 
 mon people by the most successful business men in 
 this country. 
 
 Our magnates of industry have not preached pater- 
 46
 
 POLITICS AND BUSINESS 47 
 
 nalism, but, in season and out of season, they have 
 practised it. They have practised it so long and so 
 openly, and with such conspicuous profit to them- 
 selves, that it is grotesque drollery for them to cry 
 out against paternal legislation. They have not 
 merely looked to the government to assist their enter- 
 prises, they have taken possession of it. Hat in 
 hand, they have begged with such importunity that 
 the law-making power, federal, state, and municipal, 
 seems to have been looked upon as a private pre- 
 serve. Yet these who discovered paternalism and 
 reduced it to a political art and method, never fail to 
 raise the alarm when the humbler classes ask legis- 
 lative aid of city or state. No lackey was ever more 
 subservient to his master than Pennsylvania to its 
 railroads, or than the state of California to the South- 
 ern Pacific. These corporations have owned the 
 states, as the landlords in England owned the rotten 
 boroughs before the reform. Does it lack any ele- 
 ment of th'e comic to hear, a few years since, a presi- 
 dent of that California corporation censure the 
 "dangerous tendency of crying out to the govern- 
 ment for aid " ? What past master of the art of a 
 triumphant paternalism in the West could for a 
 moment match this gentleman ? The East and Mid- 
 dle West are filled with his peers, who have given 
 object lessons in paternalism to the masses, so con- 
 tinuous and so convincing that they would be dullards 
 if they did not at last profit by their drill-masters' 
 example. 
 
 A specific and whimsical illustration of this comes 
 again from the hard-coal region in which Pennsyl- 
 vania republicans have preached the doctrines of
 
 48 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 protection. " Give us the fenced security of the tariff, 
 shut off foreign competition with our own products, 
 and then will it be well with our workmen, then 
 shall they delight in steady work and high wages." 
 With this fair promise on the lips, what do they forth- 
 with proceed to do ? With their own manufacturing 
 products hedged about, with their own interests pro- 
 tected, they proceed, as if for the gayety of nations, 
 to open every flood-gate for low-class foreign immi- 
 gration to keep down the price of what the workmen 
 have to sell, their daily labor. This product of life 
 tissue shall forsooth have no protection. "We, the 
 masters, will have it for our wares, but our laborers 
 for their wares shall not have it." 
 
 In that unhappy anthracite country the employers 
 will tell you openly and with unconscious bravado, 
 that they must get in cheaper and cheaper labor to 
 keep wages down, else they could make no money. 
 
 These realists of paternalism are among the lead- 
 ing causes of populist and socialist books. The Bel- 
 lamys are at most a foot-note on their ampler page. 
 If paternalism is growing, we at least know where 
 thanks primarily are due. 
 
 The practical obverse of this paternalism is the 
 socialistic sentiment among the working classes, which 
 strengthens day by day for many reasons, but for no 
 reason just now more than this: the refusal of so 
 many quasi-public corporations to accept proper social 
 control. They refuse in spite of the fact that they 
 have received, direct from the hand of the public, 
 the chief strategic advantages which secure their best 
 business gains. 
 
 There are few sources of socialistic unrest so open
 
 POLITICS AND BUSINESS 49 
 
 and prolific as the check which the commercially 
 powerful put upon legislation that is disinterested, 
 that is social in its proper sense. Interests that will 
 prevent an income tax and use a high tariff to aug- 
 ment the privileges, not of struggling industries,*but 
 of the most masterful business corporations in the 
 world, breed discontent, and then turn it straight 
 toward the most risky and premature forms of 
 socialism. 
 
 A single illustration may show what is meant by 
 the sure coming of these questions into the field of 
 politics, under the pressure of social unrest. We are 
 grossly behind most civilized people in our entire 
 treatment of industrial accidents. It is immediately 
 possible to remove the most flagrant of these in justices 
 by extending legal regulation based on the most defi- 
 nite practical experience of at least four other coun- 
 tries. These humane provisions are now defeated 
 among us by narrow business interests. The federal 
 government is powerless, and the separate states un- 
 willing to give an advantage to a competing state. 
 When the miners of Pennsylvania try to get the most 
 elementary Employers' Liability Act, they are told 
 before a legislative committee that it will harm local 
 industry. The recent attempts to improve the law in 
 New York were met by the objection that it would 
 drive business into New Jersey. 
 
 The penalty that we shall pay for these defeats and 
 delays is almost certain to be an unseasonable demand 
 in this country for types of socialistic legislation for 
 which we are not equipped. Our obdurate refusal to 
 organize proper compensation acts for the victims of 
 industrial injuries will soon raise the serious cry in
 
 50 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 our midst for state pensions. It is safe to predict that 
 the next considerable business depression will raise 
 the issue of " old age pensions." Two influences will 
 hasten this issue : (i) the unjust and bungling charac- 
 ter of our present laws for indemnifying accidents, and 
 (2) the rapidity with which men still in middle life are 
 set aside in favor of young men in many of the great- 
 est industries. (In the chapter on Machinery the fact 
 will be considered with proof and more detail.) The 
 man of fifty, if displaced in time of prosperity, may 
 find employment, but the moment the demand for 
 labor is arrested, these evils will show themselves in 
 every industrial city in the United States. No people 
 ever mismanaged government pensions with that head- 
 long and promiscuous wastefulness which has been the 
 humiliation of our system since the Civil War. Our 
 wealth has been such that the good-natured extrava- 
 gance has not despoiled us; but to arrange old age 
 pensions for workingmen, with a hundredth part of 
 the recklessness that has marked our pensioning of 
 soldiers, would bankrupt any workingmen's pension 
 scheme ever devised. 
 
 We have not yet won the administrative habits that 
 make this vast and delicate responsibility safe. Yet 
 the premature proposal will be thrust upon us all the 
 more impetuously, because we refuse to take the first 
 clear steps to do justly through more adequate com- 
 pensation acts. The best lesson England has to teach 
 us in the social question is the steadying and whole- 
 some reaction of her progressive factory legislation 
 upon her spirit of industrial unrest. This whole body 
 of regulative measures has saved her from a revolution ; 
 it has saved her from any violent form of socialism ;
 
 POLITICS AND BUSINESS 5 1 
 
 tempering this sect so that socialist demands in that 
 country are merely the frontier requisitions of her 
 advanced politics. 1 
 
 A coal operator, at first friendly to the good work 
 of the Civic Federation, turned later into the most 
 sarcastic critic, because "the meddling of that body 
 of theorists brought politics into our business." 
 " No array of bigwigs," he said, " shall help us run 
 our business by the help of politics." He insisted 
 that the trade unions could have been beaten easily 
 enough but for the impertinence of this political 
 meddling. 
 
 It is true that the political situation of the moment 
 was used to win that miners' strike of 1900. It is as 
 true that business administration would be appallingly 
 embarrassed if, in every row between capital and 
 labor, hopeful appeal could be made to the politician. 
 Yet this formidable perplexity has at last been reached 
 in the United States. Politics, in its proper and larger 
 definition, will more and more interfere with certain 
 forms of business. When the public is disturbed enotigh 
 by strike disorders, it will interfere politically. The 
 
 1 For an illustration let the reader turn to Engels's powerful descrip- 
 tion, "The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844." If 
 we except the lurid passages in Carlyle's " Past and Present " and 
 "Later-Day Pamphlets," and many of the notes in Marx's "Capital," there 
 is no such terrible arraignment of conditions among the laboring classes 
 as this book contains. It is a mass of documentary testimony of the 
 extensive and intensive misery of the laboring classes generally ; but a 
 misery which has been immeasurably lessened. Charles Kingsley's 
 stormy resentment against society had its kindling from just such 
 sources as these. Not twenty years after he had written " his problem 
 story," " Yeast," the improvement among the workingmen had been so 
 great that in the fourth edition of this volume the author states frankly 
 how hopeful a change has taken place.
 
 52 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 kind of organization which capital on the one side 
 and labor on the other has now taken on, renders this 
 inevitable. Capital is now centralized in producing 
 and distributing certain products that are in the wid- 
 est and most common use, like iron, steel, sugar, 
 meat, and coal. The very definiteness and magnitude 
 of the organization make it an easy mark for approval 
 or disapproval. If the consumer thinks himself 
 aggrieved, he sees clearly the source of his irritation. 
 There may be wholly legitimate economic causes for 
 the present rise of beef, but no authoritative and 
 disinterested statement of this has been made to 
 the public, and thus the cry rises in every part of 
 the country that the "government look into the 
 beef trust," that we have in a word political inter- 
 ference. 
 
 To this same end works the increasing organization 
 of labor. The very mass and extent of this organi- 
 zation makes the ignoring of it by the politician im- 
 possible, if it actively court such recognition. It is 
 not necessary that labor should try to form an inde- 
 pendent party. Its power may prove more effective 
 if its growing political strength is used to extort from 
 either Democrats or Republicans every advantage it 
 can gain. Within fifteen years, in countries like 
 Switzerland, Belgium, and France, labor organization 
 has compelled a kind of systematic mixing of govern- 
 ments in industrial affairs. It is but a few years since 
 a French premier contemptuously refused to entertain 
 the proposition of government interference with a 
 strike. He was forced to yield, and from that day to 
 this politics has played an increasing part in those 
 special labor contests that bring out the antagonisms
 
 POLITICS AND BUSINESS 53 
 
 between political individualism and the ideals of 
 modern collectivism. 1 
 
 As late as 1882, when they were discussing in 
 France whether the liberty of association should be 
 granted to trade unions, Leon Say thought the social 
 question a fad upon which serious statesmen should 
 waste no time. The last prime minister, Waldeck 
 Rousseau, set high value upon Monsieur Say's opinion, 
 following it sedulously, until the socialist vote drove 
 him to a policy which he pronounced infamous as late 
 as 1894. In Roanne, in 1895, he told his hearers of 
 the social destruction threatened by collectivism, " les 
 ruines qu'il peut faire," 2 and finally before the repub- 
 lican club, after the fall of the Me"line ministry, 
 Waldeck-Rousseau warned the party forces against 
 the first step of compromise with socialists. 
 
 Is not this the mission of le Grand Cercle republi- 
 cain, it was asked, to prevent every affiliation with 
 collectivist despoilers, and to hold fast republican 
 principles in their integrity ? It has never ceased to 
 excite merriment among his enemies that, once in 
 power, this strong leader should so soon eat his own 
 words, hasten to the socialists for help, and appoint 
 one of their best-known leaders, Monsieur Millerand, 
 as his minister of commerce. No one believes that 
 the private opinions of Waldeck-Rousseau upon the 
 merits of the collectivist programme had been trans- 
 formed. His change of front was forced by the un- 
 expected rise of a new party in French politics. The 
 socialist trade union had a membership, in 1890, of 
 
 1 President Loubet was recently as busily engaged in trying to settle 
 a strike as President Roosevelt. 
 a Discours le 15 novembre.
 
 54 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 less than 140,000, in 1899 they numbered nearly 
 500,000. In 1884 there were not 100 of these asso- 
 ciations in all France, in 1890 there were 1006, in 
 1899, 268 5. l Forty of these unions have their own 
 periodicals, and nearly 600 have established libraries. 
 Although these unions represent but half the socialist 
 strength of the country, their clubs are so organized 
 in hundreds of French cities that they exercise an 
 influence which no party manager can now ignore. 
 
 The president of the Chamber of Deputies, Mon- 
 sieur Deschanel, is reported to have said, " I owe my 
 position chiefly to the fact that I had given a dozen 
 years' hard study to industrial and economic problems, 
 under the firm conviction that the social question is 
 the ruling issue of our time." 
 
 After two speeches 2 delivered in 1894, it appears 
 to have been admitted in the Deputies that he was 
 easily the most competent member to cope with the 
 new party. He openly admits that socialism repre- 
 sents a powerful, serious, and growing influence, 
 which politics must more and more take into account. 
 Monsieur Deschanel is, perhaps, more critical of 
 political laissez-faire than he is of collectivism. State 
 intervention in behalf of the laborer (not merely of 
 the woman and child, but of the man) he accepts as 
 a principle that is to have a far wider application. 
 He believes that such interference may become na- 
 tional on a far larger scale. He holds that la grande 
 Industrie has created a new form of pauperism : "a 
 engendr6 par les chomages une forme nouvelle de pau- 
 
 1 L'Annuaire des Syndicate Professionals pour iqoo. 
 
 2 " Replique \ Messieurs Millerand et Jaures " and " Le Systeme 
 Collectiviste."
 
 POLITICS AND BUSINESS 55 
 
 p6risme." He recognizes, what his older colleagues 
 would not see, that the trade union has become a per- 
 manent part of our industrial life, and should be 
 welcomed. He calls it the " cellule de 1'organization 
 nouvelle du travail." He admits every abuse that is 
 laid at its doors, but insists that with a bold and gen- 
 erous treatment the trade union will become a power- 
 ful and conservative influence : " deviendra, entre 
 des mains plus excretes, un puissant levier de pro- 
 gres et de justice sociale." l 
 
 That socialism as curse or blessing might prove 
 to be the great fact of the twentieth century, has long 
 been felt by men of philosophic penetration who 
 wrote in the spirit of critical observers. I select 
 those only who looked at this oncoming event with 
 pronounced aversion, as their testimony will carry 
 more weight. Two French writers of such eminence 
 as Edmond Scherer and De Vogiie are both haunted 
 by the assurance that socialism is creeping upon us 
 like a great shadow. Nearly twenty years ago Sena- 
 tor Scherer expressed deep repugnance to socialism, 
 but wrote, " all signs point to the steady spread of 
 socialism within a future that we may all live to see." 2 
 
 In his acute though sombre study of race struggles 
 Professor Pearson, out of a singularly large experi- 
 ence in England and Australia, expresses a like 
 opinion. This same view appears in the more pre- 
 
 1 " La Question Sociale et Le Socialisme;" Discours prononce a 
 Carmaux le 27 decembre, 1896. 
 
 a " La Republique democratique, je ne puis m'empecher de le croire 
 tend au nivellement des fortunes, elle est condamnee a faire 1'epreuve 
 du communisme, et la seule chose que nous ayons a nous demander 
 c'est ce qu'il faut attendre de cette tentative." Edmond Scherer, 
 " La Democratic et La France," 1883, p. 63.
 
 56 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 tentious and widely read book of Benjamin Kidd, 1 
 and now Edward Dicey of Oxford, in a dirge at the 
 grave of his own liberal party, sees the gloomy appa- 
 rition of socialism rising on the horizon. 
 
 It is the politics of this party, which Professor Dicey 
 pronounces dead in England, that has been a scorn- 
 ful opponent of socialism. More than any other, it 
 came to be the party of modern capitalism. Yet while 
 the strength of capitalism is unabated, this party in 
 country after country has suffered crushing defeats. 
 In the two countries where socialism has won the 
 most signal victories, Belgium and Germany, this 
 party of the "politics of the great industries" has 
 almost ceased to exist. No modern event of greater 
 consequence has happened in Europe than the swift 
 decay of what is known as political liberalism. When 
 Professor Dicey connects the fall of his party with 
 the rise of socialism, he indicates the chief event 
 with which twentieth-century politics will be con- 
 cerned. This fact cannot be understood apart from 
 its relation to the industrial forces of our time. 
 
 The great market, banking, industrial, and factory 
 
 1 Mr. Kidd speaks of " the only social doctrines current in the ad- 
 vanced societies of to-day, which have the assent of reason, for the 
 masses are the doctrines of socialism." In his latest book, " Western 
 Civilization," Mr. Kidd brings the ideals of politics and economics into 
 one category: "As in politics the movement has been toward equal 
 political rights, so in economics it is now a movement toward equality 
 of economic opportunity." He quotes Professor Sidgwick's ethical 
 postulate, " that the distribution of wealth in a well-ordered state 
 should aim at realizing political justice." This conscious identifying 
 of political and industrial ideals is a dangerous ferment for certain 
 vested interests. Let it become familiar to the common thought, and 
 some of our sturdiest formulas on "liberty," "property," "rights," 
 must be restated.
 
 POLITICS AND BUSINESS 57 
 
 centres have created a politics which reflects what 
 was believed to be their interest. Every successive 
 industrial type has had its own political form. No 
 one doubts that the politics peculiar to the Southern 
 states before the Civil War was made chiefly by the 
 kind of business carried on there by slaves. 
 
 There was in England a landlord politics that car- 
 ried all before it until the midland manufacturing 
 cities grew powerful enough to force the landlords to 
 admit to Parliament those who represented the new 
 interests of the mill and factory towns. If a few 
 of the largest businesses of Pennsylvania transpor- 
 tation, iron, and mining were grouped together, and 
 then their history faithfully told, we should know the 
 origin and character of a large part of Pennsylvania 
 politics. The history of the Boston and Maine Rail- 
 road in New Hampshire would be at the same time 
 the mere record of much contemporary politics in that 
 state. Very nearly all that this railroad wanted has 
 been recorded politically as the will of the people. 
 Very little of what the people wanted has been so 
 recorded, if the demands were thought to run counter 
 to the interests of this corporation. The great busi- 
 ness thus not only sets its stamp on politics, it is to a 
 large extent its creator and controller. 
 
 To admit that political liberalism the distinctive 
 party of capitalism has been routed in the most 
 highly developed countries of Europe, is to admit 
 ;hat capitalism itself, as hitherto managed, is under 
 criticism. This appears with still more significance as 
 we note the tendency of commercial interests to unite 
 those who have been heretofore in opposing political 
 parties. In Belgium, where the social question has
 
 58 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 become intense, thousands of business men, who were 
 formerly liberals, now vote with the conservatives 
 because business has been frightened by the rise of 
 socialism. Even in our country the half-conscious 
 socialism known as populism has so far developed as 
 to drive the conservative and well-to-do democrats of 
 the Cleveland, Whitney, and Olney type so close 
 to the republican party, that much ingenuity is re- 
 quired to prove any important and lasting difference 
 between the two traditional foes. 
 
 At the South, the banker, the manufacturer, the 
 railroad man, now tell you with no hesitation that 
 his democratic sympathies are gone, that his real 
 interests are with the republicans. In Norfolk, 
 Virginia, I was told by a man with generations of 
 democratic traditions in his blood, " Practically every 
 successful business man of my acquaintance would 
 leave the democratic party if it were not for the 
 abnormal situation which the negro question imposes 
 upon us. The socialistic nonsense in the democratic 
 party has shown thousands of men in the South that 
 they do not belong among the democrats." Every 
 mill and factory, every railroad and other large cor- 
 poration, established at the South, will increase this 
 political sympathy with "the party of great interests." 
 
 The analogy between our republican party and the 
 dying liberalism of Europe is extremely imperfect 
 unless the splendid origin of both parties is forgotten. 
 There is far more truth than error in the analogy, if 
 we have in view merely what these parties finally 
 came to be. The Belgian liberals, for instance, repre- 
 sented large capitalistic industries. They wanted to 
 be left alone. They were solemn in their protests
 
 POLITICS AND BUSINESS 59 
 
 against " interference," whether of state or the trade 
 unions. 
 
 Only the ruins of this party are now left. Socialist 
 aggression has driven the vested property interests 
 into one common political alliance for self-defence. 
 We are now entering into this same experience. 
 
 To the extent that the republican party is notori- 
 ously affiliated with leading business enterprises, 
 banking, transportation, and the great production, 
 to the extent that these enterprises are uniting men 
 of both party traditions against a vague and fumbling 
 socialism, the comparison holds good. 
 
 Discontent with the actual industrial order is now 
 organized politically as it is in Europe, and every 
 force active among us will add to its strength. Its 
 beginnings are thus far very humble. Periods of 
 unusual prosperity will hold it in check, but at each 
 collapse of the business boom this new idea will but 
 fasten the more strongly upon the imagination and 
 the purposes of multitudes of the American people. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone is quoted as saying that the chief 
 event of his time was the increasing identification of 
 politics with social questions. Eight years ago Lord 
 Rosebery said, " I am certain that there is a party 
 in this country, unnamed as yet, that is disconnected 
 with any existing political organizations a party 
 that is inclined to say ' a plague on both your houses, 
 a plague on all your politics, a plague on all your 
 unending discussions that yield so little fruit.' " (St. 
 James's Hall, March 21, I8Q4.) 1 
 
 1 " Now, I dare say the time may come it may come sooner than 
 some think when the liberal party will be transformed or superseded 
 by some new party." John Morley, Newcastle, May 21, 1894.
 
 60 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 The party is not yet formed, but if we may believe 
 so acute and competent a scholar of world politics as 
 Mr. Dicey, " liberalism " is a thing of the past and 
 socialism a fatality of the future. 
 
 What is likely to strengthen this collectivist sym- 
 pathy is the advent of the "trust." The process 
 of consolidating large, separate concerns is easy to 
 justify in theory and by analogies from economic 
 development. It seems more than probable that 
 these giant enterprises will eventually adjust them- 
 selves to the needs of a world-commerce. But 
 meantime two eventful results cannot be averted. 
 The trust is destined (i) to arouse and intensify 
 socialistic sentiment among classes to which social- 
 ism has hitherto been an object of ridicule. Noth- 
 ing can now prevent the development of a new 
 habit of appealing to the state and government 
 to extend its authority over these colossal under- 
 takings. 
 
 The trust will (2) accustom the people to bring poli- 
 tics into the industrial field. The huge overcapitali- 
 zation, the taking and giving of social privileges, the 
 method of organization so exclusively from the stock 
 exchange point of view, with its excesses of specula- 
 tion, are all calculated to play, with disquieting effect, 
 on the popular imagination. The incidental evils 
 bound to follow these hurried aggregations of capital 
 cannot quickly enough be brought under control. 
 Long intervening years must pass before the trust 
 can prove safe for the humbler class of investors. 
 Popular approval will never be secured until these 
 open and obvious advantages are assured. Capital- 
 istic abuses have had one sure defence in the past
 
 POLITICS AND BUSINESS 6 1 
 
 behind which the trust cannot hide itself. The pub- 
 lic eye is fastened upon it by its very bigness. 
 
 It has never yet been possible to concentrate the 
 critical discontent definitely enough upon commercial 
 abuses. There has been no end of railing against the 
 corporations, but the people have taken these charges 
 very closely at their proper value. As long as the 
 vilification of corporations is indiscriminate, the com- 
 mon sense of the people will discount it for the plain 
 reason that thousands of corporations (like our New 
 England mills and factories) are fairly law-abiding 
 and bring benefits to millions of our inhabitants. 
 They are known to be as free from evil practices as 
 any phase of our institutional life. To lump these 
 business organizations into one common object for 
 cursing is not merely unwise, it is dangerous in that 
 it muddles every issue upon which reform of real 
 evils must depend. As long as obloquy is put upon 
 corporations in general, the lawless ones are safe. 
 Their percentage of the contumely is lightly borne. 
 
 With the advent of the "trust" a new stage in 
 popular judgments has been reached. The old hesi- 
 tation about fixing responsibilities for evils, real and 
 supposed, will continue until business ills again beset 
 us. In that stress, scores of the weaker combinations 
 will collapse and even the strongest be hard driven 
 to meet the responsibilities incurred by their mon- 
 strous capitalization. These days will be the days of 
 reckoning for the capitalistic holders. There will be 
 much unfairness in this popular judgment. The 
 trust has come, upon the whole, as inevitably as the 
 partnership came in its time, or as the corporation 
 began to appear at the end of the eighteenth century.
 
 62 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 Yet all that can be said for the " naturalness " of 
 this trust evolution will not shield it from one outbreak 
 of hostile censure. Thus far there has been a holding 
 of the breath at the rapidity and magnitude of trust 
 formation. The stupendous scale of it has impressed 
 the imagination as no other event in our industrial 
 history : methods, salaries, managers, promoters, all 
 are thrust into such fierce light and prominence that 
 popular attention will become very embarrassing in 
 that less prosperous period when all the capitalized 
 expectations have to be fulfilled. This element of 
 conspicuousness ought, in theory, to sober those who 
 conduct these enterprises. The very rights under 
 which they do business are granted to them by the 
 state. In season and out of season, they have told 
 the public that the gathering of various firms and cor- 
 porations into one unified association enabled them 
 to make extraordinary economies by which the con- 
 sumer must profit. Can we think that intelligent 
 men will create these expectations and then anger 
 the people by higher prices ? If they prove unable 
 to make economies that the public can share, their 
 combination will be pronounced a failure ; if they 
 can make economies but refuse to share them in 
 cheapened products, the public will be more critical 
 still. 
 
 The most popular error, however, is to judge the 
 trust on its business side alone. It has to undergo 
 another ordeal before public opinion. The trust 
 comes into the industrial struggle with privileges and 
 powers greater than ever have been exercised in the 
 world's commerce. To use these powers with such 
 prudence and fairness as not to outrage the sentiment
 
 POLITICS AND BUSINESS 63 
 
 of the community, will prove the severest test to 
 which these combinations must submit. It is too 
 soon to say what their influence is to be upon a great 
 multitude of small independent business concerns. 
 Is life to be made harder for these, or are they also 
 to have some part in " the higher stage of evolution " 
 which the trust is said to represent ? That the trust 
 will throw out of work armies of men, as we are 
 often told, is probably untrue, but will it slowly put 
 an army of the more modest independent men into 
 dependent clerical positions ? It may be said that 
 this is unavoidable, that it is progress and in the long 
 run socially best ; but that it would create a new class 
 of malcontents in American life is very certain. 
 
 The most concrete impulse that now favors social- 
 ism in this country is the inane purpose to deprive 
 labor organizations of the full and complete rights 
 that go with federated unionism. Capitalism claims 
 and gets what it refuses to labor. One of the gran- 
 dees in the business world, who has publicly insisted 
 upon "the rights of labor to organize," was asked in 
 my hearing if he were favorable to trade unionism. 
 " Yes," he said, " I have always been its friend, 
 but of course the union must be taught its proper 
 place. It has nothing to do with the employer's 
 business. If it dictates, it is out of its sphere. It 
 ought to confine itself to mutual helpfulness, burial 
 funds, and the like." Of this kind of good will to 
 organized labor employers have abundance, yet it may 
 conceal an absolute and settled aversion to every 
 real object for which the trade union stands. This 
 gentleman had an honest loathing for the actual 
 trade union when it gained strength enough to offer
 
 64 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 him the alternative of arbitration or of a strike. He 
 had an imagined affection for a ladylike association 
 which " knew its place," that is, which never ques- 
 tioned his own absolute dictatorship. He was fond 
 of saying: "There is no place for arbitration in my 
 works, because I pay all that the business will afford. 
 If they ask me to arbitrate, it is like taking me by 
 the throat. With a highwayman there can be no 
 arbitration." 
 
 This is upon the whole the attitude of the business 
 managers in four-fifths of our unionized industries. 
 From the point of view of capitalist supremacy this 
 attitude has one threatening feature. 
 
 This enmity of capital to the trade union is watched 
 with glee by every intelligent socialist in our midst. 
 Every union that is beaten or discouraged in its 
 struggle is ripening fruit for socialism. We have 
 pleased ourselves by repeating, parrotlike, "such 
 socialism as we have in the United States is wholly 
 of foreign origin." A few years ago this explanation 
 accounted fairly well for the facts. No close observer 
 can any longer consider it an explanation. The con- 
 ditions out of which socialism grows are working with 
 increasing power in our midst, and they do not con- 
 veniently select those only who speak broken English, 
 or were bred among "the tyrannies of the old world." 
 Let unionism receive from capital a severe and dam- 
 aging blow, and socialism will bear henceforth, not a 
 foreign but a distinctively American stamp. 
 
 This process has already begun. Strong trade-union 
 cities, like Brockton and Haverhill in Massachusetts, 
 to the general bewilderment, elect workingmen social- 
 ist mayors. Their hold is thus far slight. These
 
 POLITICS AND BUSINESS 65 
 
 socialists were dropped after two years in office, but 
 in both cities the sentiment which elected them is far 
 stronger and more confident than in 1898-1899. In 
 other manufacturing towns like Rockland, it becomes 
 each year more aggressive. In 1902, it sends a third 
 representative to the State House, while manufactur- 
 ing cities in Plymouth County give an enormous vote 
 for a socialist state senator. 1 Among the causes 
 which have brought these changes is the purpose of 
 employers to cripple the trade unions. It may be by 
 forcing piece-work so that wages are kept low ; or by 
 introducing a new machine like the " laster " without 
 consulting or propitiating the union whose wage scale 
 is revolutionized by the new process. That which 
 teaches a union that it cannot succeed as a union 
 turns it toward socialism. In long strikes in towns 
 like Marlboro and Brookfield strong unions are de- 
 feated. Hundreds of men leave these towns for 
 shoe-centres like Brockton, where they are now voting 
 the socialist ticket. The socialist mayor of this city 
 tells me, " The men who come to us now from towns 
 where they have been thoroughly whipped ir. a strike 
 are among our most active working socialists" The 
 bitterness engendered by this sense of defeat turned 
 to politics, as it will throughout the whole country, 
 if organization of labor is deprived of its rights. 
 
 When the socialist Chase was made mayor of 
 Haverhill, the ablest local " capitalistic " paper made 
 this comment : 
 
 1 As this goes to press, December 4th, the returns from Brockion 
 show that with the reelection of the socialist mayor by a strong major- 
 ity, eight city councillors, three aldermen, and two members of the 
 school board, all socialists, are also elected. 
 F
 
 66 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 "Now that the municipal election of 1898 has 
 passed into history, those who profess horror of so- 
 cialistic teachings may with advantage to themselves 
 and benefit to the community study the election returns 
 with anxious solicitude. They will find therein food 
 for thought. The vote of yesterday means far more 
 than the bare figures indicate. It comes as a solemn 
 warning that the people are dissatisfied with conditions 
 which make for their political degradation ; that they 
 have grown impatient of low wages and lack of em- 
 ployment, ar.d may be counted upon in the future to 
 act independently of all political] parties unless there 
 be a change both of methods and of men in the legis- 
 lative chambers of nation, state, and city. Is it any 
 wonder these people have lost confidence in the hon- 
 esty of those chosen to direct their affairs when they 
 see piling up on every side immense aggregations 
 of wealth which is used to control the necessaries of 
 life, while their daily wage grows smaller ? " 
 
 These ire puny beginnings. Our social democracy 
 is still too much at sea to put before the people 
 a clear aid coherent statement of principles. These 
 are, however, slowly taking shape, while the plat- 
 form of our conventional politicians, like that of 
 European liberalism, drifts year by year into phrase- 
 making that shows upon its face the fatal lack of 
 great and positive purpose. The conventional poli- 
 tics has reached that first stage of decay the apolo- 
 getic and defensive attitude. The new politics of the 
 social democracy has, at least, the spirit of positive 
 and creative action. 
 
 As the attenuated difference between republican 
 and " Qeveland democrat " disappears, conservative
 
 POLITICS AND BUSINESS 6/ 
 
 and large property interests, careless of party tradi- 
 tions, will band together against this common foe. 
 Our first need is to know how to meet the new occa- 
 sions which this appeal to the state brings with it. 
 
 An attempt is made in the following chapters to 
 throw light on the most important phases of the strug 
 gle upon which we are entering. I believe that recent 
 developments of socialism and trade unionism in 
 this country furnish all the guidance we require 
 both as to temper and method of coping with them. 
 Before passing to this more definite investigation 
 of the socialist programme, certain preliminary in- 
 quiries must be made as to the nature of the " social 
 question," and the real purpose of those who attatk 
 the present industrial order. Our first inquiry shoul 
 be directed to the primary fact of discontent. No 
 age ever had a social question apart from some 
 deep undercurrent of exasperated sentiment against 
 the prevailing social order. There is in our age no 
 more " social question " than there is discontent with 
 the kind of society in which we live. The extent 
 and nature of this unrest is therefore our immediate 
 concern.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 WHAT we call rather loosely the social question has 
 its invariable origin in some form or degree of popu- 
 lar discontent. It is the purpose of this chapter to 
 analyze the nature of our own social unrest ; to mark 
 some of its more undeniable tendencies ; to ask if it 
 is growing, or, if not growing, is it taking on any 
 threatening peculiarity to justify alarm ? Can it be 
 maintained that ours is an unrest different in any 
 essential from the ferment which for centuries has 
 stirred the heart and the imagination of humanity ? 
 In the current literature on social and industrial ques- 
 tions nothing, even by economists of repute, is more 
 commonly asserted. 
 
 The interpretation of the unrest (does it bode good 
 or ill ?) varies with the mood of the writer. To one 
 it augurs the approach of swift-footed evils ; to another 
 each industrial struggle foretells the birth of a more 
 robust society. Whatever the interpretation, it is in 
 the interest of clearness to get first some light upon 
 the inquiry : Is the unrest now deeper than that which 
 has marked the aspiration of most Western races ? 
 There is much to' make us believe that primitive 
 peoples everywhere are fairly content. However 
 
 68
 
 THE SOCIAL UNREST 69 
 
 hard and pinched their condition, it does not become 
 a source of chronic agitation for social progress. 
 Neither do we associate discontent with oriental 
 life and tradition. Religion and custom unite to 
 soothe these dreaming millions into acquiescence. 
 One country offers just now an exception. In Japan 
 the spell is broken. For her making or unmaking, 
 the current we call civilization has borne her from 
 her moorings. Her religion is now to imitate the 
 West. She is impatient for railroads, for the stock 
 exchange, for mills, for electric plants, for markets, 
 and alas ! for naval and military furnishings to further 
 and protect the new ventures. All this gets our 
 praise. We say : " Japan is at last waking from a 
 sleep. It is ' enterprise,' the beginning of great 
 things." At the very start observers are telling us 
 the price these people are to pay for their huckster- 
 ing in the world market. The very daintiest of her 
 gifts are being despoiled : the capacity to work and 
 live with a quiet spirit; a grace and gentleness of 
 manner that make our civilized behavior rude and 
 awkward in comparison ; and most grievous of all, 
 the quick decay of her exquisite art. The undis- 
 turbed leisure for loving and perfect workmanship 
 is already so blighted that the very hope of pre- 
 serving it is in peril. Some far-off compensation 
 for these losses will doubtless come, meantime the 
 message from Japan is that she presents an easy 
 object lesson of a people passing rapidly from the 
 relative content of the East to the hustling self- 
 assertion of the West. We shall henceforth in- 
 evitably associate Japan with the discontent of 
 progress.
 
 70 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 All progress thus carries with it its own disquie- 
 tude. Where the highest pace is set, there discontent 
 with actual achievement appears to be keenest. No 
 age, for instance, has ever poured out such wealth of 
 energy upon education as our own ; none has ever 
 tried so hard, or paid so lavishly, to carry to the 
 whole people every form of intellectual opportunity, 
 yet never in history was critical discontent with edu- 
 cation so captious and all-pervasive as at present. 
 A well-known English educator reading a mass of 
 recent books and articles by the more prominent of 
 our teachers, and attending several important edu- 
 cational meetings, has just said, " One would think by 
 the vehemence of the criticism that education in the 
 United States was in the last stages of deterioration." 
 
 Even if unrest has grown, it need not of course 
 imply discouragement. A period or a people wholly 
 free from the hungers which break into expressions 
 of discontent would be characterized as lacking the 
 first elements of vigorous and hardy life. Dates like 
 that of the English reform movement of 1832 recall 
 times of unusual agitation, nevertheless no one would 
 deny to these brave days the inspiration of immense 
 social development. The more general outbreak of 
 1 848 brought with it deeper turmoil still, yet many of 
 the most hopeful changes which we associate with 
 race improvement date from this revolutionary epoch. 
 Modern history is crowded with upheavals ; the Peas- 
 ants' Revolt of the fourteenth century ; the economic 
 disturbances in England in the sixteenth century ; 
 and again, what is known as the Industrial Revolu- 
 tion, that began in the latter part of the eighteenth 
 century and extended far into the nineteenth. Our
 
 THE SOCIAL UNREST 71 
 
 own present uneasiness, thrown upon this intenser 
 background, appears tame and colorless. Compared 
 with the Reformation, our spirit of protest is fitful and 
 uncertain, while if comparison is made between our 
 own generation and the generation that closed the 
 eighteenth century in Europe, with its volcanic shocks 
 of revolution, we are stolid and well-behaved. In 
 current discussion upon religious, educational, and 
 political topics, no phrase is more certain to be used 
 than this, " Yes, but we are living in an age of tran- 
 sition," implying that the peculiar instability of things 
 at the present moment is exceptional. So far as the 
 phrase has any significance, it can mean only that 
 certain events, upon which the eye is fixed, are mov- 
 ing with quickened step. Yet who could select a 
 decade since the landing at Jamestown that was not 
 a " time of transition " ? 
 
 The claim is still insistent that our agitations are 
 exceptional and full of perils. It is therefore wiser to 
 challenge the facts ; to see if possible what truth the 
 claim contains. Far-off periods will be avoided. 
 They offer too many pitfalls for misleading analo- 
 gies. There is even danger in appeals to other coun- 
 tries, because too many differences of race and 
 circumstance are introduced. 
 
 We turn therefore to our own home records, select- 
 ing for comparison events and years enough to make 
 a basis for calculation. Discontent continuous in 
 intensity is found at no time and among no people. 
 From the earliest of our permanent settlements its 
 fevers are chronic, alternating with periods of con- 
 scious rest and well-being. Before the middle of the
 
 72 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 seventeenth century social life in America was too 
 new and too unstable to offer safe illustrations. A 
 better beginning may be made with the Virginia col- 
 ony after its destiny is so far fixed that there is no 
 thought of abandoning this country. To the extent 
 that it can be done with fairness, those special causes 
 of unrest that have much in common with our own 
 troubles will be chosen. 
 
 What signs are at hand to-day of more extreme 
 uneasiness than those observable in the South during 
 a large part of Berkeley's reign, from 1661, includ- 
 ing the outbreak known as Bacon's Rebellion ? The 
 cause of the poor against the rich had great part in 
 that picturesque hero's plucky fight. Theft and ex- 
 tortion by those in power were notorious. Those 
 in high places became rapidly rich, and the people 
 were cruelly overtaxed. There had been a period of 
 business depression more distressing than any known 
 in our time. There was political and business cor- 
 ruption that no Tammany brave would now dream of 
 venturing. Heady attacks on property were the or- 
 der of the day, and one charge against Bacon's fol- 
 lowers was that they were a " lawless rabble poisoned 
 by communistic notions." J 
 
 The years preceding the Rebellion were such as 
 are commonly called "hard times." People felt poor 
 and saw fortunes made by corrupt officials ; the fault 
 was with the Navigation Act and with the debauched 
 civil service of Charles II. and Berkeley. Besides 
 these troubles which were common to all, the poorer 
 people felt oppressed by taxation in regard to which 
 they seemed to get no service in return. 
 
 1 " Old Virginia and her Neighbors," p. 104.
 
 THE SOCIAL UNREST 73 
 
 The worst of present-day monopolies are mild 
 when compared to those through which the English 
 merchants robbed the Virginians. To the economic 
 troubles must be added religious and educational com- 
 plaints. To their demands for schools and greater free- 
 dom in the pulpit, Berkeley replied : " The ministers 
 should pray oftener and preach less. But, I thank 
 God, there are no free schools nor printing; and I 
 hope we shall not have these hundred years; for 
 learning has brought disobedience and heresy and 
 sects into the world, and printing has divulged them, 
 and libels against the best government. God keep 
 us from both." Berkeley's own private monopoly 
 with the Indians was one of the causes that led to the 
 "rebellion." The monopoly of his successor, Cul- 
 peper, bore still more heavily on the people. The 
 falsifying of elections by the sheriffs against a free 
 white people was as flagrant as that of our own day 
 in Southern states against the negroes. 
 
 If we turn to the North, in 1686, when Sir Edmund 
 Andros came as governor to New England, the at- 
 mosphere is charged with the same distempers. 
 The rights of property were so invaded, according 
 to Increase Mather, that no man could call any- 
 thing his own. Danforth wrote, " Our condition is 
 little inferior to absolute slavery." When the people 
 pleaded for habeas corpus and the simple rights of 
 Magna Charta, Andros asked with a gibe, " Do you 
 believe Joe and Tom may tell the king what money 
 he may have ? " His secretary complains that little 
 money is to be got out of the country, because it has 
 been squeezed dry by those who preceded Sir Edmund. 
 With Dudley censor of the press, the general court
 
 74 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 abolished, the assembling of a town meeting made an 
 act of sedition, it is certain that to those then living, 
 the times seemed big with dangers. 
 
 The generation following this period brings us 
 well into the eighteenth century. A time of pros- 
 perity culminates about 1740. Bancroft speaks of 
 it as " marked by the unrivalled prosperity of the 
 colonies." It would be unfair to select illustrations 
 of special unrest during the disturbance of the colo- 
 nies by the French and English wars that immediately 
 follow. Before these confusions had passed, the tur- 
 moil of the struggle for independence had already 
 begun. The war spaces are too exceptional to offer 
 fair instances of comparative unrest. The Revolu- 
 tion of 1776 will therefore be omitted. 
 
 Of the ten years that precede the Revolution and 
 the ten that follow the peace of 1783 one may speak 
 with confidence. It is doubtful if in recent times we 
 have felt any such measure of anxiety. 
 
 McMaster writes : " The year 1786 in all the states 
 was one of unusual distress. The crops had indeed 
 been good. In many places the yield had been great. 
 Yet the farmers murmured, and not without cause, 
 that their wheat and their corn were of no more use 
 to them than so many bushels of stones, that produce 
 rotted on their hands. That while their barns were 
 overflowing, their pockets were empty. That when 
 they wanted clothes for their families, they were com- 
 pelled to run from village to village to find a cobbler 
 who would take wheat for shoes, and a trader who 
 would give everlasting in exchange for pumpkins. 
 Money became scarcer and scarcer every week. In 
 the great towns the lack of it was severely felt. Bui
 
 THE SOCIAL UNREST 75 
 
 in the country places it was with difficulty that a few 
 pistareens and coppers could be scraped together 
 toward paying the state's quota of the interest on the 
 national debt. 
 
 " A few summed up their troubles in a general 
 way, and declared the times were hard. Others 
 protested that the times were well enough, but the 
 people were grown extravagant and luxurious. For 
 this, it was said, the merchants were to blame. 
 There were too many merchants. There were too 
 many attorneys. Money was scarce. Money was 
 plenty. Trade was languishing. Agriculture was 
 fallen into decay. Manufactures should be encour- 
 aged. Paper should be put out. 
 
 " One shrewd observer complained that his country- 
 men had fallen away sadly from those simple tastes 
 which were the life-blood of republics. It was dis- 
 tressing to see a thrifty farmer shaking his head and 
 muttering that taxes were ruining him at the very 
 moment his three daughters, who would have been 
 much better employed at the spinning-wheel, were 
 being taught to caper by a French dancing master. 
 It was pitiable to see a great lazy, lounging, lubberly 
 fellow sitting days and nights in a tippling house, 
 working perhaps two days in a week, receiving 
 double the wages he really earned, spending the rest 
 of his time in riot and debauch, and, when the tax- 
 collector came round, complaining of the hardness of 
 the times and the want of a circulating medium. Go 
 into any coffee-house of an evening, and you were 
 sure to overhear some fellow exclaiming, " Such 
 times ! no money to be had ! taxes high ! no business 
 doing ! we shall all be broken men." 1 
 
 1 " History of the United States," Vol. II., p. 180.
 
 76 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 Another form of discontent, that which appears in 
 times of recognized prosperity, asserts itself early in 
 Jefferson's administration at the opening of the cen- 
 tury, with an enduring venom and vindictiveness that 
 is difficult in these days to understand. In the last 
 letter that Hamilton ever wrote, are words that tell 
 what it was that filled the respectability of the time 
 with a kind of panic " our real disease, which is 
 democracy." 
 
 The analogy of this period with our own has many 
 startling points of likeness if the analogy is not over- 
 pressed. Professor Henry Adams says that men 
 with cool heads like Rufus King and Hamilton, men 
 like Judge Tracy, Cabot, Pickering, Ames, and Gris- 
 wold, were tormented with a sense of coming crisis 
 which " overhung these wise and virtuous men like 
 the gloom of death." " Scores of clergymen in the 
 pulpit, numberless politicians in Congress, had made 
 no other use of their leisure than to point out, step by 
 step, every succeeding stage of the coming decline. 
 The catastrophe was no longer far away, it was actu- 
 ally about them, they touched and felt it at every 
 moment of their lives. Society held together merely 
 because it knew not what else to do." 1 
 
 At present the fear has frequent expression that 
 a victory of the democratic party would be followed 
 by attacks upon the higher courts. A century ago 
 this anxiety was far keener than it now is. The 
 democratic attack upon the courts in Jefferson's day 
 as " creatures of the aristocrats," as " corrupt " and 
 " irresponsible to the people," surpasses in unquali- 
 fied virulence anything that Mr. Debs has ever ut- 
 
 1 " History of the United States," Vol. VII., p. 68.
 
 THE SOCIAL UNREST 77 
 
 tered. Judge Chase of the Supreme Bench looked 
 upon these animosities against the judiciary as the 
 most threatening event in our history. Property, he 
 thought, would soon be without defence, and personal 
 liberty pass away before the reign of the mob. In 
 Baltimore, in 1803, he said: 
 
 "The independence of the national judiciary is 
 now shaken to its foundations. Our republican Con- 
 stitution will sink into a mobocracy the worst of 
 all possible governments. . . . The modern doctrines 
 of our late reformers, that all men, in a state of 
 society, are entitled to enjoy equal liberty and equal 
 rights, have brought this mischief upon us ; and I 
 fear it will rapidly progress until peace and order, free- 
 dom and property, shall be destroyed." * 
 
 In the eyes of Josiah Quincy, the strongest repre- 
 sentative in Congress from Massachusetts, " Jefferson 
 was a transparent fraud, his followers were dupes or 
 ruffians, and the nation was hastening to a fatal 
 crisis." 2 
 
 When he arrived in Washington, Mr. Quincy tells 
 us that his abhorrence of Jefferson was such that he 
 would not even accept the invitation that came to 
 him to dine at the White House. " I regarded him 
 as a snake in the grass, the more dangerous for the 
 oily, wily language with which he lubricated his 
 victims and applied his venom." 3 
 
 It is difficult to point out a single menace to our 
 political or industrial life that has not been an object 
 of dismay and pessimistic solicitude throughout our 
 
 1 Adams, " History of the United States," Vol. II., p. 149. 
 
 2 Vol. IV., p. 422. 
 
 8 " Life of Josiah Quincy," by Edmund Quincy, p. 88.
 
 78 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 earlier history. It is, for instance, widely believed 
 at present that the rage for speculation, stimulated 
 by the growth of trusts, carries with it dangers that 
 are new and peculiar in their gravity. There is much 
 truth in this, but the dangers of speculation are not 
 new. The volume of business has now reached such 
 magnitude, it has become so concentrated, and its 
 manipulations on the market are so advertised, that 
 the game is visible to every eye. In the earlier times 
 there was no such record, but speculation in its most 
 questionable sense appears to have seized about every 
 chance that offered in those days. 
 
 Large portions of charitable, religious, and educa- 
 tional funds were formerly raised by gambling in 
 lotteries. Is it likely that an age which gave such 
 sanction to this "race hunger" should be less apt 
 than we of the present to display the gambling in- 
 stinct in new business ventures ? We know what 
 a field for this gaming impulse our railroad building 
 has offered; but it may be seen just as vividly a 
 century ago in the making of common toll-roads. 
 After the success of the " turnpike " between Lan- 
 caster and Philadelphia, there was an outbreak of 
 reckless speculation in roads and canals precisely 
 similar to the wild work in railroad enterprises after 
 our war of 1861. The industrial betting field was 
 much narrower and stakes were smaller, but the 
 people were as eager for unearned gains then as 
 now. The Revolution of 1776 was followed by all 
 the gambling which new ventures at that time 
 afforded. Lotteries to build roads and bridges were 
 common. The general government was appealed 
 to on every hand to help out these local schemes.
 
 THE SOCIAL UNREST 79 
 
 Chartered companies to deal in the stocks of turn- 
 pike corporations were started early in the century 
 by hundreds. Even Vermont had twenty-six and 
 New Hampshire twenty in 1810. A year later New 
 York had one hundred and eighty. The crying need 
 of that time was cheaper transportation. To haul 
 a single ton of freight from Pittsburg to Philadelphia 
 cost $125. What, at its best, was the spirit of enter- 
 prise, and at its worst the instinct of the gamester, 
 went into these various schemes. There was as 
 much gambling as there was opportunity to gamble, 
 and ruin followed its reckless indulgence then, as it 
 follows it now. 
 
 In 1896, when Mr. Bryan was presidential candi- 
 date, the majority of our "strong and safe men" 
 were everywhere telling us what calamities would 
 troop in upon us if he were elected. The hungry 
 mob that would follow at his heels were sure to work 
 ruin in every business interest in the country. 
 
 A century ago when Jefferson became president 
 the entire conclave of scholars, as well as the whole 
 business world of New England, was horrified at the 
 prospect of political control by the common people. 
 At a New York dinner, Hamilton's words were, 
 "Your people, sir, your people is a great beast." 
 The most brilliant spokesman of New England re- 
 spectability, Fisher Ames, said in 1803 that the coun- 
 try had become "too big for union, too sordid for 
 patriotism, too democratic for liberty." The gloom 
 had deepened in 1808, when he could say: 
 
 " Our days are made heavy with the pressure of 
 anxiety, and our nights restless with visions of hor- 
 ror. We listen to the clank of chains, and overhear
 
 80 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 the whispers of assassins. We mark the barbarous 
 dissonance of mingled rage and triumph in the yell 
 of an infuriated mob; we see the dismal glare of 
 their burnings, and scent the loathsome steam of 
 human victims offered in sacrifice." Few knew New 
 England as President Dwight of Yale College knew 
 it. Yet he could write, " We have a country gov- 
 erned by blockheads and knaves ; . . . can the im- 
 agination paint anything more dreadful on this side 
 hell?" 1 Every federal newspaper in 1803 had this 
 passage, which Professor Adams says was "one ex- 
 ample among a thousand neither more extravagant 
 nor more treasonable than the rest" : 
 
 " A democracy is scarcely tolerable at any period 
 of national history. Its omens are always sinister, 
 and its powers are unpropitious. It is on its trial 
 here, and the issue will be civil war, desolation, and 
 anarchy. No wise man but discerns its imperfections, 
 no good man but shudders at its miseries, no honest 
 man but proclaims its fraud, and no brave man but 
 draws his sword against its force. The institution 
 of a scheme of policy so radically contemptible and 
 vicious is a memorable example of what the villany 
 of some men can devise, the folly of others receive, 
 and both establish in spite of reason, reflection, and 
 sensation." 2 
 
 Even the saintly Channing, already preaching the 
 new hope for humanity, and breaking with religious 
 tradition, as Jefferson had broken with political tra- 
 dition, showed an alarm as if chaos were at hand. 
 In the Fast Day sermon of 1810, he says : "We live 
 
 1 Channing, "United States of America," p. 166. 
 
 2 " History of the United States," Vol. I., p. 85.
 
 THE SOCIAL UNREST 8 1 
 
 in times which have no parallel in past ages ; in 
 times when the human character has almost assumed 
 a new form ; in times of peculiar calamity, of thick 
 darkness, and almost of despair. . . . The danger 
 is so vast, so awful, and so obvious, that the blind- 
 ness, the indifference, which prevail, argue infatua- 
 tion, and give room for apprehension that nothing 
 can rouse us to those efforts by which alone the 
 danger can be averted." 
 
 If the opinion of twenty of the wealthiest and best- 
 known of the citizens of New England had been asked 
 at any time during the two administrations of Jeffer- 
 son, and probably of Madison as well, it is safe to 
 say that eighteen of them would have thought the 
 country going to the dogs. 
 
 We should not lend a serious ear to any contem- 
 porary who gave expression to such hysterical fore- 
 bodings as these. Whatever the peril that lurks in 
 the trust, in plutocracy, in imperialism, we refuse to 
 go to the length of sheer consternation that these 
 dignified ancestors honestly felt. 
 
 One real difference between the misgivings of that 
 day and those of our own concerns religion. The 
 fears to-day are business fears. In 1800 they were 
 also religious. The only heresy that is now dreaded is 
 economic. Religious heresy is no longer an offence. 
 No one objects even to political heresy further than 
 it implies an attack on some cherished form of prop- 
 erty. In 1800, the anathema lay against the supposed 
 infidel and the Jacobin democrat. To-day it lies 
 against the socialist, the aim of whose politics is 
 radically to change the present forms of property 
 ownership.
 
 82 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 After the good times of 1815, the unrest again 
 changes its form. Extreme distress and consequent 
 bitterness are at hand, which we cannot match in 
 this generation. 
 
 The obdurate delusion that money can be printed 
 off " to meet the wants of the people " played havoc 
 then as it does still among us. The general fury 
 rose against the banks and against the " rich who 
 padded themselves about with luxury." The misery 
 extended "from New York and Pennsylvania westward 
 to the Mississippi and southward to Tennessee." In 
 Philadelphia, where 9672 men had been employed in 
 certain industries in 1816, 7500 had been discharged 
 in 1819. This city was not exceptional. From a 
 country town 27 properties in land were sold at 
 one time by the sheriff. "All over the North the 
 people were meeting, complaining, organizing, and 
 petitioning Congress and their state legislatures." 
 "The larger part of the people, even with the ut- 
 most economy, could hardly obtain the very neces- 
 saries of life ; debts were unpaid, creditors dissatisfied, 
 and the jails full of honest but unfortunate persons 
 whose wives and children thereby became a burden on 
 the township." After describing the evils in Ken- 
 tucky, McMaster adds, " In the newly made state of 
 Missouri the condition was, if possible, worse." In 
 New York and Philadelphia there was a series of 
 public meetings to devise means to cope with the 
 dangers. The fourth volume of McMaster devotes 
 an entire chapter to the " Pauperism and Crime " that 
 followed this period. " Never," he says, " in the his- 
 tory of our country had the sufferings of the depend- 
 ent and unfortunate classes been so forcibly and
 
 THE SOCIAL UNREST 83 
 
 persistently brought to the attention of the public, 
 for never before had so many worthy citizens been 
 reduced to want. 
 
 " Hundreds were glad to work for 37 and even 25 
 cents a day in winter, who in spring and summer could 
 earn 62^ or perhaps 87^ cents by toiling fourteen hours. 
 On the canals and turnpikes $15 a month and found 
 in summer and one-third that sum in winter were 
 considered good pay. In truth, it was not uncommon 
 during the winter for men to work for their board. 
 Nothing but perfect health, steady work, sobriety, 
 the strictest economy, and the help of his wife could 
 enable a married man to live on such wages. But 
 the earnings of women were lower yet. Many trades 
 and occupations now open to them, either had no 
 existence or were then confined to men. They might 
 bind shoes, sew rags, fold and stitch books, become 
 spoolers, or make coarse shirts and duck pantaloons 
 at 8 or 10 cents apiece. Shirt-making was eagerly 
 sought after, because the garments could be made in 
 the lodgings of the seamstress, who was commonly 
 the mother of a little family and often a widow. 
 Yet the most expert could not finish more than nine 
 shirts a week, for which she would receive 72 or 90 
 cents. Fifty cents seems to have been the average. 
 
 " To the desperate poverty produced by such wages 
 many evils were attributed. Intemperance was en- 
 couraged, children were sent into the streets to beg 
 and pilfer, and young girls were driven to lives of 
 shame to an extent which, but for the report of the 
 Magdalene Society in New York and the action of 
 the people elsewhere, would be incredible." 
 
 Among the twelve demands made before 1830, the
 
 84 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 following have great prominence : " the right to the 
 soil," "down with monopolies," "no imprisonment 
 for debt," the " abolition of chattel slavery and wage 
 slavery." 
 
 The working hours per day in one Connecticut 
 mill were fifteen, and this was no exception. One in 
 Paterson, New Jersey, required women and children 
 to be at work at half-past four in the morning. 
 What would Lowell weavers say to-day if they were 
 forced by their employers to attend church on pen- 
 alty of dismissal, and be taxed, moreover, to support 
 religion ? 
 
 Once more let the comparison be made between 
 the present and a time still within living memory, 
 roughly, from 1830 to 1838. The fault-finding with 
 existing institutions was wide and bitter. At that 
 time, moreover, what we call " the labor question " 
 had come to very distinct consciousness. Discon- 
 tent among workingmen led to the formation of 
 a political party in New York as early as 1829. In 
 their resolutions, Henry George was anticipated in 
 the opening paragraph, "The appropriation of the 
 soil of the state to private and exclusive possession 
 was eminently and barbarously unjust." In Art. 3, 
 " the hereditary transmission of wealth " is considered 
 as one of the causes of the prevailing poverty and 
 distress. Or, in their own words, "a prime source 
 of all our calamities." They insist that all the evils 
 of the feudal system were upon them. The move- 
 ment was vigorous enough to establish newspapers 
 in at least four states. In 1832 a convention was 
 held in Boston, represented by delegates from six 
 different states. The " evils of monopoly " was a
 
 THE SOCIAL UNREST 85 
 
 topic of discussion, and among the lectures organ- 
 ized by the trade unions a few years later, " Cor- 
 porations " is on the list of their subjects. The 
 contemporary records are so full and explicit that 
 one who has been taught that labor troubles have 
 arisen, for the most part, since the Civil War, has 
 utterly to shift his perspective. There were many 
 and bitter strikes. There was a labor party, a re- 
 form party, and an anti-monopolist party. There 
 were indictments for conspiracy against trade unions. 
 Two thousand men were " in line for agitation " in 
 Boston in 1834. The "scab" was then a terror to 
 the trade union and received, not infrequently, very 
 brutal treatment. In the same year, in Massachu- 
 setts, nearly three thousand women were on strike. 
 The still earlier agitation for ten hours was accom- 
 panied not only by strikes, but by such lawlessness 
 as to bring out the militia. Perhaps the most dis- 
 tinguished French economist of his time, Chevalier, 
 just then upon a visit to the United States, expresses 
 great surprise at these events. 
 
 If we turn from the general to the more special 
 grounds of dissatisfaction, it is difficult to select any 
 present symbol of irritation that cannot be mated in 
 the past. In Washington before a private committee 
 of the Senate I listened to a plea of trade-union rep- 
 resentatives that the " injunction " be prevented. The 
 chief spokesman said it was " new in our history ' 
 and " had come with the recent domination of great 
 corporations." Yet the literature which workingmen 
 have themselves brought out shows how long they 
 have been harried by the courts in time of strikes. 
 The common English law, a century ago, held rigidly
 
 86 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 against " dangerous labor combinations " and " labor 
 conspiracies," nor was there the slightest hesitation 
 in its enforcement. This was, of course, not the " in- 
 junction " as we know it, but the conspiracy laws were 
 no less vexatious to organized labor. 
 
 The Philadelphia " cordwainers " were trained in 
 the tactics of the strike. They had raised their wages 
 until, in 1805, they were thought to be ruinous to the 
 employer. The strike in that year brought them 
 before the courts, where they received severe sentence 
 for conspiracy. The boycott was common in these 
 early conflicts. The New York shoemakers com- 
 pelled the journeyman coming to the city to join their 
 union. If he refused and took work in another shop, 
 a strike was ordered against that shop. If an em- 
 ployer had an apprentice not belonging to the union 
 (a scab), the union would forthwith order a strike. An 
 outbreak with every symptom of the "sympathetic 
 strike" in 1809 brought the union up for conspiracy. 
 
 To-day, if the employer fail, the laborer has a lien 
 upon the property to make his wages secure. The 
 struggle early in the century to obtain this right was 
 ridiculed as an attack upon social order. The laborer 
 might be paid (not weekly as now) but at utterly un- 
 known intervals, six weeks or three months, and even 
 then the sort of money he received was so often 
 subject to discount, as to constitute a very bitter 
 injustice. 
 
 One's first impulse is to question the gravity of 
 these offences against labor, but every accessible 
 record shows how real they were. This view will be 
 strengthened if we look in more detail at a single 
 grievance. It was not confined to labor, but such
 
 THE SOCIAL UNREST 87 
 
 multitudes of workingmen felt its cruelties that we 
 find it very prominent in labor programmes. It was 
 imprisonment for debt. 
 
 No one reports these facts more carefully than 
 Charles Loring Brace. 1 He says, "As late as 1829, 
 it was estimated that there were as many as 3000 of 
 these unfortunate persons confined in prisons of Mas- 
 sachusetts ; 10,000 in New York; 7000 in Pennsyl- 
 vania; 3000 in Maryland; and a like proportion in 
 other states. In the Philadelphia prisons of that 
 year there were imprisoned for debts of less than $i, 
 32 persons ; and in thirty prisons of the state, 595 
 persons were imprisoned for debts of between $i and 
 $5. Many of these were honest debtors, who had 
 been unable to pay, solely through misfortune. The 
 proportion of debtors to other prisoners was as 5 to I." 
 
 The Report of the Boston Prison Discipline Soci- 
 ety, page 388, says : " We have known of a respect- 
 able mechanic imprisoned for a debt of five dollars, 
 contracted by his family at a grocer's while he was 
 very ill ; he was sent to jail, and he was not only 
 without a shilling, but his family was without bread, 
 because he was not able to work." The keeper of 
 the debtors' department of the Philadelphia prison 
 reported, in 1828, 1085 debtors imprisoned; their 
 debt amounting to $25,409, their expense to the com- 
 munity, $362,076 ; the amount of the debt recovered 
 in jail was $295. In 1831 the Gazette of that city 
 reported forty debtors imprisoned for debt amounting 
 to $23.40. One man was confined thirty days for a 
 debt of 72 cents ; another, two days for 2 cents ; 
 another, thirty-two days for 2 cents ; seven were con- 
 
 1 " First Century of the Republic," p. 458.
 
 88 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 fined 172 days for $2.84, and the only debt recovered 
 was one of 25 cents. 
 
 This is the period of which McMaster writes, 
 " Never in the history of our country had the suffer- 
 ings of the dependent and unfortunate classes been 
 so forcibly and persistently brought to the attention 
 of the public, for never before had so many worthy 
 citizens been reduced to want." J Thus it is evident 
 that so far as reasons for discontent are concerned, 
 labor in the good old times suffered many an ill that 
 we should not for a moment tolerate. 
 
 The reader, impatient of this dull rehearsal, has 
 already asked what good turn can be served by 
 lingering among these old-time ailments. These 
 glimpses of evil and disturbed days among our 
 ancestors do not lighten a single burden under which 
 the present suffers. No report of ancient ills can 
 lessen our own aches. 
 
 Historical retrospect does for us, nevertheless, one 
 inestimable service. It helps us to see the facts of 
 social growth and order in some due relation and 
 perspective. To keep this perspective is the hardest 
 test to which the student has to submit. Even a 
 little history may give sounder judgments upon the 
 large whole of our industrial and social existence. 
 To forget or to ignore this past, to concentrate 
 violent attention upon the disturbance of to-day, is 
 not to see things socially at all. I have heard wittier 
 and less labored definitions of a crank, but never a 
 
 1 Among the best sources of trustworthy information are the files 
 of the United States Gazette during this period. In the Congressional 
 Library at Washington may be seen under glass several examples of 
 " posters " showing the political efforts of the workingmen.
 
 THE SOCIAL UNREST 89 
 
 truer one than this, "A man who sees one fact so 
 vividly that he is blind to all the other facts which 
 alone can explain the one he sees." Even criticism 
 has its responsibilities. It should select its object 
 with some degree of discrimination and deal with it 
 in its relation to other facts of which it may be a 
 part. The frenzy of miscellaneous abuse is perhaps 
 the cardinal vice of a whole mass of emotional 
 utterance and literature upon the social question. 
 There is no healing for these distempers of excessive 
 statement like that which historic experience affords. 
 
 II 
 
 In endeavoring to compare the spirit and grounds 
 of complaint in different eras, we are met by one 
 difficulty that should not pass unnoticed. The com- 
 mon people in earlier times had no easy way to 
 popularize their sense of injustice. A Roman strike 
 was followed by hanging six thousand strikers be. 
 tween Rome and Capua. The fact was chronicled 
 as we should chronicle an unusual frost, but the 
 plebeian multitude had no means to stir the whole 
 public opinion in its favor ; to get its wrongs talked 
 about, much less acted upon. The avenues for the 
 voicing of discontent have multiplied with popular 
 education to a degree so extraordinary that we may 
 now easily be deceived both as to its nature and 
 extent. In a commercial age (if all have been taught 
 to read) the thing that pays spreads. The scale on 
 which social fault-finding and restlessness could be 
 made to pay good dividends was not dreamed of by 
 our ancestors. This art is perfected in the modern 
 press. It has been said, " Blessed are the people
 
 90 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 whose records are dull." Yes, but such records are 
 not commercially profitable. Peace and contentment 
 have no dramatic quality. It pays to sound the 
 tragic, the morbid, the alarming note, because interest 
 and curiosity are stirred. 
 
 No sign is better than the cry of the newsboy upon 
 the street. He does not call out, " Most excellent 
 health through all the community ! " " Not a divorce 
 for the entire month ! " " No accident or scandal 
 since the last edition ! " This would be good news, 
 but he knows his customer. He knows that every- 
 day happiness, the common welfare, and the dulness 
 of good behavior do not sell his papers. The press 
 has also learned its lesson. It has learned that our 
 fault-findings and our agitations may be turned to a 
 money profit. " If I can find fault enough and state 
 it in the right phrases, no papers are left on my 
 hands," is a saying reported from one of the most 
 successful American journalists. The French press 
 has come to be, in this respect, as mischievous as 
 our own worst journals. Some of the most popular 
 of the Paris sheets have brought this art of exploiting 
 social dangers and dissatisfactions to the point of 
 last refinement. An editorial writer in London, well 
 known in this country, told me that the paying 
 element in first-rate alarmist writing had at last 
 come to be understood in England. "The young 
 fellow's fortune is made," he said, " who learns the 
 trick of phrasing criticism against the present social 
 order." If the people of any past century had 
 possessed our machinery for telling and spreading 
 their fears, their gossip, their corruptions, their 
 tragedies, they would appear to us like a people of
 
 THE SOCIAL UNREST 91 
 
 whom we had never heard. This new facility for 
 the utterance of our complaints becomes also a cause 
 of the evil. To insist loudly and incessantly that 
 things are ill, is to help make them so, although 
 there is some hope that the sheer din of the caviller 
 may tend at last to beget insensibility and indiffer- 
 ence, as excessive advertising may sometime defeat 
 itself by its dreary universality. We shall learn 
 after a while that there is no relation between the 
 excellence of forty different kinds of shoes or soap 
 and the hideous disfigurement of pleasant landscapes. 
 Francis Walker was wont to make much of the 
 encouraging influences upon the mind of the laborer 
 of open and hopeful chances of work. As long as it 
 could be said, " I 'can go either to a factory or take 
 up a homestead from the government at a nominal 
 price," the mere alternative gave a sense of freedom 
 and independence, as well as a tendency to strengthen 
 wages. Now that the public domain has been dis- 
 posed of, this special avenue of possible chances is 
 shut. For the first time in our history, the popula- 
 tion turns back upon itself. Who would dare to 
 stand before an audience of workingmen and give 
 them to-day Horace Greeley's advice, " Go West " ? 
 It would be met with shouts of derision. This change 
 has already become a very vital part of our labor 
 problems. It has made large sections of the less 
 skilled among the workingmen honestly feel that it 
 is no longer possible for them to get beyond utter 
 dependence upon the employer. Until very recent 
 times all were encouraged to believe that they could 
 become independent as employer or as capitalist. This 
 had so substantial a basis of truth, that it gave rise to
 
 92 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 a kind of religion in which the saving practical virtue 
 was thrift, an'd the ideal, a fat bank account with its 
 heaven of "independence." Barring skill and un- 
 usual enterprise, the feeling has deepened and 
 widened among workingmen that these fine hopes 
 have so sadly dwindled that they exist as mere lottery 
 chances. One may put this to accurate test in many 
 of our industries. In my own city the conductors 
 and motormen upon the trolley cars are carefully 
 selected and well paid, but the question put to more 
 than forty of them, " Is there any chance in your 
 position of getting on very much ? " elicits usually 
 only good-natured surprise that such a question can 
 be asked. There is rather the dogged feeling that it 
 must be made the best of. One said to me, " I am 
 thankful to get this ; if I dropped out, a hundred men 
 would jump at my chance before supper. All I hope 
 for is to keep this job twelve years at most, at the 
 end of which I shall have what I am getting to-day, 
 two dollars and a quarter." I asked him if he were 
 married. "Yes, and I have three children, but I 
 have no business to have them. With city rents and 
 market prices about Boston, I can just keep even. 
 The best luck I expect is to stick here till I am forty, 
 then they will want a younger man. I left my coun- 
 try town because farming only keeps you alive. 
 Down here I just keep alive, too, but it ain't a grave- 
 yard, as it is up there in the hills." Some millions of 
 men in the United States are at the present moment 
 in the situation of that motorman, so far as expecta- 
 tions are concerned. For commonplace and average 
 abilities, in mill and factory, the cheering promise of 
 getting free from an " existence wage " scarcely ex-
 
 THE SOCIAL UNREST 93 
 
 ists. For special gifts, the prizes never were so high 
 as now. For ordinary capacity in the common indus- 
 tries the old hopes are lessened. 
 
 A clear and conservative statement of this evil is 
 given by President Hadley : " Certain it is that the 
 prospect of becoming capitalists does not act as so 
 powerful a motive on the laborers of to-day as it did 
 on those of a generation ago. The opportunities to 
 save are as great or greater ; but the amount which 
 has to be saved before a man can hope to become his 
 own employer has increased enormously. When a 
 man who had accumulated a thousand dollars could 
 set up in business for himself, the prospect of inde- 
 pendence appealed to him most powerfully ; when he 
 can do nothing but lend it to some richer man, the 
 incentives and ambitions connected with saving 
 are far weaker too weak, in many cases, to lead 
 the men to save at all, except through the medium of 
 a friendly society or trades union. We thus have a 
 separation of the community into more and more 
 rigidly defined groups, different in industrial condi- 
 tion, distinct in ideals, and oftentimes antagonistic in 
 their ambitions and sympathies. This separation of 
 laborers and capitalists into distinct classes involves 
 serious dangers to society as a whole." l 
 
 Not wholly different from this is another source of 
 unrest. It has long been known that well-paid labor 
 is quicker to take offence than labor of a lower grade. 
 That men with higher wages should be the first to 
 strike, has vexed many an employer and filled many 
 polite persons with astonished disgust. It is neverthe- 
 less what the race, in its most progressive stages, has 
 
 1 " Economics," p. 371.
 
 94 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 always done. Higher earnings, ampler knowledge and 
 freedom, go with new ambitions and a keener sensi- 
 tiveness about all hindrances to progress. Every 
 improvement, every step in the enjoyment of new com- 
 forts which leisure and better pay afford, constitutes a 
 reason for new efforts. A higher standard of living 
 once gained, becomes of itself a sentiment so respon- 
 sive, that any act or event which seems to threaten 
 that standard arouses instant alarm and hostility. 
 The force of this is not seen unless we realize the 
 rapidity with which new wants, in our age and coun- 
 try, are formed. The higher standard of comfort, 
 food, clothing, housing, leisure, once established, 
 becomes a necessity so imperious, that men will put 
 forth their whole strength to maintain it. A shrewd 
 builder of workingmen's houses in a Massachusetts 
 shoe town says, " I don't dare to put up a house now 
 without a bathroom, so many of the shoe hands have 
 got a taste of it, that all demand it." 
 
 We know personally, or by observation among the 
 well-to-do citizens, that any serious lowering of in- 
 come as, for example, from $5000 to $3000 is 
 looked upon as a disaster. Do people of ampler 
 income lack imagination that they fail to see the 
 bearings of this fact upon the threatened income of 
 the wage earners ? A study has been made of an 
 Eastern town in which more than four thousand 
 American workmen receive a wage that does not 
 average $1.85. What must it mean for a family of 
 five persons to have this sum cut even 25 cents a day ? 
 The worst as it is the commonest cut of all is 
 the large average of days in the year when there is 
 BO work, and pay stops altogether. The simplest
 
 THE SOCIAL UNREST 95 
 
 addition of cost for the invariable necessities food, 
 rent, clothing makes clear how narrow a margin 
 is left. I choose the employees in this town because 
 they rank distinctly above unskilled labor, and have 
 won a standard of life from which every loss is 
 dreaded, because the expenditure of respectability in 
 their group is endangered. 
 
 Every little sign of respectability which the higher 
 wage makes possible the parlor organ, the cheap lace 
 curtains, the beribboned furniture, the gaudily framed 
 family crayon soon becomes the basis of a sentiment 
 as powerful as it is salutary. Do we imagine that 
 their symbols of respectability mean less to them 
 than to the fops of the fashionable quarter ? I have 
 known a man grow gray with trouble in five years 
 because his income shrank just enough to force him 
 to move into a less distinguished part of the town. 
 He still had every possible comfort, but could not 
 have the private school, the doctor, the dentist of the 
 elite in his former neighborhood. Workingmen, and 
 more especially their wives, who have once gained 
 the income of modest comfort, have something to 
 lose, upon which great price is set, and therefore 
 organize, strike, and struggle, often in most regret- 
 table ways, to maintain that standard. The fear of 
 losing their standard acts upon them precisely as it 
 does on their "betters." Lowest paid labor revolts 
 less frequently, not only because it is duller and more 
 helpless, but because the sentiment which gathers and 
 strengthens about the newly won luxuries is still too 
 feeble. It is the sense of insecurity, lest these sym- 
 bols of getting on in the world may at any time be 
 lost, that is at present, as it is long likely to re-
 
 96 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 main, one of the deepest and most justifiable sources 
 of discontent. Nothing is so habitually ignored, in 
 attempts to understand industrial struggles, as the 
 force and prevalence of this sentiment. 
 
 It is a little tedious to refer to general education as 
 a cause of discontent, but its consequences are so 
 momentous that its omission would be unwise. Popu- 
 lar education and the spread of democratic ideas evi- 
 dently introduce influences calculated in their very 
 nature to stimulate the feelings out of which unrest 
 grows. It would puzzle one to conceive a more fer- 
 tile breeding-place of unsatisfied desires than that 
 which present educational facilities offer. It is the 
 essence of education to arouse mental activity, with 
 the sure result that thousand-fold new wants, cravings, 
 and ambitions are quickened into life. The number 
 and importunity of these wants have apparently no 
 limit, while upon their satisfaction there is a constant 
 check. The basis of this education has been a rising 
 material prosperity to the same end of awakening 
 still further wants. A retired Cape Cod captain once 
 gave me a list of things food, clothing, furniture, 
 reading matter, etc. which entered into the usual 
 family consumption in his community sixty years ago. 
 These were compared with the articles in present use 
 in the neighborhood. The difference in kind and 
 variety of things enjoyed in the two periods were, as 
 they were brought together, far more striking than 
 either of us had believed. After reflecting upon the 
 contrast, the old man said : " Yes, that's the trouble. 
 My father wanted fifteen things. He didn't get 'em 
 all. He got about ten, and worried considerable be- 
 cause he didn't get the other five. Now, I want forty
 
 THE SOCIAL UNREST 97 
 
 things, and I get thirty, but I worry more about the 
 ten I can't get than the old man used to about the 
 five he couldn't get." Could any pedantry of lan- 
 guage or of statistics tell more truth or better truth 
 than this ? The sixty years had brought great 
 changes in the standard of life, but the old relation 
 between wants and their satisfaction remained. 
 Though in the coming sixty years the affluence of 
 wealth multiply our material prosperity an hundred- 
 fold, is it to be expected that the margin of un- 
 quenched desires will be narrower? Will the ratio of 
 cravings which we cannot appease be essentially 
 diminished ? To what race experience could one 
 point to justify this expectation ? Unless we assume 
 the hope of an education profoundly modified, an 
 education the supreme purpose of which shall not only 
 be to sharpen the edge of intellectual cunning, but, 
 at least, in equal degree, to strengthen the moral and 
 social sympathies, we seem likely to the end of time to 
 be whipped on by a multitude of wants that will over- 
 top every means to gratify them. 1 
 
 There is no end to the number and variety of illus- 
 trations to show the unrest that goes hand in hand 
 with education and material prosperity. None is 
 more familiar than the higher education of woman 
 that has been organized on so generous a scale dur- 
 ing the last generation. We do not doubt the large 
 advantage it brings to her and to the race. It has, 
 
 1 I have heard a learned Catholic say that it was one of the superi- 
 orities of his religion over Protestantism that the ratios of insanity and 
 suicide are so much lower in Catholic communities. He traced these 
 ugly phenomena chiefly " to the discontent which follows a restless 
 and successful materialism." 
 H
 
 98 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 however, helped create a restlessness which new\y 
 awakened faculty and enlarged opportunity inevita- 
 bly bring with them. There is already a literature of 
 the subject. For a dozen years English and American 
 Reviews have reflected these perturbations in scores 
 of articles: "The Revolt of the Daughters," "The 
 Passing of the Household Drudge," "The Unquiet 
 Sex," " The Cry of the Mothers," with variations in- 
 numerable. During this time we note two influences 
 working together : industrial development and the 
 higher education, both of which act to enlarge 
 woman's opportunity. It is claimed that twenty-five 
 years have widened woman's avenues for earning an 
 independent livelihood from some hundreds to as 
 many thousands. Industrial and intellectual oppor- 
 tunity alike have worked greatly for her economic 
 independence. We have, in a word, in so brief a 
 period, a ratio of progress of which previous history 
 has no hint. The feverish agitations of the " woman 
 question " have, however, been a very part of this 
 general uplifting, but the thousand new chances to 
 earn a livelihood, the thousand girls' schools and 
 scores of colleges, have only intensified the claims 
 which woman raises for a larger life. The " woman 
 question," with all its restlessness, is a natural fruit 
 of the new occasions. 
 
 Again, we think of the Germans as the most thor- 
 oughly educated people. Especially since the period 
 dominated by the fateful personality of Bismarck, 
 Germany stands out preeminent for what is generally 
 connoted by the word " progress." There is the high 
 tide of race vitality, as indicated by the enormous 
 annual surplus population. The rise in her material
 
 THE SOCIAL UNREST 99 
 
 standard of living has been rapid and widespread. 
 Her commerce, stimulated by the most efficient com- 
 mercial training the world has seen, frightens every 
 European rival by the vigor of its growth. Yet with 
 the flush of great victory still warm upon her, this 
 nation, if we may believe many of her most eminent 
 writers, was never more lacking in contentment, never 
 more ill at ease than now : Von Oettingen specu- 
 lating gloomily upon the significance of increasing 
 suicide, rising highest at the very points where edu- 
 cation has done its completest work ; Von Treitschke, 
 before his death, telling his class in history, that he 
 looked with growing alarm upon the signs of discon- 
 tent among the masses ; Paulsen taking the strange 
 phenomenon for granted, as if not open to dispute, 
 and trying to account with much scholarly ingenuity 
 for the causes of the malady. 1 
 
 Just before his retirement the chancellor, Prince 
 rlohenlohe, used these words before the Royal 
 Academy of Science : " I have grown old in the 
 belief of the constant progress of humanity. But 
 within recent years my confidence has been badly 
 shaken. The indispensable battle of life has of late 
 assumed so fierce and coarse a form that we are 
 reminded of the wild and fantastic tales of animal life 
 in the antediluvian ages. Instead of progress, retro- 
 
 1 Many acute references to these pessimistic humors of the time may 
 be found in Professor Paulsen's volume " Die Ethik." It is a book 
 which is likely to have a higher value to later generations because 
 it mirrors with singular vividness the average educated thought of the 
 time upon a great variety of culture subjects. See, for example, the 
 passage, page 116, ending with the words, dass Steigerung der Kultur 
 nicht nur die Gliicksoligkeit nicht steigere, sondern vielmehr Schmer;; 
 und Enttaiischung vermehre.
 
 100 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 gression, rather, seems to mark the beginning of the 
 twentieth century." 
 
 Both illustrations indicate that the sense of ills is 
 not confined to the industrial field to the friction 
 between capital and labor. In every phase of life 
 where the " strife for things desired " goes on, the 
 same restless antagonisms, the same dissonance of 
 opinion appear. They appear among the different 
 schools of literature, in politics, in art, and in science. 
 In the very sphere of the harmonies, music, the 
 angry assertion of discordant judgments (as among 
 Wagnerites and their opponents) will easily match 
 the worst polemics of social and industrial disputes. 
 If we except religion, these are narrower fields than 
 those in which the industrial struggle goes on. Yet 
 the factions in art, in literature, in science, in reli- 
 gion, include those to whom civilization and culture 
 have brought their best gifts. We should have ex- 
 pected the amenities to prevail in these spheres, but 
 experience shows them to be rent by the same uneasy 
 spirit which animates human activity as a whole. It 
 is thus a point gained for clearer discussion to see 
 that it is all the unrest of human life, and not that of 
 some partial phase of it. Of religion, too, another 
 word should be added. 1 
 
 1 In that most thoughtful book, " The Theology of Civilization," 
 Introduction, vi, Charles F. Dole says: "There is seething unrest; 
 there is doubt of the sanctions of religion; there is a sense of coming 
 change; there is suspicion that premises and foundations, once 
 unquestioned, are now perhaps undermined; there is challenging 
 of existing institutions social, economical, ecclesiastical. Are the 
 present institutions such as the world will continue to find use for? 
 There is dread mingled with hope. What possible revolutions may 
 not impend, setting the old order aside? "
 
 THE SOCIAL UNREST IOI 
 
 One cannot omit from the causes of unrest the 
 slow decay of authority in religion. Even if what is 
 deepest in the religious spirit is, as many hold, un- 
 abated in its strength, the element of religious 
 authority has lost much of its power over men. If 
 this loss is seen as a part of other influences which 
 accompany it, few will doubt that for certain tem- 
 peraments, especially in the Protestant world, this 
 loss has brought its own deep disquietude. This is 
 not aside from the social question. Its literature 
 is filled with angry or sorrowful complaints that 
 religion, as actually embodied in the church, has 
 been systematically, even if unconsciously, used to 
 quiet the masses and reconcile them to their lot. 
 One of the most honest and intelligent labor men 
 I have ever known, told me that as long as he really 
 believed what he understood his pastor to preach, he 
 was fairly content. " The sermon," he said, " always 
 appeared to me to reconcile things I couldn't under- 
 stand. Mysterious religious authority was always 
 given which I accepted. When I talked to the min- 
 ister about definite cases of suffering in a hard strike, 
 where he and I both believed the men were not to 
 blame, he still insisted that somehow it was all right, 
 and somewhere in the future it would be set straight. 
 Now, my experience has taken that belief out of me, 
 or, at any rate, the kind of authority he gives for it, I 
 cannot any longer accept. Nor do I believe the Jesus 
 he talks so much about would have accepted it or acted 
 on it either. The successful classes, even if they didn't 
 know it, or mean it, have used religion and heaven to 
 keep the peace and to put off a lot of troublesome 
 duties. When I found this out, I threw it all over."
 
 102 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 That individual experience, without one shade of 
 heightened color, stands for the position of a great 
 multitude of the more intelligent workingmen in 
 every country. It is clear what this must mean. 
 The dissatisfactions that were felt, while religious 
 authority still held some sway over them, were 
 silenced, or spent in vague wonder on other worldly 
 speculations. If injustice was felt, there was no 
 thought of blaming God. " Now," as my friend 
 added, "when the ghosts are out of the way, we put 
 the blame where it belongs upon present human 
 society and upon those who control it." These feel- 
 ings, however poor a reason they can give for them- 
 selves, are far more embarrassing when they are 
 vented upon the actual social regime; when turned 
 from the other world straight upon this. The decays 
 of faith are, of course, in no way confined to a class, 
 nor does the illustration just given point to the most 
 serious fact, which I conceive to be this : the old 
 authorities are being abandoned at the very moment 
 when material successes and sensuous gratifications 
 multiply at a rate compared to which our ethical 
 advancement seems moving at the snail's pace. 
 
 It is not only the nature of education to create 
 more aspirations than can be realized ; it is also the 
 nature of all political agitation. That men , are 
 "politically equal" may remain long a harmless 
 proposition ; but when it has done its work, when 
 it has become so thoroughly accepted as to form a 
 common assumption of thought and discussion, new 
 and disturbing questions are sure to be asked. It 
 was once quite an amazing absurdity that man should 
 ask for religious equality, yet this has been attained.
 
 THE SOCIAL UNREST 1 03 
 
 It was thought by the wisest of men, less than two 
 centuries ago, just as preposterous that men should 
 make claims to political equality, yet this, at least 
 theoretically, has been won. Is it probable that the 
 questioning will end here ? 
 
 Will a race, spurred on by an ever ampler and 
 more insistent cultivation of its faculties, halt, in its 
 inquiries about equality, on the confines of religion 
 or of politics ? 
 
 With the plain fact of economic inequality of very 
 extreme character staring us in the face, the question 
 is being raised here, too. It has grown clear that 
 when a certain stage of discipline and civilization has 
 been reached, religious and political inequalities are 
 felt to be socially mischievous. Nothing will hinder 
 the raising of the next query : Is the present indus- 
 trial inequality worthy of more respect than the other 
 inequalities? Philosophers have speculated about 
 this from early times. It is a different matter when 
 the masses learn to raise the question. The analogy 
 here, it must be admitted, is risky. A wholly differ- 
 ent order of questions is raised on the industrial field. 
 The reasons for our material inequalities are at so 
 many points different from the inequalities of the 
 religious or political field that the comparison may 
 easily mislead us. These are, however, distinctions 
 for which the general judgment may have scant 
 regard. It is so easy to prove that anything like a 
 literal economic equality is fatuous, or, at least, that 
 we stand in no practical relation to such a result, that 
 it may seem safely beyond range of sober discussion. 
 Careful observation shows, however, that it is not a 
 literal industrial equality that is meant by those who
 
 104 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 have opened and popularized this speculation. A 
 growing number of writers, and among them econo- 
 mists of the first rank, do not hesitate to put the aim 
 toward far greater economic equality on a par with 
 the two other equalities. Nor is the aim confined any 
 longer to books. 
 
 A distinguished Australian judge, the late Sir 
 William Windeyer, said while in this country : " We 
 have not learned to manage our social legislation 
 without most regrettable blunders. Our state rail- 
 ways have got into politics, there has been jobbery, 
 and the application of the best inventions has been 
 kept back by selfish interests. We have lived glut- 
 tonously on borrowed money, and piled up large city 
 debts. All this is true, but it is not all the truth. It 
 all came so fast that it ran away with us. We are 
 beginning to face the situation, and shall eventually 
 learn our lesson. Meantime, in spite of our blunder- 
 ing, nothing would induce the Australian people to 
 turn back. We have accepted the democratic prin- 
 ciple, and shall learn in good time to apply it indus- 
 trially to our monopolies, as we have learned to apply 
 it generally to politics." 
 
 Much of this legislation shows openly and directly 
 that it aims to make the massing of great private for- 
 tunes increasingly difficult. One of the foremost of 
 New Zealand legislators, Hon. W. P. Reeves, states 
 the purpose with great boldness, " It is the uncon- 
 cealed object of our social legislation to make democ- 
 racy consistent and possible to create conditions 
 out of which such threatening extremes of wealth- 
 ownership cannot grow." These attempts may fail. 
 Capital may take wings, and the daring of individual
 
 THE SOCIAL UNREST IO5 
 
 enterprise may be dulled to the general loss ; but a 
 multitude of people are so incredulous about this that 
 legislators will be compelled to far wider experiment- 
 ing in the same general direction. 
 
 Thus, in the world of comparative politics, this 
 clearly conceived ideal of giving labor a new chance, 
 of using the powers of government expressly to this 
 end, has been openly accepted. It is conspicuously 
 under trial. Its story occupies increasing space in 
 the laborer's thought. Though failure follow in its 
 track, the heart of this great purpose is a noble one : 
 to use the full strength of public authority to raise 
 the standard of comfort, of leisure, and of culture 
 among those classes that have known far too little of 
 either. As this endeavor becomes known, it raises 
 hopes for the future and discontent with actual limi- 
 tations. Every ideal passion among the laboring sec- 
 tions now centres about this aspiration to raise this 
 life standard and to preserve it against all adversaries. 
 
 Thus far the actual proofs that popular govern- 
 ment can perform these prodigies in well-doing are 
 meagre enough, but the effort will be made, and it 
 will come through the avenues of politics. 
 
 It is thus the sum of these causes of unrest, reach- 
 ing new intensity in each succeeding period of busi- 
 ness depression, and assuming a more consciously 
 political character, that distinguishes the restlessness 
 of our age. 
 
 It is here that we reach such important difference 
 as there is between our unrest and that of the past. 
 The forces of discontent can now show themselves in 
 politics. Even if our dissatisfactions are no greater 
 than in other days ; even if they are fewer, they have
 
 106 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 found a more effective medium of expression. It is 
 not only discontent plus education ; not only discon- 
 tent plus the press to voice it ; it is discontent plus 
 the vote. The spirit of revolt can now make record 
 of itself in political activity. It can be turned to ac- 
 count by every demagogue. It can create legislation 
 and direct the machinery of government. The word 
 " socialism " stands for the new defiance. It embodies 
 the unrest and the disapproval of commercial society 
 as it now exists.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE SOCIAL QUESTION AND ITS ECONOMIC SIGNIFICANCE 
 
 ONE sees social questions innumerable, but what is 
 meant by "the social question," as if a single issue 
 dominated all others ; as if society were afflicted with 
 a single ailment ? Statesmen and economists of first 
 eminence can be quoted as speaking and writing 
 upon " the question " as if so simple a term covered 
 the facts. I have seen in a private library nearly one 
 hundred different volumes and pamphlets with the 
 title " The Social Question," or titles strictly synony- 
 mous, implying that some one all-inclusive issue had 
 arisen to vex the present generation. 
 
 It is first to be noted that those who speak of 
 "the social question" differ widely and often radi- 
 cally as to what the question is. There is a social 
 question to the ultra-individualist, Auberon Herbert, 
 but it has scarcely a single point in common with the 
 social question of that man of ponderous learning, Dr. 
 Schaeffie. Henry George had his question, but it dif- 
 fered fundamentally in two out of the three chief 
 points from the question of Sidney Webb and John 
 Burns. There is not one issue, nor the same issue, 
 for the single taxer and for the socialist. It is an 
 error well-nigh humorous to suppose that even social- 
 ists have anything like a single issue. Compare the 
 Marx tradition with that of the English Fabians, or 
 
 107
 
 108 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 with that of the able collectivist leaders of the Belgian 
 Parliament. Both in theory and in practical remedies 
 are differences not only of degree, but of kind. Even 
 a little study of the social literature shows that in 
 doctrine and in practice the writers are dealing with 
 a great variety of conflicting issues. I have made 
 from this literature, in the last fifteen years, a list of 
 eighty-four "remedies" for the social question, i.e. 
 remedies that were believed to be sovereign. The 
 causes of our ills, in these writings, were fewer than 
 the remedies, but the " root evils " were so many and 
 so various, that to speak of a question or the question 
 without explanation is open to confusion. Is it 
 " over-production " or " underconsumption " ? Is it 
 " adherence to the gold standard " or is it the " silver 
 craze " ? Is it " monopolies " or " speculation " or 
 " extravagance " or " over-saving " ? Is it the " three 
 rents " or the " private ownership of land " ? These 
 are a few of the most commonly assigned causes of 
 our troubles that are most nearly akin. But who 
 could create out of them a single issue ? Especially 
 if remedies are introduced, we face many questions, 
 and not one question. If the followers of Henry 
 George are right in holding that the present forms of 
 private land ownership constitute the supreme evil, 
 they are justified in insisting upon "the question" 
 and upon " the remedy." The socialist who adds to 
 the George evil the private control of the " means of 
 production " raises new complications for which a 
 simple formula is more difficult. If the socialist has 
 become confessedly " opportunist," the simple for- 
 mula, for theory and its application, is still more 
 inadequate. Shall the term " social question," then, be
 
 THE SOCIAL QUESTION 1 09 
 
 left to the single taxer or to the socialist of the ultra- 
 doctrinaire type ? 
 
 It would be over-nice to put these limits upon a 
 phrase that has so passed into common thought and 
 discussion : it has the authoritative stamp of so many 
 leaders in economics, in politics, and in general litera- 
 ture that it seems unwise to reject it. To accept it 
 without discrimination is no less unwise. If the 
 term is taken neither too seriously nor too literally, its 
 use need not mislead us. Even the narrower term, 
 " the labor question," raises, if closely examined, 
 the same embarrassment, yet it would be pedantic to 
 refuse all use of it. Gladstone even gives a date to 
 the rise of the labor question, which he says " may be 
 said to have come into public view simultaneously 
 with the repeal of the Combination laws " (against 
 trade unions). Do we find fault because people say 
 there is a " servant question " ? It lacks definiteness, 
 but conveys a meaning that every one accepts. So 
 many household domestics have become restless, 
 independent, quick to take offence, asking many 
 favors and perhaps granting few, that we have placed 
 this experience among our abiding perplexities. We 
 call it " a problem." The illustration of the servant 
 throws light not only upon a phrase, but upon our 
 whole subject. There has never been a time in our 
 history when the relation between mistress and ser- 
 vant was free from a great deal of bickering and 
 unpleasantness. The entire colonial period is filled 
 with pathetic complaining about servants. Professor 
 Salmon's excellent study 1 will satisfy the most in- 
 
 1 " Domestic Service," Macmillan and Co. Especially Chapters III, 
 and IV.
 
 1 10 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 credulous reader on this point. Yet in spite of this 
 there is doubtless more of a " question " now than in 
 the past. Nor, as with the larger issues, is it any 
 less a question because of the astonishing improve- 
 ment in the pay and conditions of the servant's life. 
 I have known a woman still active in her eighty-third 
 year who tells me that at seventeen she did the 
 entire work of the household, including the cooking 
 and the care of the new baby, for $i a week. 
 
 This was the average pay of her neighborhood in 
 Massachusetts. Thirty years later, for fewer hours 
 and for far lighter work, her wages were $3.50 and 
 finally $4.50 a week. This does not exaggerate the 
 change for the better in the work and in the remuner- 
 ation of the domestic. Yet never was more restless- 
 ness nor the term of service shorter, nor the entire 
 sensitive relation between mistress and servant more 
 fragile. If we are intelligent enough to avoid the 
 vain attempt" to make the behavior of the employer 
 or of her helper perfectly rational, there is little diffi- 
 culty in accounting for the sentiment from which the 
 difficulty chiefly springs. The rise of wealth has 
 been so rapid that this service is always in demand. 
 There is, perhaps, no more telling proof of material 
 prosperity in the United States than the history 
 which domestic service affords. Nothing but great 
 material gains could have given domestics such op- 
 portunities within living memory. Their wages have 
 trebled with far easier tasks and increase of freedom. 
 To many disturbed persons this remarkable progress in 
 the lot of the servant is precisely what constitutes the 
 absurdity of the situation. " Do these creatures," it 
 is asked, " want the world ? " They want, like their
 
 THE SOCIAL QUESTION m 
 
 betters, all they can get : all the comforts, all the 
 leisure, all the income they can command. Content- 
 ment and docile behavior are not a consequence of 
 enlarged income and increased well-being. These 
 new acquisitions, as we all observe, rarely quiet dis- 
 content ; oftener, indeed, augment it. Every addition 
 to wages, every opportunity opened to the imagina- 
 tion by easier travel, by the press and by education, 
 quickens the desire to change one's place, in the hunt 
 for a "better thing." A troubled New York mistress 
 says : " It is all the fault of the New York World. 
 My servants never bothered me much until they 
 got the habit of reading every day the ' ads ' and 
 ' wants ' in that paper." But this lively journal 
 merely reflects modem life. All its agencies tend to 
 intensify the consciousness of what is undesirable 
 in our actual possessions. There is scarcely a device 
 of the new conveniences that does not plague us into 
 dissatisfaction with our actual place and belongings. 
 The objectionable self-direction of the domestic is full 
 of unpleasantness, but it is as futile to rail at it as to 
 abuse any other consequence of growing democracy. 
 I have seen a proud woman grow white with rage 
 because a servant, who had given references, dared to 
 ask for references. This astonished wrath is a symbol 
 of the conflict of ideals in this relationship as well as 
 of its probable duration. However imperfect this 
 illustration of the term " servant question," we see, 
 altogether apart from its rights or wrongs, that a 
 problem has arisen out of disturbed feelings as to 
 prerogatives. It is purely a sentiment, but it makes 
 all the riddle there is. The social question is but a 
 wider and more complex issue. Its perplexities are
 
 112 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 made from the same stuff of human ambitions to get 
 on and up. 
 
 We may now enlarge our inquiry and ask : Is 
 there a social consciousness of things industrially 
 wrong that has definiteness, volume, and persistence 
 enough to make a grave problem for our time ? It 
 would be fatal to take the measure of our unrest from 
 the prosperous periods alone. An average must be 
 taken which includes the crisis and times of depres- 
 sion. The answer, if it is to carry conviction, should 
 point first to those facts that are open to least dispute 
 and to least misunderstanding. I therefore begin with 
 an illustration that shows the problem in its very sim- 
 plest form. In a town recently agitated over the pri- 
 vate ownership of its waterworks, I was told by a large 
 owner in the company : " It is all very absurd. We have 
 put in a splendid plant with all the new inventions up 
 to date. We have good water and plenty of it. The 
 rates are not exorbitant, and this is admitted. Yet, 
 somehow, there has been growing up a feeling of hos- 
 tility against the private company for a dozen years." 
 
 Here, as in a child's primer, is the economic aspect 
 of the modern social question. It is created by this 
 local feeling of hostility. It presents, in this instance, 
 no difficulties for our analysis because of its sim- 
 plicity. Its value as an object lesson is all the greater. 
 Why, even with no very special abuses, should a town 
 be agitated from so slight a cause ? One of the owners 
 assured me it was all the work of two local dema- 
 gogues. "This nonsense of city ownership," he 
 said, " is in the air, and they make political capital out 
 of it." To few others in that town was this explana- 
 tion sufficient.
 
 THE SOCIAL QUESTION 113 
 
 During some days spent in this community, I asked 
 many different people why so much feeling had 
 arisen. I went first to the leading merchant, then to 
 a lawyer, then to an editor. What they had to tell 
 was monotonously familiar to every student of these 
 questions. As in hundreds of other towns, the people 
 of an earlier generation had freely given the right to 
 distribute water to a private person. He was the most 
 enterprising man in the town. He was willing to take 
 the risks and did in his time an unquestioned service to 
 his neighbors. Incalculable millions' worth of fran- 
 chises for railroads, street cars, and lighting companies 
 have been given away in precisely the same manner. 
 Many an interest which may become finally a most ob- 
 jectionable monopoly begins and long continues to ren- 
 der indispensable service, just as the truck store is often 
 at first useful and necessary to workmen, but later may 
 become rank with abuses. Populist critics have been 
 very severe against the railroads because of the un- 
 earned increment secured from the alternate sections 
 of land given by the government. The Illinois Cen- 
 tral, for example, secured enormous land grants in 
 1850. This has been called "a colossal robbery of 
 the public domain," but no one will read the speeches 
 in the Thirty-first Congress on this grant, without see- 
 ing that it is very absurd to call it robbery. 1 The 
 ablest men of the time Seward, King, Douglas, Cass, 
 Benton, and Henry Clay believed the regions through 
 which the proposed roads were to run to be practically 
 worthless. They believed the risk of the enterprise 
 to be very great. Clay said : " There is nobody who 
 
 1 Proceedings of the First Session of the Thirty-first Congress 
 (p. 844), April 29, 1850.
 
 114 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 knows anything of that grand prairie who does not 
 know that the land in it is utterly worthless for any 
 present purpose, not because it is not fertile, but for 
 the want of wood and water, and from the fact that 
 it is inaccessible, wanting all facilities for reaching a 
 market or for transporting timber, so that nobody 
 will go there and settle while it is so destitute of all 
 the advantages of society and the conveniences which 
 arise from a social state. And now, by constructing 
 this road through the prairie, through the centre of 
 the state of Illinois, you will bring millions of acres 
 of land immediately into the market which will other- 
 wise remain for years and years entirely unsalable." 
 
 Seward thought the grant for "the best and highest 
 interests of the people of the United States." The 
 government, he adds, " owes to itself and to the states 
 to make liberal and at the same time judicious ap- 
 propriations, to extend its network of railroads and 
 canals over these new regions, where the people and 
 the government are unable to construct the work 
 themselves." 
 
 Benton's words were as follows : " The principle 
 of the bill before the Senate is to take the refuse 
 lands and appropriate them to a great object of in- 
 ternal improvement, which although it has its locality 
 in a particular state produces advantages which, we 
 all know, spread far and wide ; for a good road can- 
 not be made anywhere without being beneficial to the 
 whole United States. . . . Sir, you may travel a 
 hundred miles through a country of marshes and 
 uncultivated land, which is not only worthless, but far 
 worse ; it becomes a place where miasma is generated 
 and where beasts have their haunts. But this bill
 
 THE SOCIAL QUESTION 115 
 
 proposes to make some beneficial disposition of these 
 lands. Of the general principle of the bill I cordially 
 approve." 
 
 Douglas said : " These lands have been in the 
 market from fifteen to thirty years ; the average time 
 is about twenty-three years ; but they will not sell at 
 the usual price of $1.25 per acre because they are 
 distant from any navigable stream or a market for 
 produce. A railroad will make the lands salable at 
 double the usual price, because the improvement made 
 by the state will make them valuable. It is an old 
 practice, long sanctioned by the government; we 
 propose now to give away half of it on condition 
 that the other half shall be rendered worth $2.50 per 
 acre." 
 
 King and Lewis Cass spoke strongly to the same 
 effect. 
 
 This was at the time honest opinion. It prevailed 
 because it was widely believed that this lavish gift of 
 land would result in progress for the common benefit. 
 In Dr. Robert's admirable " History of the Anthra- 
 cite Coal Industry," the reader may see how inevi- 
 tably those precious deposits passed into private 
 possessions. It is a story in which the great risks 
 taken are marked by hundreds of failures. It was 
 the exceptional man who made money. The com- 
 munity came to be grateful to any one who could 
 surmount the early difficulties and get coal to 
 market. 
 
 Until very recent years the only public opinion to 
 which appeal could be made would have ridiculed any 
 suggestion of state ownership. With that easy wis- 
 dom which comes after experience, we wish these
 
 Il6 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 deposits were public rather than private property. 
 We wish, in the days when it could have been profit- 
 ably done, that the government had set apart large 
 mining tracts just as New Zealand did, and as Can- 
 ada has done. We were not wise enough at the 
 proper time, but gave every legal sanction to the 
 private owner. 
 
 In a New England city where street franchises had 
 proved unexpectedly profitable to a private company, 
 I asked a citizen of genuine public spirit, who had 
 been most prominent in securing the franchise for 
 the company, what he now thought of the transac- 
 tion. He replied, " It has taken two or three millions 
 of money from the public and made a few men rich, 
 but I made an honest canvass of the town and 
 there was no man known to me in this city who was 
 not glad to have us take the streets and give the 
 public the benefit of our service." Upon the whole 
 this stands fairly for the origin of most of these prop- 
 erties. With the undreamed growth of cities and of 
 population, the fabulous value of many of these 
 franchises and of other monopoly privileges slowly 
 dawns upon us. Both privileges and abuses have 
 become so clear that the public rightly insists upon 
 coming into an entirely new relation with these 
 bodies. It insists first that the public shall have a 
 larger share in the monopoly gains, chiefly through 
 some form of taxation, and second, that the public 
 shall secure itself against specific abuses by an exten- 
 sion of legal control and regulation. There is no 
 more competent or conservative opinion in the United 
 States than that which makes these two demands. 
 The degree to which taxation and regulation shall be
 
 THE SOCIAL QUESTION 1 1/ 
 
 carried, will more and more divide candid opinion 
 along the lines that separate the individualist from 
 the socialist. If the socialistic sympathy is strong, 
 it will insist that no "regulation" can long repress 
 the evils of private ownership in any business that is 
 fairly termed monopolistic. The battle is now on 
 in this country between " regulation " and public 
 ownership for certain forms of monopoly. 
 
 In the instance above given of city waterworks, 
 the growth of a sentiment toward public ownership 
 may be seen in its very simplest form. A strong 
 man with his lawyer secured the water privilege. A 
 small number of influential people were allowed to 
 take stock, and ample dividends followed. Rank 
 abuses or gross corruption were never charged. The 
 editor admitted that " the private company could per- 
 haps give us water as cheaply as it could be given 
 under public ownership. "The trouble is," he added, 
 " that a great deal of suspicion has been roused 
 because of the secrecy connected with the whole busi- 
 ness. We have found out that a small set of citi- 
 zens have a high class investment. They give a 
 good many reasons to prove that their management 
 is excellent. It is not this so much that we doubt as 
 that we don't really know what they get or what the 
 public loses. Some ten years ago lectures on munic- 
 ipal ownership were given for the first time in this 
 community. That started the discussion in the local 
 papers. From that time the agitation has not ceased, 
 and it won't cease till we have the corporation in 
 public hands. I am convinced that those business 
 men and lawyers who control the corporation can 
 easily enough keep the plums for themselves. They
 
 Il8 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 are shrewd enough to understand that they must 
 serve us fairly well and have no scandal. They can 
 do that and still keep gains for themselves that ought 
 to go to all of us." The history of the ownership of 
 waterworks in the United States is told in this simple 
 testimony. 
 
 But a great deal more is told than this. When the 
 director of the water company said, " Somehow there 
 has been growing up a feeling of hostility against 
 the private company for a dozen years," he put 
 the general experience of a generation into a sen- 
 tence. It is not certain that upon strictly business 
 grounds this hostile judgment was sound. It is cer- 
 tainly possible that under private ownership water 
 may be distributed as well and as cheaply as under 
 public management ; but, in this instance, as in hun- 
 dreds of others, the people had come to have so 
 much doubt and suspicion that an issue was raised. 
 The slow growth of this town feeling against a nat- 
 ural monopoly is, upon its economic side, the essence of 
 the entire social question. It was in a large neighbor- 
 ing city that I was told, by a writer of national reputa- 
 tion, that his attention to socialistic problems was first 
 aroused by the solicitude of certain directors in a 
 private city gas company, that considerable blocks 
 of stock should be sold to picked citizens. One 
 director was frank in his statement. " There is a 
 good deal of crazy talk in the air about city control 
 of gas. It is so valuable a property that the possess- 
 ors of it are sure to oppose any movement to take 
 it over by the city, therefore we must see to it that 
 the really influential people, or those who might 
 cause us trouble, have the stock." Professor Rich-
 
 THE SOCIAL QUESTION 1 19 
 
 ard T. Ely has told me of an amusingly similar experi- 
 ence. The machinery of the water supply, ministering 
 to the necessities of the whole population, was nar- 
 rowly owned. The business was extremely simple, 
 the demand for water constant and increasing, the 
 risks were few. Given this situation, the public is 
 sure, upon the slightest suspicion, to ask why the 
 machinery should not be owned by the town it serves. 
 If it is a good property for the few, why may it not 
 be profitable to the many ? To this it is said : " Ev- 
 erybody cannot manage expensive machinery as well 
 as the selected few in a private company. The few, 
 guided by self-interest, have superior ability." The 
 people have learned to make one troublesome inquiry 
 about this private superiority. They ask, even if 
 private control is more effective, do the people neces- 
 sarily get the advantage, or does it pass to private 
 pockets? Suspicion upon this point increases among 
 us every year. When the last century came in (with 
 one or two exceptions), all waterworks were private 
 property. To-day, certainly, more than one-half are 
 under public control, and the tendency is so strong in 
 this direction that the discussion may be said to be 
 practically final for public ownership in this one 
 department. 
 
 As we pass to the more complicated machinery, 
 that, for example, of city lighting, telegraph, and 
 transportation, opinion is not convinced as in the 
 case of waterworks, but he is a dull observer who 
 does not recognize that the tendency is as steadily in 
 that direction as the movement of a glacier among 
 the great peaks is toward the valleys below. 
 
 The contests over electric lighting, except in tech-
 
 120 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 nical respects, are still relatively simple, because 
 vested interests have not grown into baffling en- 
 tanglements. The risks are far greater than with 
 water because electrical mechanism is still in an 
 experimental stage, requiring rapid, constant, and ex- 
 pensive changes. This fact would, in theory, seem 
 to justify the city in throwing the risks of such ex- 
 pensive changes upon private companies. Some 
 German municipalities that have adopted the prin- 
 ciple of municipal ownership are careful to leave 
 a risky responsibility of this kind to private enter- 
 prise. Yet, in spite of these delicate risks, an increas- 
 ing number of our cities adopts public control for the 
 same reasons that have brought the changes in the 
 furnishing of water. 
 
 The machinery of street transportation brings new 
 complications because of the greater magnitude of 
 the problem, and because of older vested interests. 
 Yet, who that follows the history of popular feeling 
 on these subjects in our large cities doubts that the 
 same critical spirit is steadily growing against the 
 private management of the street-car service. With 
 a far greater machine railroad transportation and 
 large portions of our mining, that are inextricably a 
 part of the railroad the purely practical difficulties 
 of public control in our country become formidable 
 in the extreme. Yet no array of difficulties can hold 
 in abeyance the same sentiment that the railroad 
 machinery might in some way be used for a larger 
 common good. 
 
 I am not now arguing for collective ownership, 
 but trying to test the currents of opinion. Whether 
 the opinion is discreet or foolhardy, it is as a fact
 
 THE SOCIAL QUESTION 121 
 
 growing more and more distrustful of exclusive 
 proprietorship over certain forms of industrial ma- 
 chinery that are conspicuously essential to wide 
 public interests. On its economic side, this distrust 
 is the irritating heart of our social problem. I have 
 seen a chart giving the growth of this sentiment 
 against all forms of the great machinery that is 
 loosely classed as semi-public corporations in nine 
 different countries. The result is practically every- 
 where the same, though with varying intensity. It 
 is found in free and democratic Switzerland, Aus- 
 tralia, New Zealand, and England, as well as in auto- 
 cratic Germany. Forms of government seem alike 
 indifferent to the process of socializing this machin- 
 ery. Given a certain degree of industrial develop- 
 ment, and the inevitable result follows of continuous 
 extension of the public function, railroad, telegraph, 
 telephone, gas, electric lights, street cars, and of 
 innumerable public works. If there is any authority 
 in the cumulative experience of industrial evolution 
 over so wide an area and under circumstances so 
 diverse, this would appear to furnish a trustworthy 
 instance. This fact of long and persistent experience 
 under a great variety of national and social conditions 
 has the weight and sanction which every consider- 
 able record of social growth must always carry 
 with it. 
 
 For proofs of this tendency we need not turn alone 
 to foreign peoples. The achieved result of public 
 management is in its infancy with us, but the first 
 great step of transformed opinion and tentative legis- 
 lation has already been taken. Dr. Whitten of the 
 State Library at Albany publishes bulletins which
 
 122 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 show how steady and strong the drift of public legis- 
 lation has become among us. 1 Commenting upon 
 this, a writer in the Nation observes, " If we define 
 socialism as the tendency to enlarge the functions of 
 government, we must admit that the general drift is 
 in that direction." One of the older of the Boston 
 lawyers, who had occasion to examine these statutes 
 in the different states, writes : " We seem to be giving 
 up all ideas of state functions that I was taught were 
 sound. My college instructors were very dogmatic 
 about the work which the city, state, and government 
 could undertake. Experience has, I think, turned 
 every one of their reasons topsy-turvy. Somewhere 
 in the world I see that the community is doing satis- 
 factorily what my teachers proved to us boys could 
 not possibly be done without confusion and catas- 
 trophe." Still wayward and uncertain of itself, the 
 general movement is now easily discernible. 
 
 If confined to its economic aspects, the dissatisfac- 
 tion out of which the social question springs has its 
 origin largely in the growing belief that mechanical 
 science and invention applied to industry are too 
 closely held by private interests. An enormous 
 private ownership of industrial mechanism, especially 
 if coupled with lands and mines, is now clearly seen 
 to carry with it powers and privileges that may 
 easily be turned against every promise of free and 
 democratic society. If it is true that dissatisfaction 
 has gained such headway as to disturb more and 
 more the currents of our social and political life, 
 that of itself makes the problem of our time. 
 
 Let us test this briefly, first, by reference to gen- 
 
 1 " The Trend of Legislation in the United States."
 
 THE SOCIAL QUESTION 123 
 
 eral opinion, second to organized labor, third to cer- 
 tain farmers' associations. 
 
 General Opinion 
 
 In one of the largest business men's clubs in this 
 country I listened recently to a discussion upon Mu- 
 nicipal Ownership. At the close of the meeting the 
 president of the club said : " I would not have believed 
 that notions could change so rapidly on any subject 
 as they have upon this. Ten years ago this audi- 
 ence would have listened perhaps \o a plea for munic- 
 ipal control of street cars, lighting, etc., but not ten 
 men in the room would have believed a word of it. 
 To-night, a third of the members, whose interests are 
 not endangered, would vote for it, and most of the 
 others would go so far as to admit that the proposal 
 deserved very careful discussion." A lawyer promi- 
 nent enough to be president of the local Bar Associa- 
 tion added : " Even five years ago it was hard to find 
 any strong man in the club who felt interest enough 
 to talk about the topics two minutes. To-day few 
 topics are certain to excite livelier discussion." I 
 asked to what cause he attributed the change. 
 " Chiefly," he replied, " to the facts brought out by lo- 
 cal reform associations. They have proved to every- 
 body, what many of us knew and all suspected, that 
 the city council was as regularly debauched by these 
 corporations as the necessities of their business ex- 
 tension required. The directors always cry out, ' We 
 are under a perpetual blackmail, and therefore can't 
 help buying aldermen.' If they tell us the truth, if 
 regular corruption is a necessity of private manage-
 
 124 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 ment in this city, then it is too dangerous a power to 
 intrust to such a body. Though the city would, of 
 course, run the same risks of political abuse, it would 
 be better for the public to take the responsibilities 
 openly, and meet them as best it can." 
 
 This illustration possibly overstates the change of 
 general opinion throughout the country, but it indi- 
 cates fairly how great a change has been wrought. 
 To hear these views from the ablest practical men 
 is no longer a surprise. The tone of editorial dis- 
 cussion is just as marked. One of the most influen- 
 tial of Massachusetts dailies now boldly takes ground 
 in favor of public management, even of railroads, tele- 
 graph, and telephone. Two others are ready at all 
 times to discuss the municipal issue with that open- 
 ness of mind which assumes it to be an unsettled 
 question. The editor of one of these papers tells 
 me point blank, " Personally, I have no doubt we 
 are coming to city ownership, and ought to come 
 to it" 
 
 The current literature in favor of extending the 
 functions of the city has come to be so prolific that 
 it is hard, even for the special student, to follow it. 
 For some years I classified the articles upon this sub- 
 ject as they appeared in general magazine literature. 
 A dozen years ago the task was light, but a year 
 since, from sheer weariness at the amount of matter, 
 the task was discontinued. In one of our largest 
 libraries, the librarian, struggling with the difficul- 
 ties of a new catalogue, told me " our greatest nui- 
 sance is the increasing mass of literature on social 
 questions. Are people growing crazy on that sub- 
 ject?"
 
 THE SOCIAL QUESTION 12$ 
 
 Capitalists, and the agents who act for them, are 
 daily furnishing testimony to the same effect. 
 
 An able article in Municipal Engineering, by J. B. 
 Cahoon, warns capitalists not to oppose state regula- 
 tion. He fears and opposes city ownership, but says 
 to his business friends : " There lie open to us two 
 paths, municipal ownership or private ownership 
 under state regulation. We certainly do not want 
 municipal ownership, therefore let us prepare to ac- 
 cede gracefully to the other course ; and not only that, 
 but let us help it along. In that lies our salvation." 
 He then adds, " I doubt if there are in this whole as- 
 sociation a dozen members who realize fully the grav- 
 ity of the present situation for the private ownership 
 of public utilities." "The number of agitators that 
 are crying municipal ownership of public utilities is 
 constantly and rapidly increasing ; they are attack- 
 ing us in all parts of the country, even now, and the 
 attack will be stronger and stronger as time goes on." 1 
 
 Views of Organized Labor 
 
 It is dangerous to report class opinions. "What 
 labor thinks " has been the lying text of many a 
 demagogue. There is no uniformity of conviction 
 upon a single industrial topic among some twenty 
 millions who work for wages in the United States. 
 It is only in the case of labor organized that one may 
 
 1 1 am told by an official of a telephone company that the agitation 
 for municipal ownership has developed so far that the company has 
 quietly gathered from all sources every fragment of available evidence 
 bearing on the problem. " We propose," he said, " to be better 
 equipped than the cranks when the fight comes on."
 
 126 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 speak with the least degree of assurance. Though 
 this is but a small fraction, perhaps one in fourteen 
 or fifteen, its weight in terms of opinion is far more 
 important than is signified by numbers. This or- 
 ganized minority has scores of trade journals. It 
 has a literature and extensive agencies for propa- 
 ganda. It has a steady tendency to set the current 
 of beliefs among a far larger number than that under 
 the immediate control of the union. To treat these 
 convictions, therefore, as of slight account is the kind 
 of error for which no one seems to have so special a 
 talent as the so-called practical man. 
 
 The new step taken by organized labor in this 
 country during the last ten years is to learn the pos- 
 sibilities of political action. Twenty years ago those 
 who guided the movement were afraid of politics, to- 
 day they see in its skilful manoeuvring a new hope 
 and a new era. 
 
 The shrewdest trade-union leaders observed in the 
 great strikes of 1892 and 1894 that the chances of 
 favoring political influence (if the right moment for 
 the strike were chosen) were full of promise. The 
 brilliant victory of the strike of 1900, led by John 
 Mitchell, and deliberately aided by the most influen- 
 tial man then in Congress, so confirmed this impres- 
 sion that the great labor struggles of the future will 
 have a still closer and more calculated reference to 
 politics. As this conscious alliance strengthens, it 
 will become almost more dangerous to defeat the strike 
 than to help it toward victory. Increasingly, too, the 
 issues upon which strikes of the first magnitude will 
 turn are issues that bring us face to face with the 
 alternative of public control. The general interest
 
 THE SOCIAL QUESTION 127 
 
 and attention are henceforth directed along socialistic 
 lines, not by books, but by stirring events. The influ- 
 ence of this close relation upon trade-union convic- 
 tions is already apparent. 
 
 The older trade-union faiths were oftener individu- 
 alistic than collectivism Year by year they have 
 been modified, until it may be said that they will 
 soon be, if they are not already, practically unani- 
 mous in demanding public control of the natural 
 monopolies, gas, electric light, street cars, as well 
 as railroads, telegraph, and mines. If it is asked 
 what has solidified their thought upon this subject, 
 the answer is found in a wide and very bitter experi- 
 ence. I shall not claim that their ordeals have been 
 undeserved. I shall not hold the unions guiltless of 
 many special acts of intolerable behavior. The aim 
 is now not to judge their conduct, but to know their 
 opinions and the changes they have undergone. 
 
 Their views vary, step by step, as certain forms of 
 machinery develop and react upon labor. As the 
 iron takes its shape between hammer and anvil, labor 
 organization has been made by the organization of 
 machine industry. But for the introduction of these 
 inventions, and the way in which they have been 
 applied to industry, the laborer never would have 
 submitted to the long and terrible sacrifices that 
 organization has cost him. For the cities where the 
 unions have won their strength, the most telling ob- 
 ject lesson has been the mechanism of street trans- 
 portation. This is the great machine of the city, as 
 the railroad is for the country at large. For a quar- 
 ter of a century the strikes upon street cars and rail- 
 roads have brought home to the trade union the most
 
 128 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 instructive lessons it has learned in this country. As 
 this labor has thrown itself against semi-public corpora- 
 tions it has been made to see the hard limits beyond 
 which mere unionism cannot go. It is thus with every 
 defeated strike that one sees the employees turning 
 with steadily growing conviction against private owner- 
 ship and in favor of public, in the hope that favors 
 can be forced from the public which the private cor- 
 poration refuses. 
 
 Especially in its conflict with natural monopolies 
 like street-car companies has labor learned its politics. 
 In the heat of more than six hundred such strikes 
 it has been taught how the powerful natural mo- 
 nopoly within the city is guarded by secret privileges 
 won in the lobbies. It is in part the knowledge of 
 this that so rouses the wide public sympathy which 
 we have seen with the strikers in so many of our 
 cities. 
 
 In Milwaukee, after the great strike, I found neither 
 doubt nor hesitation that the angry popular suspicion 
 of undue political influence was justified. The reign- 
 ing political party had its roots deep in city affairs. 
 Contracts were made to the direct end of strengthen- 
 ing this hold. The heat engendered by every such 
 strike brings these facts to light. I was told by a 
 citizen and stockholder, whose judgment was thought 
 to have special value, that it was well the people 
 knew so little. Their suspicions, he said, " are more 
 than justified. I hate all talk about socialism, but 
 this strike has taught me a lesson I never could have 
 learned from books. This form of city monopoly, 
 half private, half public, has got to be brought under 
 thorough and consistent municipal direction. Whether
 
 THE SOCIAL QUESTION I2Q 
 
 we should lease it out or own and manage it, I do not 
 know, but we are near the end of all ownership that 
 is not far more responsible to the public than anything 
 we have known here." A leader among the work- 
 men said, " Nothing that has ever happened has 
 done so much to turn our men toward municipal 
 socialism as this strike." There is scarcely a limit to 
 the amount of testimony to be adduced from scores 
 of cities in the United States. In an economic study 
 which was pronounced "careful and judicious" by a 
 committee of the American Economic Association, 1 
 the reader has a glimpse of the entire street-car 
 problem in the United States. For magnitude of de- 
 moralization, the instance here given does not com- 
 pare with some of the railroad corporations, but its 
 narrowed area enables the investigator to report upon 
 it with much closer accuracy. As this Cleveland ma- 
 chinery of transportation slowly consolidates, offering 
 ever more glittering prizes to private ownership, the 
 author tells us the result. 
 
 " It has brought together a combination of men 
 whose commercial and political power is practically 
 unlimited. Representing as they do, with their 
 associates, the managers of both party ' machines,' 
 it makes little difference which party is in power, so 
 far as gaining their ends is concerned. And this 
 power extends beyond municipal into state matters 
 as well. Legislatures as well as councils are made 
 the tools of these corporations. The fifty-year fran- 
 chise bill was almost as much a party measure as the 
 election of the United States senator who championed 
 
 1 "The Street Railway Problem in Cleveland," Macmillan, 1896. 
 Especially pages 313, 315, 354. 
 
 K
 
 130 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 it. The same forces which made him senator made 
 this bill a law. 
 
 " When we approach the question of corruption in 
 the award of franchises, it must be admitted that the 
 system has thus far put an immense premium upon 
 all sorts of jobbery and corruption. The street rail- 
 way interest has been all-powerful in the control of 
 political machines. It has not only secured, appar- 
 ently for the mere asking, the most valuable privileges 
 which the city council could bestow, but it has also 
 escaped the performance of many obligations which 
 the state has compelled the council to make a con- 
 dition of its grants. It has prevented the enforce- 
 ment of nearly every law which it has not cared to 
 obey. And now it has an enormous inducement to 
 corrupt a majority of the council in order to obtain 
 the most valuable grant ever put into the hands of 
 that body to bestow. All this it has been enabled 
 and encouraged to do under the present system, 
 which offers to unscrupulous men both the motive 
 and the power to corrupt the city government." 
 
 With tiresome uniformity this is the story of other 
 cities. No body of citizens has shown a readier wit 
 to discover these facts than the trade unions. Their 
 journals show how early they were to appreciate the 
 drift of events and to understand their bearing upon 
 labor interests. With every new object lesson of suc- 
 cessful or defeated strike, this group opinion has grown 
 more confident and more definite ; that monopolized 
 machinery of city transportation, lighting, and tele- 
 phone should be taken over by the public authorities. 
 Twenty years ago opinion was formless and hesitating, 
 to-day it is clear and decisive.
 
 THE SOCIAL QUESTION 131 
 
 TJie Farmers 
 
 As in the case of the industrial laborer, we have 
 to consider on the agricultural field only those among 
 the farmers who have established organizations. We 
 have even to omit certain granges whose purpose 
 is almost exclusively social and agricultural. Much 
 amazement is expressed at the massing of great capitals, 
 but if difficulties are taken into account, it is perhaps 
 no more an object of surprise than that millions of 
 farmers, since 1867, should have organized to such 
 extent for what they believe to be their own defence. 
 They were bound together neither by common tra- 
 dition nor common politics. Their resources were 
 scanty and they were separated by wide geographical 
 distances. The real beginnings are soon after the 
 Civil War, when invention, as applied to industry, was 
 organized for the first time in our history upon a 
 great scale. As if by some impulse common to them 
 all, business, trade unions, railroads, farmers, and even 
 charities are caught by this new spirit of organiza- 
 tion. Only two years after the close of the war the 
 " Patrons of Husbandry " was founded. This order 
 began with the vaguest statement as to aims, such as 
 " industrial benefits and the social improvement of its 
 members." Vigorous efforts were made, as with the 
 earlier trade unions, to exclude all discussion of 
 politics. This nervous solicitude to eschew politics is 
 full of significance. Protesting never so loudly that 
 they will shun politics, they have year by year yielded 
 more to its claims. 
 
 The deepest purpose in most great movements 
 comes tardily to consciousness and is openly admitted
 
 132 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 with extreme reluctance. Early in the Reformation, 
 Luther is vehement in asserting, " I will do nothing 
 against his Holiness, the Pope." Lincoln was sin- 
 cere in repeating that " he has no purpose, directly or 
 indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery 
 in the states where it exists," that he has " no lawful 
 right to do so." Yet the movement behind both these 
 strong men drove them to eat their own words. In 
 the first decade of the farmers' agitation there is 
 much honest and well-meant horror of questioning 
 the infallibility of party politics. The discontents 
 that gathered about the crisis of 1873 raised the 
 number of grangers to thirty thousand in 1875. 
 Then come internal jealousies, the inevitable conflict 
 of discordant aims, and the "dangerous effects of 
 prosperity." The strength of this organization as an 
 influence continued hardly more than ten years. Re- 
 viewing its history in 1891, leaders justified their work 
 by pointing to its influence in lessening the patent- 
 monopoly of sewing machines, "thus saving," as 
 they say, " millions to the people annually " ; in 
 directing a successful agitation against transportation 
 companies by helping on the interstate commerce law, 
 etc. They have also much to say about oleomar- 
 garine, agricultural stations, and arbor days. But 
 chiefly to be noticed is the unmistakable beginning 
 of opposition to the forms of monopolized machinery 
 that concerns the farmer's life. In 1880, a larger 
 organization takes the field in the South, the 
 Farmers' Alliance. This soon adopts six ethical 
 and educational generalities, in the first of which " a 
 strictly non-partisan spirit " is taken. It gradually 
 federates with other farmers' organizations, until a
 
 THE SOCIAL QUESTION 133 
 
 "union platform" is adopted, including the aims of 
 the northern and western associations, as well as 
 those of the Knights of Labor. Politics now becomes 
 a conscious purpose, and a new and bolder position is 
 taken toward the currency and methods of exchange 
 and transportation. The National Farmers' Alliance 
 in the Middle West had, as early as 1877, brought 
 politics and " anti-monopolies " to the front. At the 
 Cincinnati convention in 1891 the full spirit of the 
 peoples party, with its political and economic ideals, 
 takes shape. The evils to be overcome are now far 
 more definite. Landownership by foreign syndi- 
 cates is opposed ; lands that have been taken by 
 railroads and other corporations, in excess of actual 
 working necessities, are to be reclaimed by govern- 
 ment; railroads and telegraphs are to be taken over 
 and operated by the state. 
 
 When it was said to the farmer, "Your produce 
 would rot in the field if it were not for the railroad 
 and this same money power," the usual answer was, 
 "We farmers understand our interests well enough 
 to know that, but we also know that it is only half of 
 the truth." From 1867 to the present, the conviction 
 has deepened that " some way must be found in which 
 these mighty agencies can be used more equitably 
 for the public good and less exclusively for fattening 
 the few." The whole movement is created by this 
 feeling. 
 
 The mere text of these programmes is, of course, not 
 sufficient to tell us what the most tenacious purpose 
 of the party is. Platforms are padded like those of 
 the republican and democratic parties. Beyond the 
 printed rhetoric is the real aim of the stronger spirits
 
 134 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 that cannot wholly display itself. During the cam- 
 paign of 1897 in Chicago, I asked three of the most 
 influential men then crying for free silver, if " 16 to 
 i " represented the most fundamental changes which 
 they desired. It appeared in each case that the " grip 
 of the money power " was the deeper problem. One, 
 whose writings had done much to inspire the party, 
 assured me that the actual issue was of course impor- 
 tant, but he added, " the evil that we are after is that 
 connected with the great monopolies." The leader 
 of this movement in Massachusetts says, " Practical 
 reasons forced us to bring the silver issue to the front, 
 but the great interest which unites us all is the danger- 
 ous business and political influence which the money 
 power has at last got in this country." 
 
 Here is the misfortune of this much-bewildered 
 party, that its grievances have such heterogeneous 
 character and are so difficult to formulate. The 
 stupendous organization of industrial and scientific 
 invention is now under the control of the strong and 
 successful. A thousand privileges, political and legal, 
 protect them in their possessions. The laws of inheri- 
 tance multiply every advantage. Many of our strong- 
 est papers are at the disposition of these interests, 
 often, indeed, their private property, and legislatures 
 and city councils are frequently moulded to their 
 wish. What can the invertebrate multitude, torn 
 by many conflicting interests, do before a power so 
 formidable ? Thus far it cannot even state its own 
 case. This it is which gives a merciless advantage 
 to every critic of the peoples party. The very 
 term "money power" has become a cant well-nigh 
 intolerable. There is scarcely a severer test to fair-
 
 THE SOCIAL QUESTION 135 
 
 ness than that to which the student must submit, as 
 he passes judgment upon the thirty years' history of 
 the farmers' agitation. To hold it to the mere letter 
 of its complaint is unjust. 
 
 The most frequent critical judgment is that the 
 one thing all populists are after is fiat money. This 
 craze is said to be the one thing that unites them. 
 There is much truth in this, but it requires a most 
 important qualification. Views upon the currency 
 alone do not test this movement. A fairer reading 
 of populist opinion shows that money is conceived 
 of as an interlinked part of our commercial mecha- 
 nism. It is thought of as a medium through which 
 this mechanism is vitalized. The instinct which seeks 
 to change the monetary system is the same instinct 
 which seeks more power over the railroad, the bank, 
 the stock exchange, the telegraph, and the grain 
 elevator. 
 
 To see the movement as one against the too exclu- 
 sive use of this industrial machinery, is to see it in 
 a light that helps us interpret it, without violence to 
 what is deepest and most permanent in it. The 
 social question is forever an attack upon what, in 
 some form, is thought to be unfair privilege. Eco- 
 nomic privilege is now an inseparable part of the 
 machinery of modern production and distribution. 
 The farmer attacks railroads because they touch him 
 at so visible and sensitive a point. He strikes wildly 
 at "futures" on the stock exchange, at our banking 
 system, at the " single standard," because these are 
 to him the express tokens of industrial privilege. 
 It is this ultimate and determining impulse which 
 enables us to give this agitation its proper name.
 
 136 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 Stripped of its padding and accidents, it is a socialist 
 propaganda. 
 
 During eight yearly visits through Western towns, 
 covering a period of hard times and a period of 
 exceptionally good times, I tried to gather evidence 
 upon this question. There are two extreme condi- 
 tions to be kept in mind. There are first, vast 
 fertile areas on which the farmer is as prosperous 
 and contented as any class with which it is fair 
 to compare him. There are other wide areas, like 
 parts of Kansas and Nebraska, in which capricious 
 climate accounts chiefly for the chronic ills under 
 which the farmers suffer. Between these extremes 
 is found a very large class whose discontent is real 
 and whose feeling, year by year, grows more social- 
 istic. I tried in each community to find out the farmer 
 whose opinion upon such subjects was thought to be 
 of value. A fair summary of this testimony can be 
 put into the experience of a prosperous farmer whose 
 intelligence had general recognition in his city. I 
 give this, as nearly word for word, as note-book 
 memoranda permit. It is stated at length, because 
 the illustration is believed to carry more truth than 
 any mere analysis or general discussion. 
 
 " For seventeen years I lived on a farm out of 
 town. For nine years I have lived in the city and 
 rented my farm. I have got ahead a little, as three- 
 fourths of the farmers I know have done, if they 
 have worked hard and intelligently. If I had not 
 read two books, Henry George, in the early eighties, 
 and later Bellamy, I should have grubbed along and 
 never thought anything was wrong. Those books 
 set me thinking how the things we grow and make
 
 THE SOCIAL QUESTION 137 
 
 are divided up. I have read ever since, and gone to 
 a good many lectures ; but what influenced me most 
 was watching and finding out how a few men got 
 very rich, and a large number amassed fortunes here 
 in town, by owning and running the street cars. 
 They were, many of them, high up in politics, and 
 got the streets for nothing, and then from year to 
 year bought up the most valuable pieces of land in 
 the city, because they knew where they were going 
 to put down the tracks. I was in a position to know 
 how the fat contracts building, paving, etc. were 
 put out so as to strengthen political control, which 
 these men needed. I have seen a contractor grow 
 wealthy in ten years, solely because he could manage 
 politics in one section of the city. The corporation 
 bought him in this way. No man can get on to the 
 city council if those men do not want him there. 
 The town has grown rapidly, and these men with 
 their friends have got all the cream while we've got 
 the skim milk. A man can't die on skim milk, but 
 you don't like to see a few at a side table take all the 
 cream. They tell us they have done big things for 
 the city. I admit it is true, but we have all found 
 out here how the clique got a great deal more out of 
 it than they ought to get, and the rest of the town 
 too little. At the start nobody knew what was being 
 given away in parting with the franchises. The 
 people are finding out their mistake, and they never 
 will be quiet till they have got them again. Now, 
 when I understood that problem in my town, I began 
 to reason about the railroad and telegraph system 
 in the whole country. If a few men could get the 
 cream in this town, it was easy to see how the Goulds
 
 138 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 and the Huntingtons could do it in a much bigger 
 field. 
 
 " I don't doubt they have helped the country in some 
 ways, just as the street cars have helped this town, 
 but in both cases they have got the cream and the 
 people the skim milk. Now, nothing will make me 
 believe that there isn't some way of doing this busi- 
 ness that is as much public business as it is private 
 so that the people shall get fairer treatment. It 
 is thinking about these things that made me join first 
 the local alliance and, later, the peoples party, be- 
 cause they are trying to do with the railroads and 
 certain other monopolies what we in this town pro- 
 pose to do with the street cars and the electric light." 
 
 I submit this case as fairly representative, enabling 
 us so far to account for the suspicion and restlessness 
 that make this phase of the social question. It is, 
 of course, legitimate to challenge his remedy of pub- 
 lic ownership. We cannot deny a certain justifica- 
 tion to his sense of wrong. As he felt it, millions of 
 others have come, or are coming, to feel it. 
 
 The form in which the farmer has stated his griev- 
 ance has often been so muddled that any economic 
 tyro could make easy jest of it. When the Irish 
 farmers began to agitate against landlords' rent, it 
 was just as easy to make those agitators appear very 
 absurd. All the economic commonplaces were turned 
 against them by the " highest authorities," as well as 
 by smart writers in the daily press. 
 
 As we now look upon these events it is clear that 
 those Irish farmers were far nearer right than their 
 patronizing opponents. The farmer was paying an 
 amount of tribute that the land could no longer
 
 THE SOCIAL QUESTION 139 
 
 afford, and a whole body of the most socialistic legis- 
 lation in modern times was grudgingly enacted. 
 
 The heart of the protest among our own farmers 
 may in time look far more intelligent than the glib 
 complacencies which the " articulate classes " level 
 against them. As the blade of economic rent cut too 
 far into the loaf of the Irish farmer, it may prove 
 that the close organization of railroad, tide-water 
 facilities, the stock exchange, and the great banking 
 filches too freely from the farmers' earnings. 
 
 The present alliance of these business interests is 
 the most powerful industrial machine that the world 
 has seen. It is a mechanism that gathers to itself 
 every triumph of science and invention. Will the 
 financial kings, whose colossal ownership enables 
 them to control and direct this enginery, use it so 
 that its benefits become uniformly apparent to the 
 farming class ? It is not enough that the farmer is 
 kept loyal merely through the " curve of prosperity," 
 his confidence must have sustaining enough to keep 
 his loyalty through curves of depression. The farm- 
 ers cannot be made to believe that the unhappy zig- 
 zag between fatness and leanness is wholly due to 
 fickle skies and occasional bad crops. They know 
 enough about the fatal rhythm of the crisis and its 
 connection with gambling distempers in the market, 
 to protect them against so na'fve an exposition. They 
 guess as giddily at the real source of crises as many 
 of the men who write books upon that subject. The 
 farmer may nevertheless be right in attributing one 
 leading cause of these disturbances to the way in 
 which these great commercial forces are used. 
 
 That the canting use of the term " money power "
 
 140 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 has become an offence, ought not to cozen us into 
 the belief that the term has no serious meaning. 
 The centralizing of banking and transportation with 
 many of the first and most necessary industries is 
 an event so momentous that the ablest men differ 
 utterly in their interpretation of it. Is this money 
 power, as now directed by private interest, a social 
 menace ? 
 
 I have put this question to many men of very large 
 experience. Most frequently the answers are opti- 
 mistic, but there are no more competent witnesses in 
 this country than a large number of men who look 
 upon this same "money power" with the gravest mis- 
 givings. They will state these doubts more freely in 
 private, not necessarily from cowardice, but from hon- 
 est intellectual perplexity before the practical difficul- 
 ties which the question involves. 
 
 I can condense these misgivings in the opinions of 
 two lawyers with princely incomes from corporation 
 practice. Both have university training and have 
 written books. They agreed that the next great issue 
 in this country was likely to be with the money power, 
 defined as an alliance of the great banking with vast 
 businesses which have, or can be given, the character 
 of monopolies. 
 
 I showed these opinions to two men, a banker and 
 a trust organizer. One has a national reputation, 
 the other is frequently quoted in conservative dis- 
 cussions of finance. Both are republicans and very 
 prosperous. I do no injustice to their views in say- 
 ing that they were still more pronounced in their 
 fears that centralizing financial control is a distinct 
 social danger.
 
 THE SOCIAL QUESTION 141 
 
 The banker said : " No such power ever fell into 
 human hands as that which some twenty-five men 
 now hold. I do not believe they mean to abuse it, 
 but I do not see how they can continue to control 
 it so that it shall not get us into both business and 
 political difficulties." 
 
 The trust organizer said, "The next thing that 
 will be recognized, even by conservative men, is the 
 tyranny in this country of this money power." 
 
 I do not put upon this testimony any very ominous 
 interpretation. It may prove that the interests of 
 these captains of industry will coincide with the com- 
 mon good. My object in quoting the above views is 
 to show that at bottom these men agree with what is 
 the core of the farmers' discontent. 
 
 It would be fantastic to say that the farmers mean 
 what these lawyers and the bank president meant. 
 The latter expressed reasoned opinions, based upon 
 long and detailed experience with financial affairs. 
 They may be said to see as far as any one sees into 
 the problem of commercial organization. They have 
 at least some conception of the obscure relations in 
 which banking, transportation, and certain great in- 
 dustries stand to each other. Far less of this is 
 understood by the farmer. His error has been ex- 
 pressed in such ways as to cast suspicion or contempt 
 upon the party as a whole. The injustice of this 
 against the peoples party is flagrant. Beneath all 
 errors of conscious explanation may still be found an 
 instinct that is sound and right. Skilful dialectic and 
 literary good form may as easily win a bad case, as 
 ignorant handling may lose a good one. From this 
 cause the farmers' movement has suffered. Its most
 
 142 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 strident emphasis has too often been upon the wrong 
 issue. Many of its most hopeful proposals have been 
 obscured by irrelevancies, or so stated as to carry no 
 conviction. 
 
 What any fair critic may already see behind the 
 faulty presentation of populism, is that the moving pur- 
 pose of it is closely akin to that just considered under 
 "General Opinion" and under "Trade Unions." If 
 carefully studied, the doubts and suspicions of the 
 populist are seen to be strangely like the doubts 
 and suspicions of the two lawyers and the bank 
 president. The ignorant and the less ignorant agree 
 that the "money power" is full of threatening. 
 Both agree that some form and measure of strong 
 government or state control will be a necessity of the 
 future. They agree that these gathered forces have 
 grown too powerful to be left unregulated in private 
 hands. The farmer's feeling about this is no less 
 justified because he cannot give rational account of 
 it. The banker and lawyer could state more cogently 
 what they 'meant by the " money power," yet, if there 
 were any truth in their opinions, it is not at bottom 
 truer than the feeling of the populist. 
 
 As with general opinion, as with the opinion of 
 the trade union, so the feeling of discontent in this 
 farmers' movement is one against monopoly privilege. 
 It is being found out what the heart of this privilege 
 is. It inheres in certain forms of property owner- 
 ship. It is the holding in such unrestricted private 
 possession the very conditions and instruments of 
 wealth production. 
 
 To gain mastery over the very titbits of the earth, 
 in harbors, cities, highways, and mines, and then to
 
 THE SOCIAL QUESTION 143 
 
 own enough of the great machinery of transportation 
 and production to decide the conditions under which 
 others shall do their work this is the power against 
 which a dangerously large number of people is crying 
 out. They do not see how power, in this degree and 
 kind, can continue to grow, without abandoning every 
 hope of a society in which equal privilege shall at last 
 reign among men. 
 
 The economic significance of the social question 
 is this deepening purpose to break the hold upon 
 monopoly privilege, as above defined. Rightly or 
 wrongly it has come to be believed, by numbers great 
 enough to become a social and political force, that the 
 most vital landholdings and the great machinery are 
 not now used for the greatest common good. 
 
 Yet the purely business elements are probably not 
 first in this rising tide of disapproval. There is a 
 growing conviction that private ownership may gather 
 to itself such strength and mastery as to control poli- 
 tics and defeat the very beginnings of democratic 
 government. 
 
 It has thus come to pass that the seeds of political 
 abuse which capitalism itself planted are bearing fruit. 
 Socialism and organized labor, imbued with the collec- 
 tivist spirit, have learned their lesson. There is in 
 future no divorcing of the greater labor disturbances 
 from politics.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE INEVITABLENESS OF THE SOCIAL QUESTION 
 
 A VETERAN in the trade-union movement of Massa- 
 chusetts said at a dinner of the Twentieth Century 
 Club : "We have not got very far in understanding 
 the social question until we rise out of the atmosphere 
 of personal blaming. A man who thinks it is all the 
 fault of this or that capitalist, has not got very 
 far. Our real trouble is not with specific rich men, 
 but with the general system which makes possi- 
 ble the man of one hundred millions on one side, and 
 a mass of laborers struggling for the means of sub- 
 sistence on the other. It is not primarily the fault of 
 the magnates ; it is the fault of all of us who consent 
 to the conditions out of which these dangerous extremes 
 spring up." 
 
 A member of the London County Council, making 
 investigations in the United States, heard these words, 
 and added : " I have been interviewing your business 
 men ever since I landed, but not once have I heard 
 so impersonal a judgment. I have found the pick of 
 your labor leaders far better instructed upon all sides 
 of the labor controversy than business men. The 
 business man is cocksure about the trouble. It is 
 the labor agitator. If only he could be suppressed, 
 all would be well." His explanation was that men of 
 affairs were too busy to read. They were simply vexed 
 
 144
 
 THE INEVITABLENESS OF THE SOCIAL QUESTION 145 
 
 by strikes and by trade-union interference, and out of 
 this immediate experience made their philosophy. 
 
 This is a very insufficient analysis. These large and 
 impersonal views are exceptions upon both sides, but 
 they are as frequently met amon g business men as among 
 those who represent labor. The perpetual astonishment 
 of the student is, however, that business men know so 
 little of those organs of opinion into which the wage 
 earner puts his most earnest and most honest thought. 
 It is droll that one should have to make this comment, 
 but I have never yet seen an employer who had given 
 the least serious attention to this literature. I have 
 known a manufacturer of machinery who had been 
 through repeated conflicts with his men over ques- 
 tions raised by the union. He did not treat these 
 disturbances as mere perversity. He had read much 
 general labor literature and showed some pride in 
 admitting that " great changes were certain to occur 
 between labor and capital during the next generation." 
 Yet among the men in his own business, a trade jour- 
 nal had been printed month by month for several 
 years. In the successive issues, every point of dif- 
 ference between his own views and those of his 
 men had been repeatedly discussed. All that his 
 men hoped for and were trying to attain, was here 
 set down, yet this employer had never thought it 
 worth his while to read a line of it. His intellectual 
 curiosity led him to much study of popular sociological 
 books, but schemes for improvements fermenting in 
 the minds of his own workers had interested him so 
 little that in his own words, " It never occurred to me 
 that there was anything worth reading in the journal 
 of these mechanics."
 
 146 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 I have known intelligent builders and scholarly 
 architects who had long fought trade unions among 
 their own workmen and yet had never even heard of 
 the trade journals in these crafts. These have con- 
 tained for many years the opinions of these workers 
 upon every issue that enters into their relation to the 
 employers. Cigar makers and garment workers are 
 thought to rank lower in the scale, yet no one can 
 look through a batch of their trade organs without a 
 wholly new conception of the movements there repre- 
 sented. As religious bodies, political parties, and 
 business interests have their own press for propa- 
 ganda, so that part of the labor world, from which 
 the chief industrial resistance comes, has created an 
 extensive periodical literature far abler than is com- 
 monly believed. In this literature they discuss not 
 only the conditions under which they work, hours, 
 wages, machinery, strikes, trade unions, they also 
 discuss every phase of the competitive regime under 
 which the industrial struggle for existence goes on. 
 From his employers and those who think with them, 
 the workman hears the defence of this competitive 
 struggle. He is told that under it men find their 
 place according to their merit. "Talent and efficiency 
 get their reward, mediocrity sinks to its proper level." 
 He is told that in all wealth-making three factors are 
 essential, land, labor, and capital, or, by more recent 
 refinement, ''natural opportunity, labor, and directing 
 intelligence." Each, according to the service it ren- 
 ders, receives its portion of the product : land its rent, 
 labor its wage, and organizing management its profits. 
 He is assured that this triune relation has something of 
 the sanctity of a divine decree, or at least the authority
 
 THE INEVITABLENESS OF THE SOCIAL QUESTION 147 
 
 of a natural law. Given a reign of " free contract," 
 and a proper regard for competition, and industrially 
 the best possible world is at hand, especially for the 
 wage earner. The forces of distribution give him an 
 ever increasing part of the product, while capital secures 
 a relatively diminishing portion. This is the cheerful 
 formula. 
 
 Meantime the victim of this instruction is busy with 
 his own observations. He notes that the capitalist 
 class enlarges its expenditure at a quite dizzying pace. 
 The home, the equipage, the club, the sports and rec- 
 reation, expand each year into more lavish and prod- 
 igal form. It is very apparent that dollar for dollar 
 the interest on capital has fallen from a high to a low 
 figure. It is apparent that dollar for dollar profits 
 have in the majority of businesses also fallen, but 
 the belectured wage earner sees that this jocund 
 formula is modified not a little by the simple fact 
 that the capitalist, during this fall in profits and 
 interest, may somehow have doubled and redoubled 
 his thrifty gains. If one possess four or five times 
 more capital, his income swells though the rate of 
 interest and profit falls. The laborer is not, how- 
 ever, left alone with his doubts. The world is full 
 of very wise people, who tell him with great frank- 
 ness that labor does not in any sense get its fair 
 share. They tell him that through the manipulating 
 of a thousand chartered privileges, labor is defrauded 
 of a formidable portion of its product. There are 
 no abler economists than dozens who make this 
 declaration. 
 
 As for the competitive wage system with its " free 
 contract," a troop of eminent men denounce it in
 
 148 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 unmeasured terms. They denounce it economically, 
 because of its wastefulness through unnecessary 
 duplication of rival plants, with the orgy of advertis- 
 ing which this rivalry occasions. They denounce it 
 morally with even more confident disapproval. They 
 see in it the teeming source of the self-seeking which 
 delights to take every advantage of another's weakness 
 or ignorance, to "best" him in the bargain. They 
 see in it the chief stimulator of the universal hunger 
 for quick riches which spreads among us the methods 
 and the spirit of the gambler. They charge it with 
 setting such a premium upon mere sharpness and 
 cunning that this type of success becomes the attrac- 
 tive idol for general worship. 
 
 It is easy to convict these charges of exaggeration 
 in the sense that they ignore the positive and service- 
 able side of competition. It is not easy to deny that 
 they carry with them a disquieting truth. It is upon 
 this, and not upon the shaded qualifications, that the 
 disaffected workmen seize. The speculative portions 
 of the labor press have become the receptacle of the 
 most accusing criticism against the business world as 
 now managed a criticism drawn not from the ranks 
 of labor, but from the ranks of those who possess as 
 much enlightenment as modern culture and opportu- 
 nity usually give. 
 
 Few events during recent years have more signifi- 
 cance than the growing popular sympathy with labor 
 unions in these struggles, especially their struggles 
 with semi-public corporations. This sympathy has 
 had an almost universal expression in the recent 
 anthracite coal strike. But for the unhappy fatalities 
 of personal violence that break out in the later despair-
 
 THE IXEVITABLENESS OF THE SOCIAL QUESTION 149 
 
 ing days of the strike, this public sympathy would 
 become irresistible. The wholesome popular instinct 
 for law and order is swift to react against any excess 
 of ruffianly attack upon persons and property. The 
 strike breaks when this deviltry becomes unmanage- 
 able. At this point every strong current of general 
 sympathy deserts the strikers. Even for them it is 
 better that it should be so, for to win by lawlessness 
 would bring weakness and not strength to labor. 
 
 This fact carries in it, however, tragedy and pathos 
 alike. Labor leaders have learned that they cannot 
 and ought not to succeed by personal savagery against 
 property or persons. I have never heard more hon- 
 est and passionate pleading for law and order than 
 from trade-union officials addressing their own men 
 in time of strike. At such a moment John Mitchell 
 said to his miners : " If you want to spoil your own 
 cause and lose every sacrifice you have made for 
 yourselves and your families, give way to your tem- 
 per and commit some violence. Just a few outbreaks 
 like this and the public good-will, to which we must 
 look in last resort, will fail us and we shall deserve 
 to lose it." These words were not spoken for out- 
 side use, but to his own men in council. Nor are 
 they exceptional among the more disciplined leaders 
 in this country. Yet what, meantime, do these 
 leaders and their fellows also know ? They know 
 that many of these corporations against which their 
 fight is carried on have been more dangerously law- 
 less than can be any crude act which their own mem- 
 bers are likely to commit. They know this because 
 scores of the best-known men in the United States 
 have told them so. They have read it in half the
 
 150 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 great papers, in books, in economic studies, and hun- 
 dreds of times have laid these opinions before their 
 members in the labor press. Dr. Gladden, lecturing 
 this year before Yale students, speaks in these words 
 of the partnership between the politician and the con- 
 senting managers of certain corporations : J 
 
 " There is no man in any prison in this country who 
 has done a hundredth part as much to make society 
 impossible as has been done by any one of half a 
 dozen great political leaders. The man who by the 
 corrupt use of money manipulates caucuses and con- 
 ventions, and debauches candidates and voters, thus 
 poisoning at their sources the streams of political 
 power, is the most dangerous man in society to-day, 
 albeit his guilt is shared by those managers of great 
 corporations who furnish him with corruption funds. 
 If our notions of justice were clearer, such men would 
 not be abroad in society. Compared with the de- 
 structive influence of such men, how harmless are 
 most of the criminals shut up in our prisons." 
 
 Which is worse, to slug a fellow-workman or to 
 purchase some immunity for a corporation by paying 
 large sums to the local political "boss," knowing well 
 what this means for lawless and debasing effect at 
 the very heart of our political life? This is but a 
 single form that this corporate lawlessness takes on, 
 and it would be very inane to infer that this greater 
 wrong justifies the lesser wrong of the trade union. 
 The two wrongs are brought together to show the kind 
 of bitterness which thousands of the trade unionists 
 are coming to feel when they are held so rigidly to law 
 and order, while these greater fellow-criminals escape. 
 
 1 " Social Salvation," p. 105.
 
 THE INEVITABLENESS OF THE SOCIAL QUESTION 151 
 
 Another form of unfairness that is still less ex- 
 cusable is the popular explanation of the cause and 
 continuance of many labor troubles. We are gravely 
 assured that it is the " labor agitator " the "walking- 
 delegate." In half the papers of the country this 
 sorry illusion gets repeated from year to year, until it 
 is believed. 
 
 I met a little girl much agitated, in Pullman, after 
 the great strike there. I asked her what the strike 
 was about. She answered, " Oh, the workmen wanted 
 to have their rents put up, and Mr. Pullman wouldn't 
 do it." There is nothing funnier in this child's ex- 
 position than in that generalization under which the 
 walking-delegate is naively written down as the cause 
 of strikes. For trade unionism at large in the United 
 States, the walking-delegate represents the opinion 
 and will of his union more closely than most con- 
 gressmen represent the opinion and will of their 
 constituents. 
 
 We are sufficiently reminded that our best men will 
 not go into the smaller politics. It is at least as true 
 that the best labor men do not always get prominent 
 positions in the unions, and essentially for the same 
 reason. The kind of gift that is indispensable 
 fluent speech, for example to active, stirring leader- 
 ship is oftener found among men of lighter weight. 
 On the other hand, there are no cooler or steadier 
 heads in the labor movement than many of those who 
 now control the unions in this country. 
 
 But the ends of capitalistic politics are in no way 
 more admirably served, than by fixing the cause of 
 these wasteful and annoying troubles definitely upon 
 obnoxious individuals. During one of our severest
 
 152 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 coal strikes, in which the public showed much sym- 
 pathy with the miners, an editorial appeared in one 
 of our best papers, saying that the causes were very 
 obscure, that more light was needed for fair judg- 
 ment I showed this to an operator in the thick of 
 the fight, urging that the public have a fuller account 
 of the issues in dispute. He replied that there were 
 no issues, " It's all the work of two or three labor 
 fakirs who want to live off our men." " What makes 
 me mad," he added, " is that I saw the manager of 
 that paper and gave him the facts, and now the 
 damned fool must talk about obscure causes and the 
 need of light." 
 
 The leisure of a few evenings spent with the files 
 of a dozen of our better labor papers will leave no 
 doubt in the mind of any candid reader that all these 
 unfair strictures against the unions produce most 
 regrettable effects. They are interpreted to mean 
 that the critics of the labor movement are wilfully 
 ignorant of its chief purposes, or deliberately mali- 
 cious in characterizing its efforts. 
 
 The labor movement rests on the assumption that 
 the production and distribution of wealth, as now 
 managed, ought to be and can be so far changed, 
 as to give the laborer more power in deciding the 
 terms under which he works. It is because increas- 
 ing numbers of the wage earners are becoming con- 
 vinced upon this point that society is afflicted with 
 an almost unbroken series of costly labor disputes. 
 This warfare excites caustic comments from the well- 
 to-do, as if it were the deliberate perversity of churlish 
 men. 
 
 Yet in a long and embittered strike no one bears so
 
 THE INEVITABLENESS OF THE SOCIAL QUESTION 153 
 
 heavy a burden as the striker and his family. There 
 is no more poignant tragedy than the freely accepted 
 suffering which thousands of fathers and mothers 
 will undergo during the wasting months of a strike. 
 With children to feed, these parents know all that it 
 means to have every cent of income stopped for an 
 indefinite future. They know that the little luxuries 
 must disappear, that the petty saving must be quickly 
 spent, and a plague of debts at once begin. They 
 know all this, not as a curious observation, but as 
 grievous human experience. They know it, and yet 
 freely choose to suffer every sacrifice that the event 
 carries with it. 
 
 We are told by their critics that they would not 
 commit such follies but for the exercise of tyranny 
 and compulsion. Yes, the trade union exercises the 
 tyranny and compulsion of a majority vote as we do 
 generally in our form of government. The other 
 sagacious charge, that they are duped into the hard- 
 ships of a strike by their own officials, is generally so 
 far from the fact that the officials know better than all 
 others that their own pay is likely to stop in a prolonged 
 dispute, and if it fail, their prestige is at an end. It 
 is the clear knowledge of this fact which leads trade- 
 union officials every year to check hundreds of strikes, 
 of which the public knows nothing. What is brought 
 to the public ear is the most flagrant abuses of trade- 
 union activity. Especially in cities that are politically 
 corrupt, trade-union officials too often take on the 
 local color. They know and practise every trick 
 from which the common municipal life suffers. 
 
 The dishonest trade-union official, the mere talker, 
 the fakir proper these are all a part of the heavy
 
 154 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 burden that organized labor has to bear. It knows 
 these men better than the public knows them, knows 
 their weaknesses often better than the employer 
 knows them. I once thought myself doing a service 
 to a trade union, by telling some trustworthy members 
 that their leader was in the pay of an association of 
 employers. They had bought him for the purpose 
 of "keeping the union quiet." I found that the 
 strong men in the union were perfectly familiar with 
 the fact, but it was more than three years before 
 they could rid themselves of this man. 
 
 The " cause " yet means so much to them that 
 hard-worked men with meagre income will give time 
 and strength and money, not spasmodically, but year 
 after year, in order that their group welfare may not 
 suffer. The sacrifices are great, and they are unre- 
 mitting. The common fund which it has required 
 years to gather, is swept away in the strike of a few 
 weeks. Money that is destined for burial or sick 
 benefit often goes with the rest. 
 
 Do multitudes of men continue to load themselves 
 with these heavy encumbrances, except for reasons 
 that in their minds bear some relation to the sacrifices 
 involved ? The struggle is as widespread as it is 
 persistent. Without exception this struggle assumes 
 that the present competitive wage system does not 
 bring justice to labor. The revolt of the strike, the 
 friction, the angry pressure of organized labor, stand 
 for a protest against this system. The mass of 
 labor disturbances is the measure of dissatisfaction 
 with it. 
 
 Now it happens that our society is full of extremely 
 influential persons who say point-blank that labor's
 
 THE INEVITABLENESS OF THE SOCIAL QUESTION 155 
 
 protest is in the main a righteous one that should 
 prevail. This sympathetic assent adds, y,ear by year, 
 new power to the labor and socialistic movement. 
 The workman no longer reads in his own papers 
 merely the opinions of his mates, he reads there the 
 opinions of so many of the world's intellectual leaders, 
 that he naturally comes to believe that the highest 
 and most disinterested talent is on his side in the 
 struggle. 1 
 
 My attention was first called to the real character 
 of this influence by the use to which German labor 
 papers put many of the leading writers in that coun- 
 try. The philosopher F. A. Lange wrote his epoch- 
 making book on the labor question in the days when 
 social democracy in Germany was in the first ferment 
 of political organization. The moral weakness of 
 the competitive system, the nature of the industrial 
 struggle for existence, the defeat of higher ideal values 
 in this scramble for private gain, never at that time 
 had been told with such searching power as by this 
 noble scholar. German workingmen were among 
 the first to welcome it. They lectured upon it, wrote 
 about it, and reproduced it in their literature. " Here, 
 at last," they said, " is a university teacher in great 
 vogue, who understands what our struggle means and 
 has the courage to utter it." 
 
 From this volume (" Die Arbeiter Frage ") the more 
 thoughtful socialists were led to Professor Lange's 
 greater work, " The History of Materialism," in which 
 they found a mine of critical material. The disci- 
 
 1 The mass of laborers even in trade unions are not habitual readers, 
 but these thoughts in the speeches of their fellows or in conversation 
 with those who do read, become a part of their life.
 
 156 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 plined interest which Lange always took in economic 
 studies, heightens his value for their uses. This 
 more academic study also bristles with barbed para- 
 graphs against the present industrial regime. In 
 the chapter on " Political Economy and Dogmatic 
 Egoism" the author analyzes the prevailing apol- 
 ogies for the struggle for existence as it appears 
 in modern business. He finds in it a deification of 
 self-interest that stands in deadly enmity with ethical 
 idealism. 
 
 He says : " We may show a hundred times that with 
 the success of speculation and great capitalists the 
 position of everybody else, step by step, improves; 
 but so long as it is true that with every step of this 
 improvement the difference in the position of indi- 
 viduals and in the means for further advancement 
 also grows, so long will each step of this movement 
 lead toward a turning-point where the wealth and 
 power of individuals break down all the barriers of 
 law and morals, and a degraded proletariat serves as 
 a football to the passions of the few, until at last every- 
 thing ends in a social earthquake which swallows 
 up the artificial edifice of one-sided and selfish inter- 
 ests. . . . The state becomes venal. The hope- 
 lessly poor will just as easily hate the law as the 
 over-rich despise it. Sparta perished when the 
 whole land of the country belonged to a hundred 
 families ; Rome when a proletariat of millions stood 
 opposed to a few thousands of proprietors, whose 
 resources were so enormous that Crassus considered 
 no one rich who could not maintain an army at his 
 own expense. ... In mediaeval Italy also popular 
 freedom was lost through a moneyed oligarchy and a
 
 THE INEVITABLENESS OF THE SOCIAL QUESTION 157 
 
 proletariat. ... It is characteristic that in Florence 
 the richest banker finally became an unlimited despot, 
 and that contemporaneously in Genoa the Bank of 
 St. George in a measure absorbed the state. " 
 
 He opens his chapter on Christianity and En- 
 lightenment in these words : " The present state of 
 things has been frequently compared with that of the 
 ancient world before its dissolution, and it cannot be 
 denied that significant analogies present themselves. 
 We have the immoderate growth of riches, we have 
 the proletariat, we have the decay of morals and 
 religion ; the present forms of government all have 
 their existence threatened, and the belief in a coming 
 general and mighty revolution is widely spread and 
 deeply rooted." 
 
 As the name of the musician Wagner rose in distinc- 
 tion, the socialist did not forget to rifle his " Kunst 
 und die Revolution" for comforting opinions. "Art 
 and the Revolution " is one fierce anathema. That 
 the laborers should rise against commercialism is the 
 one sign to this " poet-musician " that they have self- 
 respect and intelligence. "This hatred," he says, 
 " springs from a noble instinct for a dignified joy in 
 life ; from the passion to rise from drudgery to art, 
 from slavery to free humanity." It is passages like 
 these that gave Wagner the title, "The Karl Marx 
 of poetry and music." 
 
 From the weighty books of Dr. Schaeffle they 
 took very early such utterances as these : " The un- 
 limited sway of capitalism offers a widespread and 
 fruitful field for the growth of immoral instincts," 
 " The factory system has come with its merciless 
 exploitation of wage labor."
 
 158 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 During a later visit to Germany, I came to know a 
 socialist workingman with whom I often argued about 
 the rights and wrongs of the "present system." When 
 the discussion once turned upon a question of author- 
 ity and opinion, he took from his desk a scrap-book 
 filled with clippings from German labor papers. These 
 were passages condemning the industrial system as 
 it now exists. With every degree of vehemence, the 
 writers declared that labor was unjustly treated ; that 
 the wage system had much in it common with slavery ; 
 that capitalism was full of intolerable tyrannies. I 
 do not say these opinions were either wise or true. 
 I use them to show how surely they brought this 
 mechanic to feel that his own views were justified, 
 and had the approval of the masters of thought. His 
 authorities were not merely the mordant cynicism of 
 Heine or the rhymed hatred of Freiligrath. He 
 had the censure he wanted from half the German 
 economists. He had made excerpts from the first 
 of German historians, like the following from 
 Mommsen. 
 
 " Riches and misery in close league drove the 
 Italians out of Italy and filled the peninsula partly 
 with swarms of slaves, partly with awful silence. It 
 is a terrible picture, but not one peculiar to Italy; 
 whenever the government of capitalists in a slave 
 state has fully developed itself, it has desolated 
 God's fair world in the same way. . . . All the 
 arrant sins that capital has been guilty of against 
 nation and civilization in the modern world remain as 
 far inferior to the abomination of the ancient capital- 
 ist states as the free man, be he ever so poor, remains 
 superior to the slave ; and not until the dragon seed
 
 THE INEV1TABLENESS OF THE SOCIAL QUESTION 159 
 
 of North America ripens will the world have again 
 similar fruits to reap." l 
 
 He had cut out the views of Tolstoi, of Ibsen, of 
 Ruskin, of Carlyle. He turned upon me in triumph, 
 saying: "If it is a question of opinion about our 
 cursed society, all the men who think great thoughts, 
 and dare to utter them, are with us. They all call it 
 rotten, they despise capitalism, the politicians, and the 
 lawyers that are its hirelings." 
 
 Few will be so unfair as to deny that this artisan 
 got his impressions as honestly as impressions come 
 to most of us. It will be admitted that his feelings 
 were stoutly reenforced by the conviction that these 
 men of learning were on his side. He was not likely 
 to make nice discrimination as to the relation of these 
 extracts to the author's completer thought. This 
 discrimination is rare even among the educated. 
 The poets, thinkers, scholars, clothed this saw-filer's 
 rougher thought in the purple of their own distinc- 
 tion. They brought to him the mysterious sanction 
 of those whom we all recognize as teachers. What 
 he and his kind could only feel or poorly utter, they 
 gave back to him in splendid or rugged phrases that 
 redoubled their force and made them sacred to his 
 imagination. If, then, this incident be multiplied 
 million-fold, we get new insight into one source of 
 unrest with the present social order. 
 
 My experience with this German workingman led 
 
 1 This man was proud of having learned French enough to read 
 Victor Hugo. He had taken from " Les Miserables " these radical words, 
 " Universaliser la propriete (ce qui est le contraire de 1'abolir) en sup- 
 primant le parasitisme social, c'est a dire arriver a ce but : tout homme 
 proprietaire et aucun homme maitre, voila pour moi la veritable Econo- 
 mic sociale et politique."
 
 160 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 me to collect several hundred copies of European 
 labor journals, popular pamphlets, and leaflets. They 
 present a kind of anthology rilled with telling quota- 
 tions against the economic organization of society. 
 A corresponding collection of our own labor literature 
 in 1890 showed less systematic use of such criticisms, 
 but this difference has now wholly disappeared. Even 
 our more special trade organs are not less alert to 
 welcome imposing authorities. Emerson, as in the 
 following passage, is put to constant use : " As long 
 as our civilization is one of property, of fences, of 
 exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions. Our 
 riches will leave us sick, there will be bitterness in 
 our laughter, and our wine will burn our mouth. 
 Only that good profits which we can taste with all 
 doors open and which serves all men." Matthew 
 Arnold's famous phrase does perpetual service, 
 " Our present social inequality materializes the upper 
 class, vulgarizes the middle class, and brutalizes the 
 lower class." Even from the elder Arnold, I find 
 these drastic words gleefully quoted : " It seems to 
 me that people are not aware of the monstrous state 
 of society, absolutely without a parallel in the history 
 of the world, with a population poor, miserable, and 
 degraded in body and mind, as if they were slaves, 
 and yet called freemen. And the hopes entertained 
 by many, of the effects to be wrought by new churches 
 and schools, while the social evils of their conditions 
 are left uncorrected, appear to me utterly wild." l 
 
 1 1 first saw in a French socialist paper this passage from that 
 delightful writer, Professor Secretan : 
 
 " La prolongation du regime actuel est impossible. Pour s'en con- 
 vaincre, il suffit de mettre en presence quelques-uns des elements qui le
 
 THE INEVITABLENESS OF THE SOCIAL QUESTION l6l 
 
 To say that four of Ruskin's volumes have been 
 many times reprinted in labor journals is hardly too 
 strong a statement. The following is a favorite pas- 
 sage, " To call the confused wreck of social order 
 and life brought about by malicious collision and 
 competition an arrangement of Providence, is quite 
 one of the most insolent and wicked ways in which 
 it is possible to take the name of God in vain." 
 
 The more recent developments of economic litera- 
 ture have put terrible weapons into the hands of the 
 discontented. Thorold Rogers, former Oxford econo- 
 mist and a politician of large experience, tells the " dis- 
 possessed classes " why written political economy has 
 been so solicitous to defend the vested rights of actual 
 society. His two volumes of published lectures fur- 
 nish twenty instances like the following : " In a vague 
 way they (the laborers) are under the impression that 
 the greater part of the misery which they see is the 
 direct product of the laws, enacted and maintained in 
 the interest of particular classes. And on the whole 
 they are in the right" 1 
 
 This passage from the economist Professor Smart 
 of Glasgow furnishes food for very pungent com- 
 ments in a labor paper : 
 
 " But when machinery is replacing man and doing 
 the heavy work of industry, it is time to get rid of 
 
 constituent : les produits du travail devolus exclusivement a 1'entrepre- 
 neur capitaliste, 1'immense majorite des ouvriers depourvus de toute 
 garantie d'existence, de toute securite pour 1'avenir, vivant au jour le 
 jour d'un salaire juste suffisant pour ne pas mourir de faim; puis en 
 face de ce contraste economique, le suffrage universel charge d'en as- 
 surer 1'observation, enfin le salariat condamne dans la conscience des 
 salaries, et la guerre sociale en permanence." (Charles Secretan: La 
 Civilisation et la Croyance.) 1 The italics are my own. 
 
 M
 
 1 62 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 that ancient prejudice that man must work ten hours 
 a day to keep the world up to the level of the com- 
 fort it has attained. Possibly, if we clear our minds 
 of cant, we may see that the reason why we still wish 
 the laborer to work ten hours a day is that we, the 
 comfortable classes, may go on receiving the lion's 
 share of the wealth these machines, iron and human, 
 are turning out." 
 
 Professor Cairnes has a great name among econo- 
 mists for ability and for caution. What, then, are 
 thoughtful workingmen to think of words like these 
 from his " Leading Principles " ? I have seen them 
 quoted three times in labor papers. 1 
 
 " Unequal as is the distribution of wealth already 
 in this country, the tendency of industrial progress 
 on the supposition that the present separation be- 
 tween industrial classes is maintained is toward 
 an inequality greater still. The rich will be growing 
 richer; and the poor, at least relatively, poorer. It 
 seems to me, apart altogether from the question of 
 the laborer's interest, that these are not conditions 
 which furnish a solid basis for a progressive social 
 state ; but, having regard to that interest, I think the 
 considerations adduced show that the first and indis- 
 pensable step toward any serious amendment of the 
 laborer's lot is that he should be, in one way or other, 
 lifted out of the groove in which he at present works, 
 and placed in a position compatible with his becom- 
 ing a sharer in equal proportion with others in the 
 general advantages arising from industrial progress." 
 
 After Dr. Spahr published his volume on "The 
 
 1 American edition, p. 285. Let the reader curious to follow 
 Cairnes's opinion read the entire fifth chapter, Part II.
 
 THE INEVITABLENESS OF THE SOCIAL QUESTION 163 
 
 Present Distribution of Wealth in the United States," 
 I cut from the organ of the American Federation of 
 Labor the following table : 
 
 SPAHR'S TABLE OF THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH IN 
 THE UNITED STATES 
 
 CLASS 
 
 FAMILIES 
 
 PER 
 CENT 
 
 AVERAGE 
 WEALTH 
 
 AGGREGATE 
 WEALTH 
 
 PER 
 
 CENT 
 
 Rich 
 
 125,000 
 
 I.O 
 
 $263,040 
 
 $32,88o,OOO,OOO 
 
 54.8 
 
 Middle 
 
 1,362,500 
 
 10.9 
 
 14,180 
 
 I9,32O,OOO,OOO 
 
 32.2 
 
 Poor 
 
 4,762,500 
 
 38.1 
 
 1,639 
 
 7,8oO,OOO,OOO 
 
 13-0 
 
 Very Poor 
 
 6,250,000 
 
 50.0 
 
 
 
 
 Total 
 
 13,500,000 
 
 IOO.O 
 
 $4,800 
 
 $6o,OOO,OOO,OOO 
 
 IOO.O 
 
 DIAGRAMS SHOWING, BY PERCENTAGES, THE POPULA- 
 TION AND WEALTH DISTRIBUTION IN THE UNITED 
 STATES ACCORDING TO SPAHR'S TABLES 
 
 Population 
 
 Middle, 10.9 
 
 Wealth 
 
 Poor, 38, t 
 
 Very 
 Poor, 50. 
 
 Rich, 54,8 
 
 Middle, 32.2 
 Poor, 13. 
 
 A little later, I listened to a popular exposition of 
 this table enlarged upon a blackboard before a labor 
 audience. " The thin dark line of population (one 
 per cent)," said the speaker, " own more wealth than 
 the remaining ninety-nine per cent of us. The poor,
 
 1 64 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 though they are eighty-eight per cent, own but 
 thirteen per cent of the wealth, and yet we are ex- 
 pected to approve a system which has so little to say 
 for itself as that." 
 
 I do not personally believe that trustworthy sta- 
 tistical sources exist that enable one to make tables 
 of this character that are more than guesses at the 
 fact. Yet if it were known what the possessions of 
 the one hundred and twenty-six thousand richest 
 families in the United States are, the result would be 
 all that any agitator need ask. I reproduce the table 
 here, to show how words like those of Professors 
 Cairnes, Rogers, and Smart can be used to give 
 authoritative support to extreme and indefensible 
 inequalities. In the instance of the speaker just 
 quoted, he held in his hand a trade-union sheet from 
 which he read the passage from Professor Cairnes. 
 
 J. S. Mill furnishes so many extracts dear to the agi- 
 tators that he appears to be still one of their constant 
 contributors. What is the dissatisfied wage earner 
 to think of this passage ? 
 
 " The form of association, however, which, if man- 
 kind continues to improve, must be expected in the 
 end to predominate, is not that which can exist be- 
 tween a capitalist as chief and work-people without a 
 voice in the management, but the association of the 
 laborers themselves on terms of equality, collectively 
 owning the capital with which they carry on their 
 operations, and working under managers selected 
 and removable by themselves." l 
 
 A man of splendid sobriety like Mill, with the 
 best economic training of his day, subjects the cur- 
 
 1 People's edition, p. 465.
 
 THE INEVITABLENESS OF THE SOCIAL QUESTION 165 
 
 rent communistic schemes to minute and fearless 
 criticism. No weakness or danger in these collec- 
 tivist hopes escapes him. He sees that at bot- 
 tom it is all a question of securing and preserving 
 the maximum of individual liberty. He will have 
 nothing that puts this liberty in jeopardy, but he 
 objects to society as now constituted because this 
 real freedom of the individual for the majority of 
 men appears to him in imminent danger. He writes 
 his conclusion in these words, " Between communism 
 with all its chances, and the present state of society 
 with all its sufferings and injustices, ... all the dif- 
 ficulties great or small of communism would be but 
 as dust in the balance." 
 
 These words of Mill are a direct sanction to a very 
 large part of what socialists claim in the way of eco- 
 nomic reorganization. The illustrious author asks 
 no less than the upsetting of almost every separate 
 idol of the conventional business man's piety. What 
 proposal could be more radical than to make the 
 laborer an actual partner, to democratize industry, 
 in a word, as we are trying to democratize politics ? 
 Another passage from his autobiography has the 
 same frequent use : 
 
 " Our ideal of ultimate improvement went far be- 
 yond democracy, and would class us decidedly under 
 the general name of socialists. . . . The social prob- 
 lem of the future we considered to be how to unite 
 the greatest liberty of action with a common owner- 
 ship in the raw material of the globe, and an equal 
 participation of all the benefits of combined labor." 
 
 One would not expect to find John Fiske in such 
 company, but I have twice heard him quoted by
 
 1 66 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 socialist speakers, and once seen these words 
 printed : " Inherited predatory tendencies of men 
 to seize upon other people's labor is still very strong, 
 and while we have nothing more to fear from kings, 
 we may yet have trouble enough from commercial 
 monopolies and favored industries marching to the 
 polls their hosts of bribed retainers." 
 
 Lowell, Frederic Harrison, John Morley, William 
 Morris, Howells, each furnishes some stinging para- 
 graph against the present social order. One of our 
 foremost economists, Professor Henry C. Adams, is 
 gratefully referred to by a labor editor as writing the 
 following: "The laborer of to-day, as compared to 
 the non-laboring classes, holds a relatively inferior 
 position to that maintained in former times. The 
 laborer interprets this to mean that the principle of 
 distribution which modern society has adopted is 
 unfair to him." 
 
 The dignitaries of the church furnish many a text 
 for labor and socialist agitation. These words are 
 taken from Canon Barnett of Toynbee Hall : 
 
 "The policies which occupy the leaders' minds, 
 the interests of business, the theologies, the fashions, 
 are but webs woven in the trees while the storm is 
 rising in the distance. Sounds of the storm are 
 already in the air, a murmuring among those who 
 have not enough, puffs of boasting from those who 
 have too much, and a muttering from those who are 
 angry because while some are drunken others are 
 starving. The social question is rising for solution, 
 and, though for a moment it is forgotten, it will 
 sweep to the front and put aside as cobwebs the 
 ' deep ' concerns of leaders and teachers."
 
 THE INEVITABLENESS OF THE SOCIAL QUESTION 167 
 
 With one exception I have found, among the 
 clergy, the learned Bishop of Durham oftenest in 
 their sheets. The exception is Pope Leo XIII. 
 These words from the famous encyclical of 1891 
 have been used in hundreds of labor organs, and 
 repeated before innumerable labor audiences : 
 
 " The momentous seriousness of the present state of 
 things just now fills every mind with painful appre- 
 hensions ; wise men discuss it, practical men propose 
 schemes; popular meetings, legislatures, and sover- 
 eign princes all are occupied with it, and there is 
 nothing which has a deeper hold on public atten- 
 tion. . . . The concentration of so many branches 
 of trade in the hands of a few individuals, so that a 
 small number of very rich men have been able to lay 
 upon the masses a yoke little better than slavery." 
 
 We should make very paltry estimate of this new 
 energy added to the labor movement, if we tested this 
 sympathetic assent by its agreement upon mere matters 
 of material or administrative changes. Of incompa- 
 rably more power than this is the purely moral force 
 which these great names lend to the laborers' struggle. 1 
 
 These citations are literally not a tenth of those 
 
 1 Who among living writers has shown a subtler insight into the 
 tendencies of his time than De Vogue ? In a masterly essay, " L'heure 
 Presente," he quotes Prince Carolath as saying that in Germany " the 
 socialists have seduced innumerable idealists." Though this is to 
 De Vogu6 lafolie rationelle, he yet adds : " Je veux seulement marquer 
 le fait d'ou decoule tout entiere sa nouvelle puissance : le socialisme 
 a capte le courant d'idealisme qui se reformait partout durant ces 
 mSmes annees. Une conspiration tacite, inconsciente, s'est nouee 
 entre des gens que tout separe, depuis le proletaire qui se rue aveugle 1 - 
 ment centre la machine sociale jusqu'aux conducteurs patentes de 
 cette machine ; la conspiration commence a la haine d'en bas et finit 
 a la vague pitie d'en haut."
 
 1 68 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 which I have noted in the printed record of social 
 revolt. They are a scattered few taken from the 
 labor and socialist papers of five countries. They 
 represent opinions about present society which seem 
 to range these eminent authors on the side of the 
 agitators. No socialist recalcitrant uses more embit- 
 tered speech against the fenced mass of vested pre- 
 rogatives than these same teachers. Not only poets, 
 artists, and men of letters, but savants from every 
 field enter this list. They condemn a society that 
 breeds and maintains such universal and revolting 
 inequalities. 
 
 The question I wish to submit is this : what is the 
 probable, yes, inevitable effect, upon the mind of the 
 average wage earner who constantly reads or hears 
 such sustaining sentiments from our most inspiring 
 men ? Can it have any result except to deepen every 
 faith in him that his hope for social reconstruction 
 has the sanction of the best men of the time ? Their 
 testimony appears to him, first of all, free from the 
 bias of self-interest. It is the testimony of men of 
 genius and insight, it persuades him, therefore, with 
 redoubled force.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 MAN AND SOCIETY VERSUS MACHINERY 
 
 IF only the material elements of the problem are 
 considered, socialism is so largely a conflict over the 
 ownership of machinery that little headway can be 
 made until its difficulties have been faced. That 
 the world's inventions should have become a private 
 possession is to the socialist the tragedy of modern 
 industry. 
 
 In the exclusive power which this ownership gives, 
 the socialist sees the intensifying of every cruelty in 
 the industrial struggle for existence. Largely to this 
 ownership he attributes the slavish dependence of 
 the workman, the panting scramble of competition 
 with its chaotic production and waste of human life. 
 Let this ownership, together with the earth's area, 
 pass again to the people, and a swarm of evils under 
 which we now stagger shall fall from us. That these 
 " means of production " should be taken from the 
 control of the few and given into the control of all, is 
 to pass from slavery to a free and self-directed life. 
 It is of course true that socialism does not trust alone 
 to the mere material fact of this transfer of posses- 
 sion. It has its own ethical idealism and a very noble 
 appreciation of a more prolonged and thorough train- 
 
 169
 
 170 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 ing for every child. Socialism sees that these spiritual 
 values are to be counted in, if men are to enter into 
 its new brotherhood. The economic side of this 
 endeavor turns, however, on the machine and the 
 "footing on which it rests." 
 
 It is to be noted that there is in this view no objec- 
 tion to machinery as machinery. The objection is 
 against its individual ownership. Generations of 
 workmen have objected to the machine as such, while 
 other objectors, who cannot be classified, show a keen 
 antipathy because of its effects upon the man or upon 
 society. 
 
 Emerson says manhood has been shrunk and be- 
 littled by machinery. " The robust rural Saxon de- 
 generates in the mills to the Leicester stockinger, to 
 the imbecile Manchester spinner far on the way to 
 be spiders and needles. The incessant repetition of 
 the same hand-work dwarfs the man, robs him of his 
 strength, wit, and versatility, to make a pin-polisher, 
 a buckle-maker, or any other speciality ; " Ruskin, in 
 a style brilliant as fire, preached against the " wheels " 
 of progress for forty years. Morris begins the pro- 
 logue to the " Earthly Paradise " with the words : 
 
 Forget six counties overhung with smoke, 
 Forget the snorting steam and piston stroke, 
 Forget the spreading of the hideous town. 
 
 In one of his art lectures he speaks of machines that 
 " have been so used that they have driven all men 
 into mere frantic haste and hurry, thereby destroying 
 pleasure, that is life, on all hands ; they have, instead 
 of lightening the labor of the workmen, intensified it, 
 and thereby added more weariness yet to the burden
 
 MAN AND SOCIETY VERSUS MACHINERY 17 1 
 
 which the poor have to carry." Nor is it alone the 
 poet and seer who see the ugly side of all this cunning 
 artifice. I once asked an engineer to whom great 
 honor has been given, why so many men of high 
 intelligence felt this disapproval. He replied : " Their 
 instinct is as right about it, as the suspicion of the 
 workman. I have grown up with machinery, have 
 watched its effect for years in shops of every descrip- 
 tion. I say Zola's phrase, ' La Bete Humaine,' is 
 an exact description. The great machine is a beast 
 and claims its victims as constantly as any monster 
 in the old fables." He had no illusions about " throw- 
 ing more men out than are set to work." His cen- 
 sure was because so much of this power has to be 
 worked in places and under conditions that slowly 
 dehumanize a great multitude of men, women, and 
 youth. 
 
 President Hadley, in a chapter on Machinery ad- 
 mirable for discrimination, admits that, " The charge 
 that the factory system tends to deprive the laborer 
 of independence, and reduce him to the position of a 
 machine, is not so easily set aside. The substitution 
 of mechanical for intelligent labor is often a very 
 serious evil in modern manufacturing, . . . large 
 classes of men who were most useful citizens in the 
 past are being driven out of existence by the stress 
 of modern competition." 
 
 John Stuart Mill was as severe in his upbraiding 
 as the poets when he expressed the conviction that 
 machinery has not even lightened the toil of the race. 
 The sewing-machine does twenty times the work of 
 the unaided needlewoman. As a consequence, cloaks, 
 with more than one hundred thousand stitches, are
 
 1/2 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 now made. Here is no lessening of toil, but only 
 heavy accumulation of useless and stuffy ornament. 
 At this point many of the artists cry out against 
 machinery. They insist that although it gives us 
 mountainous piles of objects ; gives us infinite quantity 
 of things, it deprives us of beauty and delicacy. The 
 nobler object of life is certainly not first quantity, 
 but quality. Quantity as such does not necessa- 
 rily represent any good whatsoever. The newspaper 
 is called the educator of the democracy. It is an 
 educator in a good sense to the extent that it has ex- 
 cellence of quality. But presses in a single office 
 may turn out half a million of yellow journals in a 
 day. They make a Sunday edition of thirty-two 
 pages, some of it good, some of it rubbish, and a part 
 merely despicable. 
 
 The opinions just quoted are a challenge to the 
 frisky optimism of this machine age. The engineer 
 spoke from experience, Mill from a singularly cool 
 judgment. Morris, printer, designer, weaver, dyer, 
 working half his life as a practical craftsman, yet like 
 his master, Ruskin, never lost his hatred of most ma- 
 chinery as now used. Even if these critics do not 
 exaggerate the evil side of machine influence, it is 
 evident from the extracts given that they ignore the 
 immense service of the thing they blame. 
 
 Mechanical invention represents in point of magni- 
 tude the all-dominating force of our time. It would 
 leave no human experience uncontradicted if an 
 energy so stupendous did not, like the whole world 
 of force, have its pain and shadow side. 
 
 James Nasmith, in his Autobiography, after rejoic- 
 ing in the triumph of his Bridgewater foundry,
 
 MAN AND SOCIETY VERSUS MACHINERY 173 
 
 increasing the skilled workmen and raising their 
 wages, adds, that habits of steady application among 
 large numbers of men showed a tendency to lessen 
 as the machinery grew more perfect. This is the 
 spirit of a fairer attempt to balance evenly the gain 
 and loss. 
 
 Since Emerson's imprecation, we have learned to 
 connect some unexpected virtues with machinery. It 
 has become so interwoven with our entire social being 
 that it reflects our common character. If machinery 
 symbolizes greed, it also symbolizes many forms of 
 improved conduct and activity. 
 
 The requirements, especially of the great public 
 machinery like the railroad, make for better manners 
 as well as for temperance, promptness, and accuracy. 
 What railroad could to-day hold its own in competi- 
 tion, if it tolerated the brusque and boorish ways 
 common among its employees less than a generation 
 ago ? Whatever lack of civility remains, the change 
 on many lines has been prodigious. The neat uniform 
 that has replaced the slouchy and indistinguishable 
 dress, is a change no more marked than the deport- 
 ment toward passengers. The superintendent of the 
 Chicago Telephone Company told me : " Politeness, 
 of course, we will have, but we demand much more. 
 If we can't bring a girl to talk in pleasant tones, we 
 don't keep her. Neither is extreme discourtesy tol- 
 erated from those who hire our telephones. We take 
 them out of a man's house or office if he talks 
 brutally or coarsely to our employees." 
 
 The electric street car is now a part of the great 
 machinery. As the new improvements have come, a 
 far higher grade of men is employed upon it. Upon
 
 1/4 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 the old New York horse cars, a large proportion of 
 the drivers and conductors were so inferior in general 
 appearance, dress, and behavior that one seemed to 
 be in the presence of tramps. The slovenly and 
 lumbering car is disappearing before a clean and 
 luxurious vehicle. Yet this spacious carriage is not 
 more of an advance over the clumsy thing it dis- 
 places, than the men who serve it are superior in 
 grade to their predecessors. 
 
 It is the nature of the machine to test and to select 
 the sort of capacity fitted to operate it. That it 
 should require, where it touches the public, greater 
 sobriety and a more courteous bearing, is in part a 
 tribute to mechanism. The telephone so impinges 
 upon the public nerves that a pleasant voice adds 
 to its value. When the telephone is at last in every 
 home, and every operator is taught a proper intona- 
 tion, pleasant voice tones will become a commercial 
 asset. This invention will then be found to work as 
 effectively against the bad voice, which all foreigners 
 note, as the railroad is now working for temperance. 
 
 That the service of invention has not been confined 
 to material profit is seen in the aid rendered to our 
 political development. In 1800, few of the wiser 
 men believed that the country, as we know it, could 
 be held together. Whatever other causes have 
 contributed, the machinery of steam transportation 
 and the telegraph have perhaps alone been power- 
 ful enough to prevent disunion. The great property 
 interests have been both distributed and united, as 
 families have been scattered and yet bound together. 
 So, too, specific problems of dense city populations 
 are likely to have more help in their solving from
 
 MAN AND SOCIETY VERSUS MACHINERY 175 
 
 electric and railroad facilities than from any other 
 source. 
 
 Our concern with machinery is here, however, rather 
 with the problems raised by labor and socialistic agi- 
 tation. As this, in the view of the writer, is the most 
 fundamental of the purely practical issues, it will be 
 considered at length. 
 
 That which glares at us on the surface is the 
 machine's capacity to multiply the product which 
 makes our wealth. This is kept to the front by all 
 who sing the praises of invention. Industrial history 
 nowhere furnishes so many brilliant illustrations as 
 this story of mechanical achievement adding to the 
 creature comforts. Where there was no tool or only 
 primitive ones, the race lived from hand to mouth, 
 and not even that continuously. Where machinery 
 is highly developed, wealth increases far more rapidly 
 than population. Even if its distribution is unfair, 
 the higher wages and fewer hours that follow are 
 traceable, first of all to the swelling product of the 
 machine. Many printers upon one of our great 
 papers receive six and seven dollars a day. If the 
 printing tools of a half century ago were still in use, 
 the wages would not be half this sum. With the old 
 tools they could not make that quantity of papers 
 which attracts the advertiser. The machine alone 
 makes possible the hundred thousand edition with 
 its world of readers. It is to reach these that the 
 advertiser so roundly pays. Here is the source that 
 makes the high wage a possibility. 
 
 A well-known conductor on one of our great roads, 
 who has lived thirty-three years of his life on moving 
 trains, tells me that the comfort of the trainmen has
 
 1/6 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 increased with all the most important mechanical im- 
 provements. " Every five years I can see the condi- 
 tions of work are a little easier, and I think safer. 
 When I began as a brakeman, the life was cruelly 
 hard, but now automatic devices do the heaviest 
 work. It is so much easier that about the only dif- 
 ference that I see between the brakeman and the 
 passenger is that the brakeman doesn't have to pay 
 for his ride." These improvements may be noted 
 on every decent railroad in the United States. This 
 improvement is quite as much moral as it is material. 
 The conductor was telling the story of a score of 
 roads when he added : " We used to have few men on 
 the road who did not drink to excess. They visited 
 saloons freely at the station during working hours, 
 and half of them carried whiskey openly in the train. 
 All that has been changed so entirely, that I do not 
 know a more temperate set of men than trainmen. 
 We simply can't keep our places and have it known 
 that we drink in working hours, or drink too much 
 off time. The risk is too great to allow a man in the 
 business who has any intemperate tendency." The 
 value of this evidence is great because it answers 
 conclusively one of the oldest arguments against 
 machinery, that it necessarily lowers the quality of 
 the man. As a generalized statement this is now seen 
 to be false. 
 
 * 
 
 The economic section of the committee of fifty 
 found this so true that it could substantiate Carroll 
 D. Wright's previous judgment, "The greatest single 
 influence in the United States, making for temperance, 
 is the railroad." 
 
 The cheapness and abundance of grain foods is
 
 MAN AND SOCIETY VERSUS MACHINERY 177 
 
 explained when the story of machinery has been 
 told. Mr. Holmes of the Agricultural Department 
 has traced the history of the plough. One wonders 
 at the existence of any type of mind that would not 
 be fascinated in John Deere's works at Moline, 
 Illinois, where these marvels of human invention are 
 produced. Could Ruskin have been patient to watch 
 these processes, and still be satisfied to load the result 
 with abuse ? They are as strictly triumphs of imagi- 
 nation as any most brilliant page that he ever wrote. 
 
 The steam-gang plough, combined with a seeder and 
 a harrow, has reduced the time required for human 
 labor (in ploughing, sowing, and harrowing) to produce 
 a bushel of wheat, on an average, from 32.8 minutes 
 in 1830 to 2.2 minutes at the present time. It has 
 reduced the time of animal labor per bushel from 
 57 to ij minutes; at the same time it has reduced 
 the cost of human and animal labor in ploughing, 
 seeding, and harrowing per bushel of wheat from 
 4 cents to i cent. 
 
 As a boy I watched men shelling corn by hand 
 across the edge of a shovel, or grinding one ear 
 against another. One may now see a machine that 
 shells a bushel every minute, besides packing it into 
 a sack ready for delivery. This means abundance 
 and cheapness. 
 
 Before Whitney's invention it required the work of 
 one person ten hours to take the seeds from one and 
 a half pounds of cotton. The machine will now do, 
 in the same ten hours, more than four thousand times 
 as much. That ten million bales can be marketed in 
 a season, and that cloth is so cheap, is no longer a 
 wonder.
 
 i;8 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 A linen sheet that once cost thirty days' labor can 
 now be made in seven hours. A steam shovel will 
 do in eight minutes what one man can do with diffi- 
 culty in ten hours. The dirt may be unloaded from 
 a train of cars in six minutes, that would require, with 
 the shovel, a day's work of ten men. A stone-crusher 
 will perform the work of six hundred men. Few 
 material blessings bring more comfort to every class 
 in the community than good roads. To none is the 
 advantage greater than to large sections of the rela- 
 tively poor, as in country districts. Yet the rapid 
 growth of these highways is almost exclusively the 
 result of the machine. I choose this more striking 
 form of invention because it is largely against such 
 that labor has raised its most angry protest. 
 
 To comfortable people generally this cry of the 
 workman against machinery is a plain imbecility. 
 " Does he know his interest so little as to object to a 
 labor-saving contrivance ? Does it not heap up the 
 product out of which his wages and well-being come ? 
 There is of course great inconvenience now and then 
 to the individual, but it is merely incidental. You 
 laborers must trust to the ' long run.' The machinery 
 that throws you out, or cuts your wages, makes more 
 work here or elsewhere. The thing it makes falls in 
 price, which is but another way of raising your wages." 
 It was thought that labor should be docile after this 
 explanation of the distant and ultimate good which 
 machinery brings. But the race of hand-to-mouth 
 workmen that would be satisfied with such advice 
 is, happily, not yet born. Only a rare few, even 
 among business men, act upon the " long run " 
 motive. The average employer is concerned with
 
 MAN AND SOCIETY VERSUS MACHINERY 179 
 
 the profits of the next six months, i.e. with " the short 
 run." The uncertainties about tariff changes, about 
 the permanence of good times, and, above all, about 
 the pressure of competition, often make this the only 
 practicable course to follow. The trade unions are 
 only copying the employers when they reply : " We 
 cannot postpone our share until years of time bring, 
 if they do bring, cheaper products. The employer 
 may be able aided by patent laws to keep all the 
 good to himself for years. We have a right to every 
 good that organization can give us at the time." 
 
 Better than all outside advisers, labor has known 
 the dangers which threatened it. It has watched the 
 troop of women and children pouring in as competi- 
 tors among the men. It saw that these were taken 
 solely because they would work for less. In this 
 country labor soon learned that machine industries 
 demand a " reserve army." Then, if business 
 presses, workmen are at hand ; when it slackens, they 
 can be turned off. 
 
 Where machinery has brought high and quick prof- 
 its, it has put a premium upon every form of cheaper 
 labor, woman, child, and immigrant. This it is which 
 has introduced among the laborers a competition as 
 merciless as any that employing capitalists bewail 
 among themselves. To press the " long run " view 
 upon the laborer, under these conditions, is to assume 
 an innocence that he did not possess even two gener- 
 ations ago. Labor's relation to machinery has been 
 darkened by dangerous economic illusions, yet the 
 tenacious instinct that the implements of toil should 
 be far more under his own control was sound from 
 the beginning. It is in this rooted faith that one
 
 ISO THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 sees far off the hope of a genuinely democratic 
 society. When separate tools were joined and fitted 
 into more elaborate instruments, they slipped from 
 labor ownership because labor was weak from igno- 
 rance and poverty. It was in no way fitted for such 
 proprietorship. The modern social question has largely 
 risen out of the conflict between capitalistic ownership 
 and the workman's sense of lost mastery. In the earlier 
 stages, when inventions multiplied so rapidly, the la- 
 borer struck at them savagely, as at an enemy. He 
 saw his fellows constantly dropped, and customary 
 wage payment upset and readjusted. In his igno- 
 rance it appeared to him that his very hold upon 
 life was lost. 
 
 From the larger social point of view it is very 
 simple to show the error into which the workman fell. 1 
 
 If machinery were upon the whole robbing him of 
 work, then a relatively smaller part of our population 
 must, decade by decade, be occupied with machinery. 
 Every investigator knows that the exact opposite 
 of this is true. There is no decade since 1850, in 
 which it cannot be shown that machinery has set a 
 larger and larger proportion of people to work. The 
 proportion of those earning a livelihood directly by 
 the help of machinery was never so great as at the 
 present moment. 
 
 1 The dire conflicts in the cities of Midland England, in the first half 
 of the nineteenth century, have had, even by the novelists, most dramatic 
 recital. Boston trade unions had this subject under frequent discussion 
 about 1830. Five years later a New York publicist wrote, " It is well 
 known that many of the most violent and lawless proceedings have 
 been excited for the purpose of destroying newly invented machinery." 
 Albany printers struck against a machine to print Bibles, although the 
 book could thus be delivered " folded" for four cents a copy.
 
 MAN AND SOCIETY VERSUS MACHINERY l8l 
 
 It is seen that hundreds are thrust aside, it is less 
 easily seen that masses are set to work. One has 
 only to analyze the indirect services which invention 
 creates to admit the force of this. Upon the old 
 handloom one could weave forty yards of shirting in 
 the week. To-day the weaver may produce in a 
 week sixteen hundred yards, or forty times as much. 
 If the making and delivery of the raw material and 
 the distribution of the finished product, forty times as 
 great be taken into account, no one will doubt that 
 the machine stimulates more activity than it displaces. 
 
 Printing machinery has been especially selected as 
 illustrating the displacement of labor. Yet it can be 
 proved to a certainty that far more men and women 
 are occupied in this industry than ever before. The 
 inventions have so cheapened processes as to make 
 possible innumerable products like the Munsey and 
 McClure magazines, in the making and distributing 
 of which a new army of persons has been set to work. 1 
 
 The Hoe press prints, folds, cuts, and pastes 
 seventy-two thousand eight-page journals in a single 
 hour. To gather the material, make and deliver the 
 raw paper, finally to distribute the printed sheets 
 daily in twenty states, must bring occupation to many 
 more than the machine dislodged. 
 
 1 I once listened to a discussion of this subject before a trade-union 
 gathering in which three printers began by maintaining that invention 
 was doing each year a larger part of the work and men a lessened 
 part. When a clear statement had been made of the numbers set to 
 work by more than twenty new periodicals, paper-making, machine- 
 making, distributing, and even printing, it was finally conceded by all 
 that the results of the new instruments had made occupation for many 
 more men than had been displaced. The concrete effects of a single 
 machine before the eyes had alone been taken into account.
 
 1 82 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 Invention has created hundreds of new industries. 
 The railroad alone employs more than a million. 
 The telegraph, telephone, bicycle, illustrate new voca- 
 tions made outright for millions of workers. The 
 railroad displaced the coach, but the express business, 
 affiliated with the railroad, has set to work many 
 men where the old coach employed one. The tele- 
 graph and telephone have made work for many times 
 more than can ever have been displaced. The mo- 
 ment that the indirect services which invention pro- 
 duces are estimated, the case appears stronger still. 
 
 These showy achievements have been thought to 
 be the final and crushing answer to labor's complaint. 
 The answer is not final. The workman has learned 
 the indirect, long-run advantage of much machinery, 
 but he is incontestably right in striving, with his full 
 associated strength, to get all possible immediate 
 advantages from the invention ; to lessen individual 
 and short-run evils. This half-blind instinct of labor 
 is at one with what we are all slowly learning ; namely, 
 that they who own much of the great mechanism, es- 
 pecially if it rest on a natural monopoly may get and 
 long keep to their excessive fattening, privileges and 
 resources that should be far more open to the general 
 enrichment. If we add political control to this private 
 control of machinery and natural opportunity, we have 
 that against which the whole storm of social discon- 
 tent will beat in the next generation. Labor's rela- 
 tion to some specific forms of industrial machinery, 
 as now owned and guarded, is precisely that of our 
 own wider relation to certain monopolized privileges. 
 
 The philosophic advisers of the workingman have 
 rarely been fair to him in this frantic contest with
 
 MAN AND SOCIETY VERSUS MACHINERY 183 
 
 the new inventions. There was from the beginning 
 a heart of truth even in his wildest errors. It is often 
 the very nature of a successful new machine to dis- 
 turb the normal local wage in such way as to make it 
 seem an enemy to those affected by it. I can illus- 
 trate this by an experience once given me by one of 
 the most influential socialists in this country. " I 
 was trained in an English machine-shop, coming to 
 the States for better chances here offered. My 
 wages finally reached $4 a day, when a new invention 
 cut me down to $2.50. I again reached $3.50, when 
 another contrivance cut me to $3. I got a little above 
 this, only a third time to be docked to $2.50. When 
 I became convinced that with the best effort I could 
 make there was no chance to get beyond a certain 
 line, I quit trying, and have since done all I could to 
 further the cause of socialism among my fellows." 
 There are, of course, many varieties of machine work 
 in which this experience is untrue. There are proba- 
 bly more in which it accurately describes what is con- 
 tinually occurring. 
 
 It frequently happens that a foreman's personal 
 advancement depends upon the good showing he can 
 make to the employer in his own department. To 
 do this, he is often able to use new inventions (as in 
 the above case) to keep wages low among as many of 
 his men as he can force or induce to accept the situ- 
 ation. Special skill may at the same time be consid- 
 erably advanced, while others with only average 
 ability, but with some sort of disposition or qualities 
 that require prudent handling, may still receive the 
 old wage. I have heard these processes described 
 with no concealment by several foremen. In Pitts-
 
 1 84 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 burg one told me : " I must keep as many men down 
 as I can keep down (in their wages), or my report to 
 the boss would be against me. If I didn't do it, he 
 would find plenty of men who would." 
 
 It is in these almost infinitely varying details of the 
 actual workshop that one learns the limitations to all 
 buoyant generalizations about machinery. Let us 
 look at another very common case. 
 
 In an Illinois foundry I heard it said with some 
 indignation, " Talk about healthy men ; look at them 
 for yourself; there isn't a man who suffers from it." 
 The work was ten hours for six days in the week. It 
 was thought absurd that the men should want a 
 Saturday half-holiday. Here were several hundred 
 men living amidst hideous surroundings. Thirty 
 saloons were within ten minutes' walk. They were 
 the natural recreation places for the larger part of the 
 men when their work was done. It was the opinion 
 of a foreman that those who did not habitually go to 
 them and spend a larger part of their wages were in 
 the minority. " Most of us go, of course," said one ; 
 " what else is there to do ? The free lunch will give 
 us food and whiskey, too, for ten cents." I went 
 into one of the most popular saloons. It was filled 
 with these men between nine and ten o'clock. They 
 were reading the Police Gazette, playing cards and 
 pool, and throwing dice for drinks. If one could 
 have looked upon the entire picture, others would have 
 been seen, some at their homes, some at the library 
 a mile away, but these were the few against the many. 
 It would be as silly to blame these men, as to call the 
 employer hard names. The nature of the business, 
 the sharp rivalry of competing firms, left small margin
 
 MAN AND SOCIETY VERSUS MACHINERY 185 
 
 for philanthropies. If work must be carried on under 
 those conditions so strenuously and with so little 
 relief, society must pay the price. " My machinery 
 is such," said the employer, " that it must be run fast 
 and continuously, or I should shut down and turn 
 them all off. It is not a pleasant place, but I am 
 forced to be close to the river and close to the freight 
 depots." This is a fair description of thousands of 
 mills and shops. The machine, in the large sense in 
 which the word must be used, including the railroad, 
 shipping lines, etc., seems too often to compel the se- 
 lection of working places that are beset by every un- 
 wholesome influence that can play upon the laborer's 
 life. Too often his family must be reared hard by, in 
 surroundings as loathsome as many of those, for 
 instance, that disgrace the neighborhood of the great 
 Chicago packing houses. 
 
 As long as the machinery practically requires so 
 beggarly and mean a setting as this, we cannot con- 
 sider the environment as an unrelated part of the 
 evil. Modern machine industry has gathered the 
 workers into towns and cities, or grouped them in 
 masses in mines and factories. It has set them to 
 work upon a mechanism so complicated that its 
 effects can only be truly imaged, when we think 
 of the railroad, telegraph, telephone, steamship, 
 power loom, and all other seemingly isolated ma- 
 chines, locked together into one stupendous enginery. 
 About this, in it, and through it the swarming mill- 
 ions are at work. The tides of commerce play upon 
 it sluggishly for a time, leaving a third or a fourth 
 of the attendants in chronic idleness, then, every belt 
 and axle are hot to meet the clamor for all the
 
 1 86 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 products that can be thrown upon the market. The 
 army of operatives has to do the bidding of this 
 monster feeder of human wants. 
 
 All that portion of machinery that is of necessity 
 overdriven and placed in extremes of dampness, heat, 
 or dust, as it often is, is not an unmixed blessing. I 
 asked an engineer on an ocean steamship about the 
 life of the stokers working in an atmosphere of one 
 hundred and ten degrees Fahrenheit. He said, " Oh, 
 it makes beasts of them, but we can't help it." 
 Whenever machinery cannot be used except in con- 
 ditions that brutalize life, we call it an evil, even if a 
 necessary one. If the speed is so great that the 
 average man or woman cannot stand the strain be- 
 yond a half of one's natural life, it is an evil, and 
 an evil far beyond its effect on the individual, for 
 it strikes at parenthood, producing a devitalized off- 
 spring that constitutes the chief horror of many in- 
 dustrial centres. 
 
 With the manager of one of the great iron indus- 
 tries in Pennsylvania, I watched several hundred men 
 working a full eleven-hour day in a deafening noise 
 and in an atmosphere murky with dust. A portion 
 of the work, which continued unremitting through the 
 twenty-four hours, was done by " double shift." This 
 required a twelve-hour day. The speed throughout 
 was as high as the men could be induced to take. 
 Unprompted, the manager said : " It is a pity that 
 men have to work like this, but there is no help for it. 
 The machinery drives us at a gallop as well as the 
 men. To clean the place up decently and run it eight 
 hours, would shut it up in a week. Our worst com- 
 petitor, in , drives harder than we do, and gets
 
 MAN AND SOCIETY VEKSUS MACHINERY 187 
 
 more out of his men." I asked about the wages. 
 "The men with skill are well paid, $2.50 upwards 
 to $3.00, and even $4.00, but the mass of unskilled 
 get perhaps $1.50, just enough to exist. If they have 
 families, I don't see how they manage it." Let it be 
 admitted that machinery is, in general, a blessing ; but 
 what sort of a blessing does it bring to such as these ? 
 It is better than starvation, but what rational end of 
 life can be attained with eleven or twelve hours' daily 
 toil in these surroundings ? The manager made it clear 
 why nothing better could be done. "The boom has 
 come, and while it lasts our success depends upon 
 driving as if life was at stake." This description is 
 accurate, " While the boom is on, our success de- 
 pends upon driving as if life was at stake." 
 
 To such straits have these organized forces brought 
 us: first a hot race with competing rivals, then a 
 glutted market ; first the boom, then the depression ; 
 first long and crowded hours, then lack of work and 
 men adrift. This sorry see-saw in the industrial 
 world is the puzzle of the economist and the despair 
 of the practical man. This network of great inven- 
 tions cannot be put down as the exclusive cause of 
 the evil, but that the evil is enhanced by this cause 
 is certain. This means that we are half enslaved by 
 a great deal of our own mechanism. It means that 
 we honestly care more for the machine's output in 
 wealth, than we care for manhood, womanhood, and 
 wholesome family life. It means that we do not first 
 and profoundly care for citizenship and a reputable 
 society. If these workers can keep their animal 
 strength and tend the machine, is it not enough ? 
 The absolute requisitions of culture of any kind
 
 1 88 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 a minimum of unexhausted leisure, of real freshness 
 of body and mind would take at least two hours 
 off every working day. It affronts our intelligence 
 to say that the average man can do that kind of 
 work more than eight hours daily, and have left over 
 the leisure, the moral and intellectual surplus of 
 energy, for humanizing objects. The loss to good 
 citizenship, to social peace and safety, is an abiding 
 threat to social peace. If we were not the easy 
 victims of wont and usage, accepting the actual as 
 natural, we should one and all revolt against this 
 awful waste of human values. That the future will 
 class it as a form of slavery, seems to me assured. 
 
 A very large proportion of capitalistic investment 
 is now embodied in machinery of the most delicate 
 and costly character. When the complex enginery 
 is once started, it has to be " tended " precisely as 
 if it were the most frail human life or plant. It 
 is as safe to shut up and desert a hothouse of dainty 
 flowers, as to close up and desert modern machinery. 
 Every hostile element attacks it as if bent on instant 
 destruction. To prevent this devastation, mills are 
 often run at great loss, when trade is dull, thus piling 
 up the product of an overstocked market. 
 
 Another type of evil in the Western rural districts 
 that cannot be dissociated from machinery is de- 
 scribed in the following words by a competent local 
 observer : 
 
 "The influence of large farms on country life is 
 unquestionably deplorable. The summer population 
 of the big wheat farm is composed mainly of a drift- 
 ing class of laborers with no attachment to the soil 
 and with no interest in their work beyond getting
 
 MAN AND SOCIETY VERSUS MACHINERY 189 
 
 their pay. In the winter they go to the pineries or 
 hang about the cities looking for odd jobs. The 
 winter population of the farm is reduced to a few 
 men who take care of the stock, and perhaps one 
 of the foremen who has a family. Usually the 
 manager and his family go to some town to pass 
 the dead season." 
 
 The Hon. C. A. Ficke of Iowa, speaking of ordi- 
 nary farms, tells me : " From an acquaintance with 
 every county in the state, I should say that the 
 drifting character of this hired farm help is an al- 
 most unqualified evil. Many of our farmers carry on 
 their work by the help of machinery in such way 
 that they can dispense with the ' hands ' except for 
 a few weeks in the year. These men are well paid 
 during this time, then they scatter in search of desul- 
 tory jobs, many of them seeking the large towns and 
 cities, where the uncertain nature of their employ- 
 ment ruins hundreds of them. Thousands of farmers 
 in these parts will not hire a man accompanied by 
 his family. The results of this are equally bad." 
 
 In all this the employer is often as much a victim 
 as the employed. His mill, too, is but a cog in a 
 vaster mechanism. It turns now swiftly, now lazily, 
 according to the throb of the great markets which 
 are its life. The individual employer takes the 
 breathless pace, because it is the pace of the army in 
 which he marches. It is partly because he is swept 
 on by forces greater than himself, that he must snatch 
 so eagerly at the little power within his grasp. The 
 inventions under his own hand, he can in some degree 
 appropriate as absolute property. " Trade secrets," 
 royalties, and patents he can secure for a little space.
 
 190 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 In this scramble a new machine appears upon the 
 scene. If the employer can put it in, on his own 
 conditions, no questions asked, he may, if hard 
 pressed by a competitor, drive a very sharp bargain 
 with his workmen. Now he drops men, now he 
 introduces girls and boys, now he cuts wages. In 
 this moment of possible difference between the felt 
 interests of employer and workmen over the intro- 
 ducing of a new invention, a large part of the social- 
 ist problem springs into existence. The test question 
 often arises, who shall have the new increment of 
 gain which the machine brings ? Shall the employer 
 have all the good of it because the invention is his ? 
 Again and again I have heard it asserted, " I have 
 bought it, and all the advantage that comes with it is 
 my own." It is doubtful if this claim would be chal- 
 lenged, if in introducing the machine no disturbance 
 to labor were caused, but the more perfect the inven- 
 tion, the more likely is it to derange the labor group 
 that used the discarded machine. The new machine 
 is usually the death of the old one which it replaces. 
 The attempt of the union to divide the advantage of 
 the new invention with the employer has been the 
 heart of an immemorial strife. When ignorance 
 gives place to enlightenment, the union will not 
 " oppose machinery." This the intelligent ones have 
 long since learned. Neither will they yield the 
 pivotal point of doing all in their power to secure as 
 much immediate benefit as the organization can effect. 
 
 This point is so vital that it should have ample 
 illustration. An improved invention is perfected and 
 brought to the mill or factory for introduction. The 
 employer, especially if he is plagued by unionism,
 
 MAN AND SOCIETY VERSUS MACHINERY 191 
 
 uses extreme caution in putting the new device to 
 work. In countless cases, he first selects the most 
 alert and vigorous among his workers and practises 
 them, to see how fast the new invention can be 
 run, and how large a product it can be made to 
 turn out. When the best it can do is discovered, the 
 employer tries to make the result the standard for all 
 the other workers. If he can do this unchecked, he 
 may secure all the immediate advantages, and leave 
 the inconveniences to the workers. From the very 
 beginning of the machine era, the trade union has 
 had to struggle against this tendency to force the 
 pace of the average workman, by the tested skill of 
 the most vigorous. I have seen in a New England 
 factory a machine working with such rapidity as 
 to excite wonder that any one could be induced to 
 follow it nine hours a day. Upon inquiry, the fore- 
 man told me how it had been managed. " This in- 
 vention," he said, " is hardly six months old ; we saw 
 that it would do so much more work that we had to 
 be very careful in introducing it. We picked the 
 man you see on it, because he is one of our fastest. 
 We found out just what it could do before we put 
 it into the room. Now they will all see what it 
 can turn out when it is properly run." " Properly 
 run " meant to him run at its very highest speed. 
 This was the standard pressure to which all who 
 worked it must submit. I have known a manu- 
 facturer to leave a strong trade-union shoe town 
 and go to the country because " the trade union try 
 to slow up my machine. If I attempt to get all the 
 good out of it, they are bound to put a check on me 
 somehow."
 
 192 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 When the New England shoe laster was perfected 
 a few years since, it was seen by employer and em- 
 ployed that if put to general use it would strike an 
 almost final blow to the strong union of the lasters. 
 The company owning the invention had it first tested 
 in its own rooms and then offered to put it into the 
 manufactory, sending its own man to run it. The 
 union in Brockton instantly struck. I asked a local 
 manufacturer his opinion. He answered : " I think 
 the union entirely justified in this strike. If I were 
 one of them, I would be at the front of it." There 
 was doubtless complete legal justification in selling 
 (or buying) this machine together with the lasting 
 company's man to run it. Why, then, should this 
 employer acknowledge that the strike, which worried 
 him, was just ? It was because he was large enough 
 and fair enough to see that it was asking far too 
 much of an old and established labor organization, 
 to see this new invention applied under conditions 
 which involved, not only its immediate dissolution as 
 a union, but a rapid displacement of many members 
 from the shops. 
 
 If it is to be assumed that men can be treated 
 exactly as machines are treated, this union had no 
 ground for complaint when its fate was decided. 
 Its members had merely to say : " Shoes can now 
 be lasted automatically ; we are out of the game. 
 Let us drop our tools and learn a new trade." This 
 would have given the entire benefit of the invention 
 at once to its owners, to the manufacturer, and to the 
 consumers. To the labor organization it would be 
 said : " You must take the whole sacrifice, distressing 
 as it is. It is deplorable that, after years of service,
 
 MAN AND SOCIETY VEX S US MACHINERY 193 
 
 you have to look elsewhere for a livelihood; but 
 progress and the good of the greater number demand 
 it. However, shoes will eventually be somewhat 
 cheaper, and this compensation will be yours." If 
 the final and supreme end of the world's toil were 
 cheapness of product, the routed union and the dis- 
 placed laborers would have to take this counsel and 
 act upon it. They refuse to do this because they are 
 human beings with the rights which their humanity 
 implies. This is what the employer meant who 
 said the strike of the lasters' union was just. 
 He saw the human interests at stake and rightly 
 balanced them against certain business hindrances. 
 He thought it fairer and wiser in this instance to 
 sacrifice a part of the material benefit rather than the 
 human. 
 
 But no judgment as to the fairness or wisdom of 
 this employer's concession is quite possible until it is 
 explained what the union proposed to do. There is 
 a sense in which these men were " fighting the ma- 
 chine." They did not propose to stand out against 
 its introduction. They admitted that the machine 
 had come to stay. The struggle was not against the 
 machine, but wholly over the conditions of its use. 
 They asked that members of the union should be 
 chosen to run it. In other words, that the union 
 should then and there participate in the advantages 
 which the machine brought with it. The public 
 has been deceived as to the nature of the strife, 
 because the older unions did fight the machine as 
 machine. Now and then, new and ignorant unions 
 do this still. Often unions in the building trades 
 secure a local monopoly which they abuse to the
 
 194 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 point of absolutely preventing the use of some new 
 invention. 1 
 
 Grave as these exceptions are, they are exceptions, 
 and should not blind us to the main facts. Labor 
 organizations, as a whole, aim to get their share of 
 utility when the disturbing invention is applied. 
 They do not propose to abolish it, or even to hinder 
 it, if applied with due regard to labor interests. 
 
 I believe it to be simple justice to labor organiza- 
 tions to admit that the main purpose of their long 
 contention has been to free machinery from the abuses 
 of a too narrow capitalistic interest. It was of course 
 unavoidable that labor should work toward this great 
 end, through the earlier stages of unionism, ignorant 
 of its own goal. Its history and its literature are 
 nevertheless filled with proofs that its purpose, deep 
 and unalterable, has been to force machinery into its 
 proper place, where it should serve man rather than 
 enslave him. 
 
 It cannot be denied that weighty questions of in- 
 dustrial progress and of the rights of property are 
 raised by this attitude of the unions. Yet govern- 
 ments and municipalities without number have already 
 taken the trade-union ground, and many first-rate 
 business men act on the assumption that the union 
 contention (stripped of its abuses) is just. It is the 
 essence of this assumption that business management 
 should take on a more democratic character. Or to 
 
 1 The unions pay dearly for these rank abuses, since they go far to 
 justify the public in believing that labor organizations are merely mulish 
 in their opposition to industrial progress. The medieval attitude of 
 certain unions at the national capital in using their political influence 
 to retain clumsy and outworn devices has brought upon the cause of 
 labor much deserved contempt.
 
 MAN AND SOCIETY VERSUS MACHINERY 195 
 
 give the statement another form, the contest of organ- 
 ized labor takes for granted what is essential to the 
 spirit of partnership in the business. The strident 
 tones in which the harassed employer announces, 
 " This is my business, and I propose to have no dicta- 
 tion how it is to be carried on," is itself a sign that 
 the unions claim a sort of partnership, however absurd 
 it may be. On the other hand, the grim and tenacious 
 purpose of the unions, in time of strike, to beat back 
 scab labor, has the same implication of group rights 
 in the business. Such an assertion on the part of 
 labor is now thought to be monstrous. I wish there- 
 fore to give the testimony of the president of one of 
 the best-known corporations in the United States. 
 His opinions are submitted, because they have the 
 authority of a conspicuously successful business man- 
 agement, as well as that of a singularly conscientious 
 student. For years he has been as eager for the best 
 literature on the social question as any economic in- 
 structor. The trade unions are strong, and frankly 
 recognized by the management. In many consulta- 
 tions with this gentleman he has told me how he 
 came to think the old term " my business " less true 
 than the term "our business." "We are a body of 
 directors, stockholders, and workmen. These latter 
 we encourage to come to us, buy homes, and settle 
 permanently about us. In a very real sense there is 
 a kind of partnership, though of course in no legal 
 sense. The rights are not all with me or with the in- 
 vestors. I shall fight for the control, because that 
 is a necessity. Our men could make the product, 
 but they could not market it. The buying and sell- 
 ing is at present beyond their capacity. If I should
 
 196 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 give them the business, they would go down before 
 our rivals in a year. A century later, when the work- 
 men are properly educated, I should probably be the 
 hired manager." 
 
 When I pressed the question about the nature of 
 the partnership which he recognized, he replied, " It 
 is a partnership in the sense that I do not hold them 
 off at arm's length. They have a right ' to dictate ' 
 in many ways. When I put in a new machine, it 
 usually involves a change in the wage scale among a 
 portion of the men. We talk this over together and 
 see how the machine can be adjusted so as to do the 
 least possible injury to the group which is affected by 
 it. That is itself an acknowledgment that something 
 like a partnership exists among us. Some inventions 
 would enable me to break up the union. Most me- 
 chanical improvements of any importance involve 
 turning off men. It is my duty to talk all this over 
 with them and make them see it. It is also my duty, 
 when one set of relations is broken up by a new 
 machine, and wages and conditions changed, to do all 
 in my power to let them have just as much of the 
 advantage and as little of the harm as possible. I 
 have found thus far, that with proper sympathy from 
 my foreman, we can redistribute the workers in such 
 way as to keep the peace and make them feel that 
 they are fairly dealt with." 
 
 Here, obviously, is the temper and the method that 
 would save forthwith half the strikes in the United 
 States. I should like to hang beside this another 
 picture. It is that of an industry larger and not less 
 successful than the other. 
 
 Nowhere more than in this business does machinery
 
 MAN AND SOCIETY VERSUS MACHINERY 197 
 
 play a greater part. Nowhere does one invention 
 follow another with more startling rapidity. As a 
 consequence, nowhere can one better mark the splen- 
 did achievements in augmenting the mass of products 
 and in lowering their price to the user. It was in part 
 this visible plethora of ever swelling profits that roused 
 discontent among the more intelligent and better paid 
 workmen. The strike that followed was ridiculed be- 
 cause started by the " labor aristocrats." After the 
 conflict had subsided, I heard the story on the spot 
 from several of the men who had suffered from it. 
 There were many regrets that it was unwisely begun 
 and unworthily handled. " The pay," said one, " was 
 good, and you could trust what they told you." 
 
 " Why, then, was the strike ? " From the most 
 thoughtful man among them I got this answer. " I 
 think now the strike was stupid, but I shall always 
 think there was cause of just complaint on our part. 
 We had sacrificed much to build up a strong labor 
 organization, but we were as helpless as any belt upon 
 the great wheels. Except the pick of the men, we 
 were liable to be dropped any moment without a word 
 of explanation. New contrivances are being put in so 
 fast, wages altered, and men turned off exactly as if 
 no union existed. I have seen, in a single section 
 of my union, one man in nine thrown out, exactly as 
 if they were screws and didn't fit. We are not fools 
 enough to object to the new inventions they put in, 
 but they have no business to put them in without the 
 slightest regard to us as human beings. They have 
 absolute control of the machinery and of every bit of 
 the new wealth which the inventions make for them. 
 Millions go into their pockets because they have the
 
 198 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 power to take it. The ordinary unskilled working, 
 does not get enough to make it safe to raise a family. 
 A dozen men have palaces' and money to burn, while 
 two-thirds of those they employ will not, if they are 
 wise, try to buy the most modest home. They must 
 live in cheap tenements, in order to be free to move at 
 a moment's notice. Hundreds of men, who have made 
 part payment on a house, have lived to regret it." 
 
 With the foremost active manager in this business 
 I talked over this complaint about machinery. " But 
 the inventions," he said, "belong to us. The chief 
 nuisance of a trade union is, that they want to haggle 
 and delay over every bit of old iron we throw out. It 
 is one great advantage we have over the foreigner, that 
 we can put in the invention instantly, and not fool with 
 a trade-union committee." Here again the heart of 
 the struggle is laid bare. " To fool with a trade-union 
 committee " meant to talk over the conditions of 
 readjustment brought about by the new appliance. 
 It was to acknowledge that the union had some right 
 to discuss the changes which concerned its very life 
 as an organization. The aims of the union seem 
 often to have nothing whatever to do with machinery, 
 as in its contention for an eight-hour day, yet 
 behind all is the one great purpose, to get the largest 
 possible share of the product which labor creates. 
 
 Now if mechanical invention is in the unrestricted 
 possession of the employer, labor feels itself baffled 
 in striving for all the wealth it creates, or believes it 
 creates. The constant putting in of new machines, 
 with every immediate utility passing to the owner, 
 seems to leave the laborer on the hopeless margin of 
 wage dependence.
 
 MAN AND SOCIETY VERSUS MACHINERY 199 
 
 In the last business referred to, the masterful 
 director held that this dependence was justified. All 
 thought of a partnership in any sense was scouted. 
 In the instance first given the president held, on the 
 contrary, that labor was defrauded unless it were 
 frankly admitted to discuss the changes that always 
 follow successful and disturbing inventions. It is 
 possible that the uncompromising method of absolute 
 ownership, and not less absolute dependence, will pre- 
 vail, while the conception of a partnership will fail. 
 The formula, " This is my business," may prove vic- 
 torious in the struggle, while the fraternal, " Our 
 business," vanishes with that great company of ami- 
 able follies in which mammon worship has not been 
 the sole object. 
 
 If it prove true that we have too little good will and 
 intelligence to organize industrial affairs more and 
 more along the lines of "our business," the outlook 
 is not cheerful. It would mean, to a certainty, that 
 every turgid agitation which justifies a miserable dis- 
 content is fastened upon us for an unknown and 
 ominous future. It would mean a gloomy succession 
 of strikes, dragging in their train those fatal excesses 
 with which local authorities cannot cope. It would 
 mean a danger darker still in democratic society : the 
 soldier equipped with weapons of death led out 
 against a mass of his fellow-citizens. 
 
 II 
 
 Only the nature of the machine problem is pre- 
 sented in this and the previous chapter. The specific 
 solution which socialism offers will be considered 
 in the pages which are given to that subject. Mean-
 
 200 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 time, a more detailed illustration is necessary to 
 show that one of the most deadly results of machine 
 industry need not go without a remedy. 
 
 Economic phraseology is impotent to state the full 
 gravity of these misfortunes. Those that manage 
 the trade-union benefit fund, workers in the Associ- 
 ated Charities, and at College Settlements know what 
 it means for the family man to be thrust aside before 
 fifty. It is here among the weaker and older work- 
 ers that the completer measure of the ills can be 
 taken. It is a common answer that these ills may 
 be real, but that they are temporary. In the larger 
 curves of time, readjustments are made, and the indi- 
 vidual hurt is lost in the general good. I have tried 
 to show that this sleek optimism is misleading. The 
 "long run" is no more real than the "short run." 
 With only the " long run " in view, the most serious 
 charges against machinery are still unanswered. 
 These charges are concerned with the perpetual suc- 
 cession of " short run " and individual hardships, 
 whose gathered atoms constitute a very massive and 
 persistent fact. It is with this that the future of 
 voluntary association and social legislation will have 
 to do, in the attempt to modify the struggle for exist- 
 ence on the industrial field. 1 
 
 But first let us see in a given instance what these 
 short run phenomena are. I was allowed recently to 
 
 1 " The most conspicuous, if not the most serious distress connected 
 with hard times is found in those lines where there has been great 
 duplication of machinery; lines where the machines and the laborers 
 together are far more able to supply the popular demand for products 
 and devices at rates which will keep the workman and his family alive." 
 " The suffering from this source is terribly severe." President Ha<ttey t 
 " Political Economy," p. 344.
 
 MAN AND SOCIETY VERSUS MACHINERY 2OI 
 
 attend a sitting of heads of departments in one of the 
 larger industries of the United States. There was 
 one hour and fifty minutes of rapid and concise dis- 
 cussion upon the possible economies to be effected in 
 the different branches of the business. At least one- 
 fourth of the discussion turned upon the practica- 
 bility of discharging unnecessary labor. Every 
 superintendent was put under fire of general criticism. 
 He must show that he was producing the highest re- 
 sults with the least expenditure of means. "You," 
 said the chairman, " have thirteen men on such a job, 
 
 F suggests that ten men could do it as well, what 
 
 do you say ? " The superintendent appealed to made 
 his defence or admitted that two or three men could 
 be discharged. 
 
 These superintendents represented several thousand 
 workmen. The kindness and consideration on the 
 part of the employers were a model of good will. So 
 far as convenient, other positions were found for those 
 displaced, but no year passed in which " several hun- 
 dred " men were not dismissed. I asked an owner 
 active in the business what became of the discharged 
 men. He answered : " Of course we can know noth- 
 ing about that. Our affairs are too large to admit of 
 any considerable personal supervision. When a man 
 begins to look shaky, we have to let him go." If 
 large numbers of men are worked weekly six full 
 days of ten and eleven hours, if made " shaky " by 
 long and special service at minute processes, they are 
 replaced at forty or forty-five years of age by young 
 men ; there may be in all this a great cruelty to the 
 individual, and mischief to society. Let us look at 
 this last evil. Not alone the quickened speed of
 
 202 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 machinery, but its costlier and more delicate nature 
 calls for an operator with every nerve and muscle at 
 their best. The work upon much of the swiftest 
 machinery can be rapidly learned, so that youth is 
 naturally selected. An Eastern shoe manufacturer, 
 visiting Western shoe shops, told me that competition 
 with the East had so increased that he determined to 
 know the reasons. The chief thing that had struck 
 him was the general appearance of the workman as 
 he looked through the Western shops. " It often 
 seemed to me," he said, " as if I were in a high 
 school. The older hands are hard to keep with us, 
 but they have disappeared altogether out here." I 
 have a series of photographs representing large num- 
 bers working in hat, shoe, and garment industries. 
 The group effect is that of a boy's school with here and 
 there a man in middle life. I have heard a manufac- 
 turer of machines say that among the greatest changes 
 he had known in forty years of business was this elimi- 
 nation of men who showed the least sign of age. 
 Another employer told me : " It isn't so much that 
 we turn off men when we see the gray hair and spec- 
 tacles, but we don't any longer, as we used to, take 
 on men of forty. The fellow of eighteen or twenty, 
 even if pretty green, can be quickly taught, and then 
 he is good for twenty years. Where the older men 
 have special skill, or some quality that we want, they 
 are kept, but not the average men." It is these 
 average men in the forties and early fifties that are 
 thrown out by thousands each year in the great indus- 
 tries. Many take lighter routine work as watchmen 
 and gatekeepers. Many turn to odd jobs. Many are 
 supported by their children. In most of the older
 
 MAN AND SOCIETY VERSUS MACHINERY 203 
 
 businesses there is honest and kindly effort made by 
 the employer to find work about the premises. This 
 sense of responsibility is now seen to disappear en- 
 tirely in the case of certain trusts that have replaced 
 smaller corporations. A Boston man who sold an old 
 family business to the trust tells me, " I got a good 
 price, and was willing to stop, but I have one un- 
 pleasant regret, the kindly personal ties I always had 
 with my men and their families are simply wiped out 
 by the big organization." 
 
 The separation between the owners of fixed capital 
 and the laborer has long been noted ; but with vast 
 federated plants, managed by hired intermediaries, 
 it is unavoidable. There will be brave attempts to 
 meet the difficulty by alluring philanthropies, by 
 " doing something for the workingmen." If merely 
 philanthropic, these will fail as they deserve. Be- 
 nevolent schemes that bear the slightest taint of 
 charity have at last got the contempt of the intelli- 
 gent wage-earners. 
 
 Importunate and never again to be silenced, their 
 demand is that they get their benefits, not as gifts or 
 favors, but as recognized rights. Philanthropies are 
 a dangerous substitute for honest wage payment, 
 shorter working time, and increased influence over 
 the conditions of the labor contract. What may be 
 called the Great Bluff of our time is to put gratui- 
 ties and benefactions in the place of justice. There 
 is no donation, however gaudy, that can fill the place 
 of justice. The attempt of the ruling class to do 
 this is the oldest trick in history. It was the opin- 
 ion of a Roman emperor, " Magnificence in gifts 
 may deceive even the gods." The crowd could then
 
 2O4 THE SOOAL UNREST 
 
 be quieted by the brutalities of a pageant, the butch- 
 eries in the arena, by fleets of stolen grain scat- 
 tered among the people, as a Tammany heeler 
 scatters gifts and personal kindnesses before the elec- 
 tion. We are at least civilized so far that we demand 
 more decorum, and a certain humanizing of our lar- 
 gesses. They must bear the image of charity and 
 good-will to men. They must be educational, artis- 
 tic, and in all ways incentives to good morals and 
 religion. 
 
 Now it would be both untrue and offensive to deny 
 that these later bounties are vast improvements upon 
 the free circus of Caligula. No wise man would 
 check a generous instinct of any multi-millionnaire. 
 The books, pictures, churches, and schools take their 
 places among the welfare institutions of our time. 
 They are influences which deserve the honest and 
 grateful approval of the public. 
 
 Yet when this tribute to good motive and good 
 result has been paid, the story is not finished. We 
 are hoodwinked, unless we see that there ought to 
 be, and possibly may be, a still better way than this 
 to acquire individual and social morality. The sturdy 
 self-respect in any community that should build its own 
 church, school, library, dispensary, paying every 
 honest bill as it goes, would show an exhilarating 
 superiority before which every one of us would hasten 
 to pay respect. We must be grateful to our princely 
 givers, but the mistake would be fatal to accept this 
 method of splendid subsidies as a finality. What we 
 really want is the ability and the instructed will to 
 pay our own bills, even if the pace of our civilization 
 halts a little. I know a group of Flemish socialist
 
 MAN AND SOCIETY VERSUS MACHINERY 2O5 
 
 working men and women who slowly bought with 
 hard-earned money two thousand well-selected vol- 
 umes for their common library. Not ten in the 
 entire membership ever got $2 a day in wages. 
 What comparison is there between the educational 
 value of that sacrifice and the easy acceptance of a 
 building choked with gift books ? 
 
 The unspoiled instinct in the labor and socialist 
 movement is to do precisely this thing, to gain com- 
 petence and leisure, to win these luxuries for itself. 
 The flair of this instinct is unerring when it scents 
 danger in benefactions. In spite of noble exceptions 
 among employers, labor knows that these bounties 
 may confuse the relation in which it hopes to stand 
 toward the employer. There will be much mockery 
 at this by well-bred people. It will be easy to mock, 
 because the claim is so obscure. The labor phrase 
 has become very familiar, "We will have justice, not 
 charity." 
 
 The public, critics and students alike, all find fault 
 with this use of the word because of its vagueness, yet 
 it can be made perfectly clear what "justice" here 
 means. Last year I visited a mill to which many 
 pretty additions had been made, a library, resting 
 room, gymnasium, etc. The manager said, "This 
 ought to make them contented, hadn't it ? " I asked 
 a friend, who is a stockholder in the mill, to find out 
 for me just what the men and women working there 
 thought of these new sources of contentment. The 
 answer I got was this : " The most intelligent ones 
 tell me they should much prefer to have the expense 
 of these things added to their wages. They take it 
 good-naturedly enough, and think the employer is a
 
 206 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 good man, but they seem to believe he will in the 
 long run get his labor a little cheaper, and can at- 
 tract a certain class of labor in these ways." This is 
 fast coming everywhere to be the feeling. It is some- 
 times bitter, but oftener merely cynical. 
 
 Let us further examine this claim, in what is per- 
 haps the most tragic element connected with machine 
 industry. It should enable us to see first what labor 
 means by "justice " in a definite instance; second, a 
 special form of evil connected with machinery ; third, 
 the general direction of more immediate and conser- 
 vative remedial action. 
 
 I select an industry which has reached the very 
 highest point in mechanical evolution, the Carnegie 
 Steel Company. Nowhere have I seen more lordly 
 and generous provision for those who are maimed at 
 their work. I found instances in which the recom- 
 pense was four times as high as the greatest amount 
 ever given under the German State Insurance. In 
 my surprise at these amounts I asked Mr. Schwab, 
 then president of the company, for more information 
 about their method. He replied, "We have no 
 method except to see to it that our own injured men 
 are generously dealt with." In a letter received later 
 from Mr. Schwab, he says : " If a man is injured at 
 our works, we send him to a hospital at once, where 
 he has the best possible medical attention, all of 
 which we pay for. If he has a family to be taken 
 care of during his enforced idleness, his wages, or 
 part of them, is given to his family in weekly instal- 
 ments until his recovery, and until he is able to resume 
 his duties. In case such injury makes the person 
 unfit for his usual occupation, something suiting
 
 MAN AND SOCIETY VERSUS MACHINERY 2O/ 
 
 his physical condition is found for him. Many of 
 our workmen who are injured are foreigners, and 
 one peculiar feature is that the great majority of in- 
 juries is to workmen of foreign nationality. In such 
 cases they usually want to return to their own coun- 
 try, if their injury is a serious one. When this is the 
 case, we provide transportation for them to their 
 homes and allow them sufficient money to either start 
 them in some small business, or provide a place for 
 them in some institution. Where the accident results 
 fatally, the family is always taken care of financially. 
 If there are children, provision is made for their 
 education. If we cannot provide means by which 
 the wife can take care of herself, we allow her a 
 pension, or house to live in, or something of that 
 description. If they have grown-up children, we 
 provide them with work. In brief, each case must 
 be treated independently. We have no fixed rules." 
 Here is benevolence open-handed and in its least 
 objectionable form. That it was done honorably and 
 in good faith I do not question. 
 
 It is to instances of this character that those point 
 who would convince us that voluntary good will is a 
 surer friend to labor than anything which the law can 
 effect in the form of legally applied justice. 
 
 Some of the best Southern mill-owners show much 
 indignation at those* who ask for legislation to check 
 the desecration of child life in their mills. They urge, 
 instead, that voluntary agreement and personal good 
 will can meet the evil better than legislation. That 
 ancient query, " Can you make people moral by 
 legislation ? " has in it so much truth for a whole 
 class of social evils that there is little difficulty in
 
 208 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 throwing doubt upon all law as an aid to industrial 
 betterment. There is nothing, however, that is now 
 better known than the power of legislative enact- 
 ment to help mightily in the case of definite industrial 
 evils. Child labor is one of these. Uniform law in- 
 cludes the weak employer and the bad one. The 
 difficulty is rarely with the best and strongest em- 
 ployers. They can afford to be fair, but the hard- 
 pressed employer and the meaner ones will take 
 every petty advantage which public indifference and 
 the necessities of the poor throw in their way. It is 
 for these that the law is a necessity. 
 
 No more can industrial accidents be left to the 
 generosity of exceptional corporations. Only the 
 rare few can afford to imitate the Carnegie Company. 
 The average business now insures against accidents 
 in some private company, whose skilled lawyer knows 
 every device to beat the injured workman in the 
 courts. On the other hand, when the workman's hurt 
 is known, he may be visited by some attorney who 
 spurs him on to beat the company. It has come to 
 be mainly a blind hunt to fix personal responsibilities 
 under industrial conditions which make this impossible. 
 
 An injury that deprives a man of half his working 
 power should be recompensed in like proportion. 
 The " capitalizing of accidents," in proportion to their 
 disabling results, is a discovery to which the future 
 will give far higher rank than we now accord to it. 
 It has passed the stage of theory, and is now put 
 to practice on a scale that leaves no doubt as to its 
 possibilities, among persons willing to inform them- 
 selves of the facts. The principle on which it rests 
 is that of insurance insurance under which the mass
 
 MAN AND SOCIETY VERSUS MACHINERY 2CK) 
 
 of unmerited misfortunes is distributed among those 
 who can, and who in justice ought to bear it. As it 
 comes to be understood in its application to the ap- 
 palling average of industrial casualties, it will be 
 found to satisfy, more perhaps than any other remedy, 
 the growing ethical sense of society. 
 
 In the anthracite coal fields one would like to begin 
 reform by applying this systematized insurance to 
 that frightful list of stricken laborers that are now 
 thrown back upon themselves or their families with 
 recompense so uncertain and niggardly as to shock 
 the most primitive sense of social justice. 
 
 Let us now see in a given case what the workman 
 means by asking for justice. In the matter of indus- 
 trial accident he asks to have legal rights so system- 
 atized that he shall receive definite and calculable 
 compensation for injuries. 
 
 The relation of industrial accidents to machinery is 
 direct and obvious, yet neither their number nor their 
 treatment has been in the least realized in any com- 
 munity until a long and arduous propaganda has 
 been made. Previous to the accident insurance in 
 Germany it was thought that there might be thirty 
 or forty thousand injuries due to machinery that 
 would be covered by the insurance. The first inves- 
 tigation showed three times this number ; when the 
 investigation became more complete, six times the 
 number. It was found that in many dangerous call- 
 ings the accidents were concealed from the outside 
 world. But for the forced public regulation of rail- 
 roads, we should have no hint of the full tragedy that 
 goes on, day by day, in the United States. The 
 authoritative statement of the Commission for 1901
 
 210 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 reads as follows : " The total number of casualties to 
 persons on account of railway accidents, as shown 
 for the year ending June 30, 1901, was 61,794, the 
 number of persons killed having been 8455 and the 
 number injured 53,339. Of railway employees, 2675 
 were killed and 41,142 were injured." 1 
 
 From railway machinery alone, 8455 killed and 
 53)339 injured in a single year. 2 One has to read and 
 reread these figures before their grewsome significance 
 is in the least clear. If we add the mining, iron, and 
 lumbering industries, portions of which are more dan- 
 gerous than the railroad, some conception is possible 
 of the mutilated life due to machinery as it is now run. 
 
 Yet if all the cunning and sympathy of the race 
 were exhausted in the attempt, this slaughter could 
 not be stopped. It can be greatly curtailed by im- 
 provements like the automatic car coupler, and by 
 throwing pecuniary responsibility upon the owners. 
 Wherever the slaughter is sudden and dramatic 
 enough to shock the public, as in the machinery of 
 mining and transportation, it has become possible 
 to compel the ownership to pay heavily for its ac- 
 cidents. In countless lesser and private industries, 
 
 1 Commenting on this report, the New York Evening Post says : 
 "In reverting to their figures, it will be interesting to compare them 
 with the last report of casualties in the British army in South Africa 
 during the recent war, which, it will be remembered, lasted nearly 
 three years : 
 
 Killed on American railways, three years ending June 30, 
 
 1900 21,847 
 
 Killed (British forces) during South African war (including 
 
 deaths from disease 22,000" 
 
 2 Fairness requires that discrimination should be made between the 
 casualties of employees and the casualties to others called by the rail- 
 road " trespassers."
 
 MAN AND SOCIETY VERSUS MACHINERY 211 
 
 where the blows fall singly and silently, as deaths in 
 a hospital, though the numbers may be as 10 to I 
 greater, there is thus far in the United States only 
 the crudest attempt at fair dealing with the victims or 
 their families. 
 
 From a group of several hundred cases, of the type 
 collected in the Bulletins of the New York Depart- 
 ment of Labor, I give a commonplace instance. A 
 Swede working with a derrick, while removing an 
 old building in Chicago, was struck by a falling beam, 
 which broke his arm in three places. He settled for 
 the sum of $80. His son, a waiter in the Union 
 League Club, told me a year later that of this amount 
 $68 went to the doctors. He was still unable to work, 
 and never again could have free use of his arm. It 
 is the commonest case of taking advantage of the 
 laborer's ignorance. He could have secured counsel 
 to fight the case in court. But for this he was too ill 
 informed. 
 
 In most of our states our method of indemnifying 
 industrial accidents is as crude as it is abnormal. 
 Justice requires some approach to equality of proced- 
 ure, but a crushed hand may bring nothing to the 
 sufferer, it may bring $50, it may bring $500. 
 Whether it bring anything, much or little, depends, for 
 the great majority of workmen in this country, upon 
 the most incalculable chances. 
 
 We still act as if in an age of primitive tools. When 
 every man controlled a simple tool, like hammer and 
 plane; when it did not move except when he willed 
 and as he willed, it was not unnatural to hold him 
 responsible for incidental hurts. It was not unnatu- 
 ral that if one workman injured another it should be
 
 212 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 held to be the fault of that workman and not of the 
 employer. There was then some sense in the for- 
 mula, "The responsibility of the fellow-servant." 
 From the older and simpler conditions, rules like 
 "common employment" have come down into the 
 age of huge instruments driven by the powers of 
 steam and electricity. The difference is as great 
 as that of breaking boulders by fire or vinegar and 
 blasting with dynamite. During the long experi- 
 mental struggle to harness electricity, workmen in 
 the United States daily fall to the street, withered by 
 the touch of a live wire. What in common has this 
 manner of death with the older accidents when labor 
 moved and controlled the simple tools ? 
 
 That the corporation and every stockholder in it 
 should escape responsibility, by allowing a lawyer to 
 plead ancient saws, shows that the strong and suc- 
 cessful of our age have as little taste for justice as 
 their ancestors. It is the scale and complexity of 
 modern machine industry that has made the old rules, 
 like the " common employment," " contributory negli- 
 gence," grotesque in their unfitness to present facts. 
 What the French fitly call the " accident anonyme," 
 the accident over which the victim has no control, has 
 come to be a terrible reality in machine industry. 
 
 In "common employment," under this rule, the 
 laborer was said to contract with his employer to take 
 all the usual risks that were incident to the business. 
 Thus the employer so far escaped responsibility. One 
 of the commonest of these risks was an accident 
 brought about by the carelessness of a fellow-laborer. 
 Early in the century, when machinery was of the 
 simplest sort ; when the employer was the owner and
 
 MAN AND SOCIETY VERSUS MACHINERY 213 
 
 lived among his workmen, the doctrines of " common 
 employment " and " contributory negligence " were 
 intelligible. In a modern mill, factory, mine, or in 
 railroad service, they are as much out of date as a 
 distaff, or as bleeding for miscellaneous diseases. 
 The cause of accidents in these days of great ma- 
 chinery and of the army of subcontractors, becomes 
 so obscure that the law, many years since, became 
 charged with a casuistry as subtle as that of the 
 scholastics. The cases are filled with metaphysical 
 terms like the following : "causa causans" " principal 
 cause," " determining cause," "proximate cause," and 
 "cause directly contributory" to the accident. I 
 have^ heard the dean of one of our law schools call 
 this common legal casuistry " rubbish of the worst 
 sort," as applied to the facts and exigencies of the 
 present-day industry. Most civilized communities 
 outside of America have already made the same 
 acknowledgment by framing new laws that mark an 
 era in a juster social legislation. 
 
 Switzerland came first in 1881, Germany in 1884, 
 Austria in 1887, Norway in 1894, and England, 
 France, Italy, and Denmark in 1898. One and all 
 have taken the first definite steps toward the organiza- 
 tion of justice in this matter of industrial accidents. 
 
 In an entire day's discussion of this subject in 1901, 
 before the American Social Science Association in 
 Washington, the judgment was practically unanimous 
 that our methods of recompensing accidents by ma- 
 chinery are as clumsy as they are unjust. There is 
 in the United States no well-informed student of this 
 question known to me who has in general a different 
 opinion.
 
 214 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 The justification which a layman feels in using 
 strong language about this inhumanity, is that wher- 
 ever the facts have had thorough discussion, both 
 lawyers and politicians of highest eminence agree in 
 condemning conditions like those now existing in the 
 United States. It was of these that Sir Frederick 
 Pollock said, " I think the doctrine of the American 
 and English courts is bad law as well as bad policy." 
 Of these same conditions (the English act of 1880) 
 Mr. Asquith used the words, " a scandal and a re- 
 proach to the legislature, an elaborate series of traps 
 and pitfalls for the unwary litigant, and producing 
 litigation which, in proportion to its difficulty and 
 cost, is absolutely barren of result." Lord Salis- 
 bury and Mr. Chamberlain have both used language 
 scarcely less severe. When the discussion began in 
 the House of Commons, twenty years ago, scores of 
 able men hotly defended these laws. It is now said 
 that no first-rate man in the house will even attempt a 
 defence. At the international congresses for the dis- 
 cussion of accident insurance, the part which " com- 
 mon employment " has played in our legislature has 
 invariably elicited surprise and disapproval. 
 
 Mr. Willoughby, in his admirable book on " Work- 
 ingmen's Insurance," at the end of the chapter on this 
 subject in the United States, puts the case of our own 
 backwardness in these words : " It would be difficult 
 to think of another field of social or legal reform in 
 which the United States is so far behind other nations. 
 The most depressing feature of the situation lies in 
 the fact that the very principles involved in this 
 gradual evolution from the limited liability of em- 
 ployers to that of the compulsory indemnification by
 
 MAN AND SOCIETY VERSUS MACHINERY 215 
 
 them of practically all injured employees, are as yet 
 not even comprehended in the United States." 
 
 Nowhere can the ethics of social responsibility be 
 studied to such advantage as among these accidents 
 and deaths due to the manner and places in which 
 complicated machinery is now used. 
 
 The United States stands preeminent for its inven- 
 tive faculty. Nowhere has the great machinery de- 
 veloped so swiftly or taken such perfect and effective 
 form. Nowhere has a race profited so greatly and so 
 continuously by the cheapened product due to me- 
 chanical devices. It would be a very elementary 
 form of justice for a public so enriched to say : " We 
 get the good of it ; our incomes and our luxuries in- 
 crease with every new embodiment of the inventor's 
 cunning. We, who are loaded with extra gifts, come 
 off unscathed, yet the vast processes which work for 
 our comfort are followed by a fatal train of blighting 
 injuries. Ought not we who get the good, to see to it 
 that the inevitable death or mutilation should be 
 decently recompensed ? " Yet we as the nation which 
 receives most from the machines make the most nig- 
 gardly return to the victims. Semi-public corpora- 
 tions have been compelled, in a degree, to do their 
 duty. Here and there private corporations act hon- 
 orably toward their injured workmen, but the general 
 mass of crippled life in our country is indemnified, if 
 at all, with a meanness, with a fickleness and uncer- 
 tainty that is a reproach to our civilization. No civ- 
 ilized nation can match our hot pace and our careless 
 disregard of human life. We insist that the hurry is 
 but a name for enterprise and progress, and that it is 
 unavoidable if we would lead the world in industrial
 
 2l6 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 achievement. If this be so, let justice be done to the 
 victims of all this greatness. 
 
 The principle through which, at least, a beginning 
 of justice is possible, is now clearly worked out for 
 our instruction. It has been developed from the 
 same causes in Switzerland, France, England, and 
 Germany. The facts of industrial accidents were 
 first exhaustively studied with a view to uniform and 
 equitable procedure. The illustration from Germany 
 is best only because the investigation of their acci- 
 dents has been most systematic and thorough. When 
 Germany had our " Employers' Liability "as it now 
 exists in most of our states, she had what we have, 
 endless and expensive haggling in the courts with 
 every extreme of uncertainty to employer and em- 
 ployed, as to amount of indemnity. It was found 
 there, as with us, that perpetual injustice resulted 
 because of the laborer's ignorance in using the com- 
 mon law. The first German authority upon this sub- 
 ject, Dr. Zacher, says : " The heavy burden of proof 
 laid on the party seeking redress almost frustrated 
 the beneficent intentions of the measure. The limita- 
 tion of responsibility to cases, in which the blame 
 rested with managers or overseers, left uncovered not 
 only cases originating from personal fault or neglect, 
 but likewise that large class of injuries caused by 
 chance or fellow-workmen. The inability of the re- 
 sponsible parties to pay an indemnity, often compelled 
 the applicant to fall back upon public charity, and 
 the increasing number of lawsuits seriously embit- 
 tered the relations between employers and employed." 
 
 Twenty years' experience under the German act has 
 made it clear that more than half of the industrial ac
 
 MAN AND SOCIETY VERSUS MACHINERY 217 
 
 cidents are neither the fault of the employer nor of 
 the employed. They come with the regularity of the 
 tides, and can be dealt with by exact actuarial methods. 
 This evidence had a powerful influence in England in 
 their decision to stop this hunt for impossible personal 
 blames, and put this whole matter where it belongs, 
 upon a basis of carefully regulated insurance. The 
 long and searching discussion of this problem in eight 
 countries is practically a unit upon this point. The 
 expense of accidents (barring cases of gross negli- 
 gence) should, like insurance, be thrown upon the 
 costs of the business. The general body of consumers 
 must then, in the long run, when readjustments are 
 made, pay the bill for the disabilities incident to pro- 
 duction. This ends, once for all, a world of petty 
 personal bickering that is wasteful from every point 
 of view. 
 
 One of the first results of the study was to show 
 how easily the employer escaped responsibility under 
 the rules which came down from primitive industry. 
 A group of 15,970 "grave accidents," published by 
 the Imperial Bureau in 1887, reads as follows: 
 
 3156 due to fault of employer, or 19% 
 
 4094 due to fault of victim, or 25 % 
 
 711 due to fault of both, or 4% 
 
 524 due to fault of fellow-workmen, or 3% 
 
 6931 due to risks which were incident to the employment, or 43% 
 
 554 due to unknown cause, or 3% 
 
 Here about three-quarters of the employers would 
 escape under the old rules as they are frequently 
 interpreted in the United States. These figures are 
 not exceptional. The Swiss tables showed that less 
 than eighteen per cent of accidents could be proved
 
 2l8 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 against the employer. In Belgium it was shown that 
 the old law (like our own) left three-fifths of the 
 injured workmen without legal rights of indemnity. 
 
 Just as clearly do these preliminary studies in 
 social justice bring out other startling phases of 
 cruelty on the one hand and of immediate possible 
 improvement on the other. 
 
 To see that one kind of work has a per capita 
 risk of accident or death, eleven times greater than 
 another, in which the wages are quite as high, shows 
 what unfair burdens we are willing to thrust upon 
 the weak and ignorant. The insurance of the Ger- 
 man type now compels the business with extra risks 
 to pay an insurance proportioned to the peril. If 
 unusual casualties attend any business, it should bear 
 the burden. The old theory that hazardous toil 
 receives higher pay, is now seen to have no general 
 truth whatever. It is like the conjured objection to 
 the ten-hour day in the English mills, that the profits 
 were made in the last half hour and " therefore the 
 working day could not be shortened." 
 
 Again it appears in many industries, where the 
 nervous strain is great, that the ratio of accidents 
 rises in the tired hour before the work is stopped. 
 There are industries in which the accidents are twice 
 as numerous in the last hour of the day as they are in 
 the hour following dinner. The bearing of this upon 
 a shortened day in these industries is obvious. 
 
 These illustrations of the danger and loss side by 
 no means exhaust the account, but they fairly show 
 that if the service of machinery is great, the maiming 
 effects of it are also great. 
 
 No sane person, however, suggests that machinery
 
 MAN AND SOCIETY VERSUS MACHINERY 2 19 
 
 be either destroyed or discontinued, not even the 
 wrathful Ruskin, if he is carefully read. Machinery 
 is with us doing our work, and it is here to stay. 
 It is strictly the creature of man's devising brain. 
 Not a cog, a lever, or a wheel that was not a thought 
 before it was a thing. There is no enginery how- 
 ever vast that is not thus a creature of man's mind. 
 The first of all questions about machinery is how 
 far we shall allow this by-product of our thinking 
 to become our master. 
 
 No one will claim that the evil is primarily in the 
 machine. Such evils as there are, must be in the 
 ways in which we allow it to be used. We permit 
 it often to be badly placed, recklessly run, too irre- 
 sponsibly owned or put to specialized uses that dwarf 
 the operator. 
 
 These are the evils with which the coming time 
 has to cope. The most obstinate of them will be 
 met only by a uniform, well-ordered extension of 
 factory and social legislation of the types illustrated 
 by child labor and industrial accidents. 
 
 It is now pretty safe to say one thing to those 
 who assert that this uniformity cannot be reached 
 because separate states will stand out in order to 
 secure every competitive advantage. Monopolized 
 privilege in the United States will almost certainly 
 engender abuses which public opinion will not con- 
 tinue to endure. Almost certainly we shall have 
 (as in the great strike of 1894 and the coal strike 
 of 1902) trouble profound enough to create a new 
 habit of mind in the American people. Through 
 these extreme disorders and inconveniences the public 
 will learn its hard lesson of demanding those activi-
 
 220 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 ties of government that will at last give us a body of 
 uniform, industrial, and social legislation that will 
 stand in some real relation to the actual facts of an in- 
 dustrial life that is no longer an affair of state boun- 
 daries, but of one common national area. Not to do 
 this, means a still more rapid development of socialism. 
 Meantime the questions raised by machinery have to 
 be faced, one by one, until they are better understood. 
 No single illustration can better bring out these facts 
 as they bear upon the social question than the tragedy 
 of industrial accidents and the whimsical incongruities 
 of our present legal methods. The average of inju- 
 ries is appalling in extent, but possibly one-half of 
 them are due to avoidable causes. Those that cannot 
 be avoided, can be honestly and humanely recom- 
 pensed. It is not destiny that the casualties from 
 coupling cars in 1889 should have been 5235. If 
 quarrying stone is fifteen times as hazardous to life 
 and limb as making paper or cloth, it is not fate that 
 the extra peril should be borne by the quarrymen with- 
 out some corresponding compensation. It has been 
 proved in theory and in practice that a rough money 
 equivalent can be given. It is not fixed by nature 
 that men should operate machinery so many hours 
 and in conditions so unwholesome that the springs of 
 life are exhausted before life is half lived out. 
 
 For these and kindred evils, traceable to machin- 
 ery, as now owned and operated, socialism appears 
 upon the scene with proposals of its own. 
 
 It is a fundamental assumption of the socialists, 
 and more and more of organized labor, that if the 
 " means of production " were controlled by the com- 
 munity, rather than by private persons and corpora-
 
 MAN AND SOCIETY VERSUS MACHINERY 221 
 
 tions, the evils now connected with machinery would 
 pass away. It is thus implied that the evils are 
 inherent not in the machinery, but in the nature of 
 its ownership and control. The collectivist therefore 
 asks that the state take over the niines and the 
 machinery necessary to work them. Let it give a 
 minimum living wage to every worker, with hours 
 not exceeding eight; in a word, the people have 
 power to use machinery as it will. First, enlarge the 
 public possession of this machinery, then the com- 
 munity shall have the profits, and what is perhaps a 
 greater good, it shall use the machinery for the com- 
 mon weal. It has yet to be proved whether or not 
 socialism can make this promise good. New Zealand 
 and Australia have adopted this policy of using rail- 
 roads, telegraph, telephone, etc., first for social service. 
 Strictly business and dividend reasons are consciously 
 subordinated to this higher interest. We watch this 
 daring venture anxious to know if the new principle 
 will work. Can they work this machinery through 
 politics first for the public good, without loss of 
 efficiency and a too heavy burden of costs? If this 
 can be done, it will mark an era in social improvement. 
 While we await results, our task with the correspond- 
 ing machinery is chiefly that of " regulation " ; to 
 subject these forces to such control that human and 
 social interests shall not be too much endangered. 
 In many countries the proof is now complete that uni- 
 form legal control can work incalculable social bene- 
 fits. The limits of this control and its efficiency as 
 compared with the collectivist principle can be known 
 only through that further experience that is now 
 rapidly accumulating for our guidance.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE MASTER PASSION OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 I 
 
 Illusions 
 
 THE story of the social unrest cannot be told with- 
 out reference to those motives which underlie its 
 practical methods. At the heart of all socialistic 
 aspiration is some conception of equality. At the 
 heart of the larger labor movement is the race long- 
 ing for a society in which at least the spirit of equal- 
 ity shall be realized. Most radical remedies are only 
 means to this end. Beyond, and deeper than all 
 the machinery of social reconstruction, is this master 
 passion of democracy. 
 
 Henry George did not give his life for a system of 
 taxation. He worked for thirty years with rare and 
 high devotion to convert the world to his " single 
 tax," but wholly beyond this was the thing he cared 
 for ; the larger equality which he believed the single 
 tax would usher in, There is no sect of socialists of 
 which this is not likewise true. Their several 
 schemes stand only as means to this larger end of 
 a more equal life. Is this dream, as so many tell us, 
 a discredited absurdity ? 
 
 Those who have written most persuasively in favor 
 of equality have been moved to expression by the 
 
 222
 
 THE MASTER PASSION OF DEMOCRACY 223 
 
 violent and flaunting inequalities amidst which they 
 lived. Rousseau and Godwin, the aristocratic St. 
 Simon and the democratic Fourier, down to recent 
 writers, like Zola and Tolstoi, are sore and angry 
 before the fact that those who have too little and 
 those who have too much so jostle each other along 
 the highway of a common life. Almost more is it 
 a source of irritation that those who are not in want 
 are prone to excuse these extremes as natural, un- 
 avoidable, and even desirable. Godwin wrote this 
 sentence, "The human mind is incredibly subtle in 
 inventing an apology for that to which its inclination 
 leads." 
 
 The prejudice of interest and of temperament 
 rarely shows itself with more complacent confidence 
 than in most discussions on that world-old dream 
 of the democracy, equality. In the days when the 
 tory hatred of Gladstone was so acrid that it was 
 thought to be bad form to mention his name at 
 a dinner table, I asked a wise Englishman what 
 reason could be given for a bitterness so excessive. 
 "Those who hate him," he answered, " cannot give 
 reasons, or if they do, there is no consistency among 
 them. You will notice that vituperation takes the 
 place of argument. When Gladstone is gone, it will 
 be seen by all that his rank is without dispute among 
 the half dozen of the greatest statesmen England has 
 produced. My own interpretation of the abhorrence 
 in which the well-bred world professes to hold him, 
 is that it sees in him a very terrible enemy to those 
 property rights on which our social inequality rests. 
 Not that Gladstone means this, or is conscious of 
 it, but his enemies see in him a most redoubtable
 
 224 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 champion of the coming democracy, and hate him 
 accordingly." This exposition may be defective, but 
 it illustrates the unreasoning passions that are kin- 
 dled when interests for which men most care are put 
 in danger. 
 
 No subject is more beset by disturbing bias or 
 class jealousy than equality. Much of the literature 
 that extenuates inequalities exhibits a certain irri- 
 tation, as if the author were arguing against one 
 who had affronted him. This perversity of misun- 
 derstanding is epitomized in the Lincoln-Douglas 
 debates. Lincoln came again and again to the famous 
 equality clause of the Declaration, " All men are 
 created equal," etc. From the astute Douglas to the 
 pettiest demagogue of proslavery politics, Lincoln 
 was harassed because of his defence of equality. 
 With his incomparable lucidity of statement, he tells 
 the public what he means. He does not mean equal 
 in all respects ; color, stature, moral and intellectual 
 gifts, are indefinitely variable, but deeper than this 
 difference lies a basis of equality, absolute and im- 
 pregnable. "There is," said Lincoln, "no reason in 
 the world why the negro is not entitled to all the 
 natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of 
 Independence ; the right to life, liberty, and the 
 pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much 
 entitled to these as the white man. I agree with 
 Judge Douglas that he is not my equal in many 
 respects certainly not in color, perhaps not in 
 moral or intellectual endowment But in the right to 
 eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, 
 which his own hand earns, he is my equal, and the 
 equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living
 
 THE MASTER PASSION OF DEMOCRACY 22$ 
 
 man." In passages like this, it is made fearlessly clear 
 that the great democrat is not arguing for impossible 
 equalities; clear, that he understands, as well as his 
 opponent, what a gamut of superior and inferior quali- 
 ties inhere in the race, and forever will inhere. But 
 these repeated explanations of Lincoln, except to far- 
 off and disinterested readers of the speeches, were 
 fruitless. Once insisting upon the great principle of 
 equality, no qualifications that he could make before 
 an audience weighed in the balance against the inso- 
 lent substitute for argument, " Will you marry a nig- 
 ger?" "Will you invite 'em to dinner?" Stung 
 by the persistent unfairness, Lincoln replied, " Any- 
 thing that argues me into his (Douglas's) idea of per- 
 fect social and political equality with the negro is but 
 a specious and fantastic arrangement of words by 
 which a man can prove a horse-chestnut to be a 
 chestnut horse." 
 
 This sentence summarizes the interminable at- 
 tempts that have been made to prove that the dream 
 of the democracy is mere fatuity. The explanation 
 of this is easier, because few subjects, if interpreted 
 with any literalness, are so open to attack and to 
 raillery. If there is one fact about which human ex- 
 perience can have an absolute opinion, it is the fact 
 of diversity and inequality of gifts. Nor is there a 
 sign that this diversity and inequality are being ex- 
 tinguished. There are signs that they tend uniformly 
 to deepen with each new stage of progress. Certain it 
 is that nature loves variety no less than unity, and 
 greets each new difference in her unfolding life with 
 delight and approval. 
 
 It is a measure of our culture to shrink from
 
 226 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 monotony and rejoice in variation. I read a vapid 
 imitation of Bellamy, in which none were to be 
 physically more beautiful than others. The very 
 sense and source of beauty would thus expire. A 
 world in which at a given moment none are better, 
 braver, more gracious, more eloquent or more master- 
 ful than others, presents a sorry spectacle to the 
 imagination. It is open to doubt, but I fancy that a 
 society which insisted upon apportioning exact prop- 
 erty equivalents would affront the common sense of 
 any well-developed race. A race that has become 
 both strong and kind, would be eager that property 
 should go according to needs and to gifts. As these 
 varied, the use of property would vary. 
 
 If, then, our discussion is to begin with these admis- 
 sions of inevitable inequality, what remains for argu- 
 ment? The whole practical question is, I believe, 
 untouched by any of these concessions. Lincoln's 
 phrase, "specious and fantastic arrangement of 
 words," as applied to equality, was never more in 
 fashion than now. Many an uncompromising de- 
 fender of society, as now organized, is quick to make 
 merry over every suggestion of equality. 
 
 There is some excuse for this, if the word be taken 
 narrowly, or if many of the past interpretations of 
 equality be accepted. If, on the contrary, we are 
 willing to take the word at its best, take it as it is 
 now used even by the broader-minded of the socialist 
 writers, the notion of equality presents no paralyzing 
 difficulty whatever. The better to establish this fact, 
 let us look first at the narrower meaning and at the 
 illusions with which the word has been associated. 
 
 So many graphic efforts have been made in this
 
 THE MASTER PASSION OF DEMOCRACY 227 
 
 country to force an artificial uniformity, that the 
 attention has been diverted from the essential spirit 
 of equal privilege. Perhaps the history of no peo- 
 ple offers so great a variety of picturesque attempts 
 to realize social equality as the United States during 
 the nineteenth century. The century opens with the 
 election of a chief magistrate consecrated to this end. 
 No sooner was Jefferson in office than he began to 
 practise la vie Jgalitaire, the ideals of which so fasci- 
 nated him in France. In 1801, he proclaimed his 
 purpose to efface, at his receptions and at his table, 
 every form of class distinction. All rules of prece- 
 dence, hitherto customary, were to be set aside. 
 This was the famous pele-mle that so enraged the 
 British minister. The general dismay was at its 
 height in 1804, when Jefferson wrote privately to 
 Monroe, "We have told him (the English minister) 
 that the principle of society as well as of govern- 
 ment with us is the equality of the individuals com- 
 posing it ; that no man here would come to a dinner 
 where he was to be marked with inferiority to any 
 other; that we might as well attempt to force our 
 principle of equality at St. James's as he his princi- 
 ple of precedence here." The British minister wrote 
 home that the foreign representatives and their wives 
 "are now placed here in a situation so degrading to 
 the countries they represent, and so personally dis- 
 agreeable to themselves, as to become almost intoler- 
 able." The French minister wrote to Talleyrand 
 that " all Washington was turned upside down." It 
 is not probable that an abler or a more sincere and 
 honest trial of " the equal life " among the functions 
 at the Capitol, could ever be made than that which
 
 228 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 was made by Jefferson under his " Canons of Eti- 
 quette," that had the formal approval of his Cabinet. 
 
 The experiment, however, left as little trace as any 
 of the hundred Utopias that have been tried in our 
 country. The failure came, not because foreign am- 
 bassadors treated it with ridicule and disdain, but be- 
 cause our own people did not continue to like it, more 
 than the foreigners liked it. To see why any one of 
 the Utopias miscarries, is to see why Jefferson's hope 
 came to nought. It matters little which experiment 
 we select. One of the ablest and most practical 
 business men in England, Robert Owen, started one 
 in Indiana in 1826. The thirty thousand acres of 
 land, the mills and houses, cost him $150,000 a 
 large fortune for those days. It excited much in- 
 terest, and the Hall of Representatives in Wash- 
 ington was opened to him and crowded with 
 distinguished hearers two long evenings, to hear the 
 story of the "changed circumstances that should 
 make for equality." Several men of note were 
 among the members of this colony in Indiana : Vigo, 
 the painter; Maclure, a rich geologist of note, 
 attracted by the Pestalozzian system of education ; 
 and a well-known naturalist, Alexander le Seur. In 
 1824, all hopes were high. 
 
 The first signs of mutiny come with the endeavor 
 to enforce the details of the equal life. If the mem- 
 bers are to be sincere in discarding the tokens of 
 artificial superiority, what better beginning than with 
 personal dress ? It was therefore decreed that the 
 dress should be uniform. The men should be clothed 
 in a jacket without marked color, the trousers at- 
 tached to the jacket by buttons. It was early noted
 
 THE MASTER PASSION OF DEMOCRACY 22Q 
 
 that while many men submitted, they were not the 
 most desirable members of the " Community of 
 Equality." Many of the best male members openly 
 sulked beneath this colorless jacket. As for the 
 women, the disapproval was instant and unmistaka- 
 ble. They were to be garmented in an unadorned 
 frock extending a little below the knee. The rest of 
 the raiment was to consist of pantalets. The sulky 
 protests of the men were very subdued compared to 
 the unconcealed displeasure of the women. There 
 could be no reasonable check on the expression of 
 their vexation, because, in the final constitution, abso- 
 lute freedom of speech was made not only a privilege 
 but a duty. The women were quick to avail them- 
 selves of this fundamental right. They not only flatly 
 refused to wear the vestments of equality, but formed, 
 forthwith, a sort of sympathetic strike against any 
 and all women members who dared to appear in 
 them. To Mr. Owen this behavior seemed unworthy, 
 but it caused him no misgivings. He said it was 
 natural that people brought up in the long tradition 
 of frivolous personal distinctions should be slow to 
 free themselves from its influence. If the right be- 
 ginning were made with the young, these foibles would 
 pass away with other perversities of human nature. 
 
 The splendid optimism of Robert Owen was a part 
 of his genius. The history of social reform has few 
 names to which the future will give superior rank. 
 I believe that the practical economic achievements of 
 the English democracy owe more to him than to any 
 other man. It is very plain, however, that many of 
 his special methods of reaching equality were humor- 
 ously ill chosen.
 
 230 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 In all that Thomas Jefferson did in Virginia to 
 abolish primogeniture, the entail of property, and to 
 insure religious liberty, his contributions to equality 
 were great. If he bad done what he wished to 
 do, establish popular education and abolish slavery, 
 no name in our history would have been so illus- 
 trious, but the details of the pele-mele are of the 
 same order as the colorless jacket and the pantalets. 
 If there is a single lesson to be read from the long 
 list of insolvent Utopias, it is that the thing we call 
 human nature will not submit to have thrust upon it 
 the externals of a literal equality. 
 
 The literary Utopias are unabashed by these per- 
 plexities. In Bellamy's world, each person has an 
 extremely liberal credit card. This lordly provision 
 is possible, because a fine imagination has spirited 
 away a host of awkward difficulties. Wealth has 
 been multiplied by the author at least a dozen times ; 
 the wealth enjoyed in common, indefinitely increased, 
 and what is of greater importance than both of these 
 items, the whole population has somehow become 
 prudent and self-controlled and delicately consider- 
 ate of others. If one does not exhaust his credit 
 card, he cannot save for himself what remains. It 
 passes to the common treasury, and he begins the 
 new year with a new credit symbol. 
 
 Industrial changes that should give us, in the year 
 2000, ten or twelve times more wealth each year 
 than we now have, are perhaps among the pos- 
 sibilities of the coming century. It would not be 
 more startling than the changes that have become the 
 commonplaces of the century just closing. A far 
 tougher strain upon our credulity is the transforma-
 
 THE MASTER PASSION OF DEMOCRACY 231 
 
 tion in the race of men and women. The unfailing 
 trait in every Utopia is this assumed change in race 
 qualities. There is no difficulty that cannot be 
 evaded, if one sets out with the right kind of hu- 
 manity, or imagines one that has reached far higher 
 development. Certainly the chief sources of our 
 social troubles are old-fashioned ignorance and self- 
 ishness. If one choose to conceive a race that is 
 without ignorance and without selfishness, the new 
 society is at hand. Bellamy is not unaware of this 
 fact, and therefore finds it necessary to introduce a 
 religious revival a revival such as the world has 
 never seen for universality and thoroughness. Other 
 worldly motives do not enter into it. A sublime 
 enthusiasm for the good of all in this present world 
 lifted the multitude into an ecstasy of well-doing. 
 The revival did not cause the economic changes, but 
 was rather caused by them. As we are told, it "made 
 a short story of the later stages of the great upturn- 
 ing." Many believed that the industrial revolution 
 would require decades, but Dr. Leite says to Julian, 
 while they wait for the play : 
 
 " Those who held this opinion failed to take account 
 of the popular enthusiasm which would certainly 
 take possession of the movement and drive it irre- 
 sistibly forward from the moment that the prospect 
 of its success became fairly clear to the masses." 
 Giving the history of this enthusiasm, he further 
 adds : " An impassioned eagerness seized upon the 
 multitude to enter into the delectable land, so that 
 they found every day's, every hour's delay intoler- 
 able. The young said, ' Let us make haste, and go 
 into the promised land while we are young, that we
 
 232 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 may know what living is.' And the old said, ' Let 
 us go in ere we die, that we may close our eyes in 
 peace, knowing that it will be well with our children 
 after us.' The leaders and pioneers of the Revolu- 
 tion, after having for so many years exhorted and 
 appealed to a people for the most part indifferent or 
 incredulous, now found themselves caught up and 
 borne onward by a mighty wave of enthusiasm which 
 it was impossible for them to check and difficult for 
 them to guide, had not the way been so plain." 
 
 Then to cap the climax, as if the popular mind 
 were not already in a sufficiently exalted frame, came 
 the Great Revival, touching this enthusiasm with 
 religious emotion. This quotation is not presented as 
 a target for gibes, but to show the magician's skill in 
 overcoming difficulties. The author knew that his 
 scheme could not work, even in the imagination of the 
 reader, unless the inexorable selfishness of man was 
 dislodged. If equality were temporarily won, the old 
 devil of self-seeking would destroy it again. The 
 revival is made equal to the occasion. Even of the 
 capitalists who fare ill in the book, it is said : 
 " They were not persons of a more depraved disposi- 
 tion than other people, but merely like other classes, 
 what the economic system had made them. Having 
 like passions and sensibilities with other men, they 
 were as incapable of standing out against the con- 
 tagion of the enthusiasm of humanity, the passion of 
 pity, and the compulsion of humane tenderness which 
 the Great Revival had aroused, as any other class of 
 people." 
 
 With an influence so irresistible at one's disposal, 
 no millennium need be postponed. The communist
 
 THE MASTER PASSION OF DEMOCRACY 233 
 
 carries the division of property still further than the 
 socialist ; but if self-seeking is expunged, the extremer 
 equality is as easy as the other. The philosophic 
 anarchist has a splendid ideal ; a society in which no 
 prison, police, court, or law is necessary. If a revival 
 or any other agency could make all people behave 
 so well that no external constraint was necessary; if 
 there were absolute generosity, forbearance, and good 
 will, this ideal, too, could be realized. The Sphinx 
 riddle is how to get such behavior. At present the 
 Utopias monopolize it. The world, as known to us, 
 is moved by other and far more complex motives. 
 
 To the cynical, the Utopias have ever been the 
 easy mark of satire; and when they failed, the 
 crushed hopes met from the outside only general 
 hilarity and I-told-you-so complacency. The lack 
 of sympathy with heroic and unselfish attempts to 
 realize equality is itself evidence of the common dis- 
 like of equality. One of the later experiments, at 
 Ruskin, Tennessee, for which great hopes had been 
 felt, has met disaster. I have gathered many opin- 
 ions from the press, but among them all no kindly 
 note of appreciation. Has the world, at heart, a 
 fixed, unconscious hatred of equality ? 
 
 The history of these hardy enterprises is very 
 chilling. For most it is a question of months, of 
 years for a few. A small fraction is held in some 
 permanence if only the binding power of religion is 
 there. Religious sects can get little comfort from 
 this, because it seems not to matter much what kind 
 of religion holds them ; that of the Mormon and the 
 Shaker appear to be among the best for the purpose. 
 If these communities are destitute of sturdy faith
 
 234 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 or superstition, if you will, that subdues them into 
 habits of obedience, they fall to pieces. They start 
 radiant with high and noble purpose. In the begin- 
 ning no sacrifice is wanting to realize the equal life. 
 But a few moons come and go, and then a subtle 
 poison begins its work. 
 
 Here again the explanation is seen in our most 
 common observation of ourselves and of the men and 
 women about us. A few years ago the American 
 papers were very jocular at the expense of a rich 
 American in London, because of his published claims 
 to a distinguished family lineage. Yet that is what 
 half one's acquaintances are everywhere doing to the 
 extent of their ingenuity. Heraldry now is a charmed 
 word for multitudes of very humble people. Libra- 
 rians are suddenly plagued by the importunity for 
 genealogical evidence of distinguished ancestry. 
 Daughters of this and daughters of that ; clubs, 
 coteries, everywhere springing into life, bound to 
 discover proof that they are not quite like other 
 people. I saw a Colonial Dame flushed with de- 
 light because on a great occasion in another city 
 her badge had given her showy precedence over cer- 
 tain Daughters of the Revolution, who at home never 
 failed to let her feel her social inferiority. She said, 
 " In all my life, no minute ever gave me a joy like 
 that." The women need have no shame, they can- 
 not outdo the men in this pursuit. Scarcely a town 
 that is not gay with embellished orders stamped with 
 every display of royal and knightly nomenclature. 
 Read the list of officers from the Sublime Grand 
 Master down, and ask what aristocracy in history ever 
 went farther in its hunt for feathers. Two or three
 
 THE MASTER PASSION OF DEMOCRACY 235 
 
 years ago there was a gathering of three or four 
 orders in Boston. From a single copy of the Herald 
 I take the following modest titles, Grand Dictator, 
 Grand Chancellor, Supreme President, Grand Vice 
 Dictator, Supreme Warden. 1 This outbreak is a droll 
 commentary upon a society that has found so much 
 to ridicule in the " haughty infirmities " of the old 
 world. It has sprung, however, straight from human 
 nature. We have won wealth and some leisure that 
 have brought us into contact with foreign sources of 
 distinction that we lack. No people ever displayed 
 the passion for inequality more greedily than we. 
 One builds a yacht, and if he can dine an English 
 prince at the Cowes races, or entice the German Em- 
 peror on board at Kiel, this single breath of royal 
 atmosphere at once endows the enterprising host with 
 the rarest social privileges at home. Every circle 
 breaks at the touch of the king's hand. 
 
 This craving to index oneself off from others, by 
 any mark that can be hit upon, is not very vicious, 
 perhaps not always bad, but it is the essence of 
 inequality and shows how rooted an instinct it is 
 within us. I asked the head of a fashionable city 
 school about the parents that brought their daughters 
 to her. " It is," she said, " so unusual as to surprise 
 me when a parent shows any other real anxiety than 
 to secure for her child certain social connections. 
 Education has no meaning except as it furthers this 
 end." If this is snobbish, what is it for working 
 girls' clubs to exclude household domestics ? I have 
 known Boston shop-girls at their dances to put up 
 a placard marked, " No servants admitted." No 
 
 1 Sunday Herald, October 7, 1900.
 
 236 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 social group that ca^o^^iamed is free from this 
 itching. gnia < 
 
 It is only when facts like these are faced without 
 flinching or evasion, that the failure of most Utopian 
 schemes is 'seen to be inevitable until far more radi- 
 cal work has been done upon race habits. It has 
 often been said that these failures have been caused 
 by unwillingness to work. The records give the lie 
 to this explanation in scores of cases. The shirking 
 of tasks is but a partial and secondary difficulty. 
 Deeper than this, and far more uniform and perma- 
 nent, is the depressing fact that the members do not 
 continue to love each other. On the first high tide 
 of generous ardor, they rejoice in each other's com- 
 pany at all hours. They are eager to sit at a com- 
 mon table, and to share the products of a common 
 toil, but this love-feast rarely continues. The most 
 saintly among them are often the least manageable 
 of all. A single passage from a private letter of one 
 who had seen much of this community life throws 
 an almost pitiless light on the entire history : " We 
 all liked each other at first, as brothers and sisters 
 should. But a very devil of ill will and suspicion 
 began to show itself in the second month between 
 Brother H. and Brother F. It began in a way so 
 contemptible that I am ashamed to tell it. Brother 
 H. had an ailing stomach and could not eat a certain 
 sweet pudding served once a week. Brother F.'s 
 great fondness for this dish so worked upon the feel- 
 ings of Brother H. that he could not refrain from 
 un-Christian remarks to those about him." This nar- 
 rative continues in the same rare vein, but it needs 
 no further quoting. Though only a sweet pudding, it
 
 THE MASTER PASSION OF DEMOCRACY 237 
 
 resulted in the sourest ferment for several others to 
 whom it gave opportunity to vent their own ill humors. 
 The incident is less frivolous than it appears, for it 
 was merely an occasion to express feelings that in 
 default of pudding would have seized upon the soup or 
 the cut of the beard. Sometimes it is the manner of 
 eating, sometimes it is too much or too loud talking, 
 sometimes too little. Silence irritates as well as 
 garrulity. Gossip, jokes ill-timed, low vitality in one, 
 and buoyant health in another, humor here and lack 
 of it there, romantic fervor in this member, and in 
 another only gray matter of fact. 
 
 The result is the more easily understood because the 
 personnel of these communities is naturally composed 
 of those who had already become extremely critical 
 of the old society which they found so faulty. They 
 bring to the new society the same qualities that could 
 not tolerate former associations. In the letter 
 quoted, it is said, " We expected to attract queer people, 
 but that there were so many kinds of queerness and 
 that they could be so unreasonable, we had to learn 
 by most disheartening experience." 
 
 These are but the oldest platitudes of race experi- 
 ence. The members of these Utopias were thrown 
 too closely and too constantly together. If people 
 like each other, they also dislike each other ; if they 
 are held together by attractions, they are also driven 
 apart by repulsions, and space must be given for the 
 selective process of both impulses for antipathies 
 as well as for affections. Unless the Buddhist and 
 Catholic monasteries are thought to be satisfactory 
 ideals of the equal life, there is no sign in the history 
 of more than four hundred experiments, that a vigor-
 
 238 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 ous humanity will long resign itself to any separate 
 colony scheme that the wit of the reformer has thus 
 far devised. People are driven together under condi- 
 tions so narrow, with so much sameness, that the 
 limits become unbearable after the first enthusiasm 
 subsides. The test which every colony must meet, 
 that sets itself apart from the great world, is to make 
 the conditions of the community life so rich in variety, 
 that the various temperaments can find room for 
 activity. Not to do this, is soon to let loose every 
 imp of petty jealousy and bickering that possesses the 
 human creature. The commonest lessons from every 
 almshouse and old ladies' home should have taught 
 us this. That which now keeps these defects some- 
 what in abeyance is that competitive society, bad as 
 it is, gives man leeway for his energy. The stronger 
 the personality, the more room and variety is needed 
 for self-expression. No one can look upon the Shakers 
 without feeling that their community has merely 
 selected from the outside millions a certain type of 
 man and woman, kindly and docile, but for the most 
 part destitute of virility. Men and women rich in 
 strong personal character cannot be so cabined. 
 
 I have heard a kindly and intelligent sea captain, 
 half his life spent in long voyages, say that the 
 severest test to morals that he ever faced was with 
 his own crew and passengers after two months 
 at sea. " We became touchy, sour, and disagreeable 
 for the most ridiculous reasons. I have been surly 
 the entire day, because the mate said good morning, 
 and surly another day, because he did not. On a 
 four months' voyage, I* have seen passengers act for 
 days as if they loathed each other. When we had
 
 THE MASTER PASSION OF DEMOCRACY 239 
 
 escaped from the ship, and had been two days on 
 land, we treated each other like human beings." 
 
 The saintly F. D. Maurice, riding in a London 
 omnibus, over the jolting pavement, imagines the 
 effect of smooth pavements (just being introduced) 
 upon the friendly good-nature of the passengers. 
 When the rattling ceases, Maurice fancies that stran- 
 gers will catch eagerly at the opportunity of holding 
 sweet converse with each other. The pavement has 
 come, and one may ride a hundred miles upon it 
 without observing the slightest general tendency to 
 embrace the chance of neighborly intercourse. 
 
 When the passengers rush to fill our railway trains, 
 do they try to get together ? Unless with a friend 
 or with one of their family, they apparently desire 
 nothing so much as to keep apart in a separate seat, 
 or in two seats if they can monopolize them. There is 
 not the least eagerness to entice strangers to occupy 
 the place beside them. The apart-instinct is as 
 powerful as the together-instinct, and it does not 
 become less so as society develops. The proprietor 
 of one of the older Boston hotels told me that when 
 he worked in a hotel for his father, a generation ago, 
 men who had never seen each other made no objec- 
 tion to taking the same bed, or sleeping three beds in 
 a room. "Now," he added, "half my customers 
 would leave for another hotel, rather than submit 
 to have their bed in the same room with another. 
 Everybody wants to keep as far away from others as 
 he can get." This does not mean that there is less 
 good will among men than in more promiscuous 
 times. The gay knights and ladies of the Rhine 
 castles who ate with their fingers out of the same dish
 
 240 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 and knew no napkins, were not more unselfish than 
 the modern, who insists upon a separate plate. Sep- 
 arateness and apartness increase with every step in 
 the social growth. Upon one side common functions, 
 common wealth, common privileges, are enlarged. 
 Parks, libraries, museums, vast educational facilities, 
 are everywhere increasing at the same time that purely 
 individual functions increase. The together-instincts 
 do not develop more rapidly than the apart-instincts. 
 No social scheme that fails to reckon with the ever 
 widening variety of race energies has a moment's 
 chance of success. The literary Utopias often avoid 
 these stubborn realities by first destroying society in 
 order to have the ground cleared for their own build- 
 ing, or they begin on an island or in some realm of 
 nowhere, unplagued by complicated traditions. 
 
 Bellamy is unusual in this, that he pluckily takes 
 up society as it is. Syndicates, trusts, department 
 stores, furnish him with his best material. Develop 
 them far enough and universally enough and petty 
 individual enterprises will be wiped out, or gathered 
 into these colossal undertakings that only the state can 
 manage. But Bellamy's own material is dangerous 
 in his hands, for the reason that it hardens in spite 
 of him into a huge mechanism that fills many of his 
 own persuasion with repugnance. The most pictu- 
 resque incident, as well as one of the most significant, 
 in modern socialistic thought, occurs for our instruc- 
 tion almost as soon as Bellamy's dream was fairly 
 before the world. It came from a brother socialist, 
 but one of far richer and more varied power than 
 Bellamy possessed, the English poet and artist, Will- 
 iam Morris. He, too, has the divine rage against the
 
 THE MASTER PASSION OF DEMOCRACY 24! 
 
 competitive system. He, too, will destroy it, root and 
 branch, but he is first of all poet and artist craftsman, 
 vitalizing every hour with more intense and diverse 
 life energy than any one of the famed group of which 
 he was a part. Morris catches greedily at " Looking 
 Backward," reads and rereads it, but is choked in its 
 atmosphere. If one who called Bellamy comrade, 
 who called himself a socialist, feels such acute aver- 
 sion, as if cramped and stifled when he has to inhabit 
 Bellamy's social fabric merely in imagination, what 
 would happen to a nation with pulsing activity an 
 hundred-fold more multiform than in any single 
 individual, however gifted ? 1 
 
 It would be without excuse to linger at such length 
 over the Utopias if they did not present both a theory 
 and a practice of equality. In their literary form, as 
 in their varied experimenting, they furnish inestimable 
 material for judgment. They show us what men and 
 women think about a certain kind of equality before 
 they try it, and what they think after the trial is made. 
 These experiments have gone on through many 
 centuries and among many nationalities. They have 
 taken widely different forms. At least twenty are 
 struggling at the present time with the same hopes 
 and the same embarrassments. I have seen the 
 records of fourteen attempts made in Australian 
 colonies. The three or four that now seem least 
 likely to fail are so greatly modified by securing 
 private property rights that they appear to set slight 
 value on equality in its Utopian sense. The literal 
 interpretation of equality has no logical completeness 
 except in communism. Communism captivates at 
 
 1 Both Bebel and Kautsky had the same feeling as Morris. 
 R
 
 242 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 the same time the saint and the loafer. It offers to 
 the imagination what the heroic are glad to give, and 
 to the dead-beat what he is greedy to take. 
 
 As the socialist dialectic will always embarrass the 
 advocate of the single tax, so the logic of the com- 
 munist will harass the socialist, because he leaves 
 certain forms of property still in private possession. 
 To the communist, one form is as nefarious as an- 
 other. I knew an apostle of unflinching equality, a 
 French tgalitaire, who was dedicated absolutely to his 
 principles. The coat on his back, his writing-desk 
 and books, the wife with whom he lived, belonged, he 
 claimed, as strictly to another as to himself. " The 
 principle," he added, " loses its greatness and its power 
 over men if it is not harmonious and complete." The 
 socialists, more than all others, roused his wrath, 
 "because they pick and choose," he said, "like the 
 stupid bourgeois, this or that fragment of equality, 
 according to their taste." 
 
 In the extraordinary success of the great foundry 
 {familisthe) at Guise, in North France, Godin carried 
 equality to the farthest limits consistent with the 
 management of a great and paying business. His 
 youth was fired with communistic ideals. Though 
 rich, he lived in the same building with his workmen ; 
 but in their common theatre his family seat was some- 
 what apart and better than the others. In showing me 
 this a workman said, " Godin was true to the great prin- 
 ciple up to a certain point, but we never liked it that 
 he did not watch the play from the same seat as the 
 rest of us." This workman was in the theoretic stage. 
 Godin was sorely plagued by the importunity of this 
 type of workman, as those who have to apply theory
 
 THE MASTER PASSION OF DEMOCRACY 243 
 
 will always be worried by the unhampered critic. 
 This is the chastening ordeal which socialism must 
 undergo in the coming century, as it tries to bring us 
 nearer the " reign of equal rights." 
 
 II 
 
 Realities 
 
 It was my endeavor in the last chapter to state 
 fully and fairly the ineffaceable limits which experi- 
 ence has already drawn about the pettier conceptions 
 of equality. The origin of many of the most star- 
 tling inequalities is biolo ^cal. To get born with cer- 
 tain qualities is to have many chances to one against 
 the man who came into life without them. We all 
 see that the sources of superiority are in the gifts that 
 cannot be made equal. The mysteries of tempera- 
 ment, buoyancy, vivid imagination, prudence, charms 
 of personality, tact, inflexible purpose, steadiness of 
 self-control, and even physical gifts, like good diges- 
 tion and ability to sleep, are qualities that lead men 
 beyond the average of their fellows. To put the least 
 check upon these distinctions (or inequalities) would 
 bring a common and a grievous loss. 
 
 We have thus far neither the wisdom nor the moral 
 courage to raise the questions on which these con- 
 genital superiorities depend. For a very indefinite 
 future these deep sources of inequality will remain 
 practically beyond our influence. These are difficul- 
 ties, however, that in no way conflict with a larger and 
 truer interpretation of equality. Because absurd 
 claims to literal equality have been made, we need 
 not spoil the discussion by continuing to repeat them.
 
 244 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 Helvetius is still quoted as maintaining that one man's 
 gifts (all privileges removed) are equal to another's. 
 This is now known to be so wide of the truth that it 
 is a poor shift for an opponent of equality to make 
 much of such exaggerations, and thus divert attention 
 from claims that may be rational. 
 
 The abler socialist writers the Webbs, Vander- 
 welde, Kautsky, Malon know the limitations of 
 equality indicated in the last chapter quite as well as 
 smart casuists like Mr. Mallock. They do not now 
 ask for fantastic identities of gift or possession. 
 They ask for a social and economic reconstruction 
 that shall give new freedom for race development. 
 
 Our real problem, therefore, is to know how far 
 opportunity to develop every gift is open to all ; how 
 far do artificial privileges restrict these opportuni- 
 ties to the few; how far does an imperfect social 
 and industrial system handicap a portion of the 
 people; above all, how does an unregulated com- 
 petition select, stimulate, and strengthen individual 
 qualities and social ideals that thwart a genuine 
 equality ? 
 
 When Mr. Webb says, " We want to bring about 
 the condition in which every member of society shall 
 have a fair chance to use and to develop the gifts 
 with which he happens to be born," he is not putting 
 in claim to an absurdity. When he asks for a democ- 
 racy so broadly educated that it appreciates compe- 
 tence and its relation to the infinitely varied tasks of 
 society, he only asks for what that very prince of 
 democrats, Jefferson, called the " natural aristocracy." 
 In writing to Adams (October 28, 1813), he says, 
 " May we not even say that that form of government
 
 THE MASTER PASSION OF DEMOCRACY 245 
 
 is best which provides the most effectually for a 
 pure selection of these aristoi into the offices of 
 government ? " 
 
 If the purpose is to try merely to see what heart 
 truth there is in this dream, we shall admit that all 
 external signs of equality, like dress, apartments, 
 working hours, are not of primary, not even of sec- 
 ondary, importance. Indeed, as the discussion has 
 developed, less and less stress is laid upon them, and 
 that which has taken their place is indicated by vague 
 commonplace phrases such as " equality of oppor- 
 tunity." It has no ultimate purpose that all receive 
 the same material gifts. These, equal or unequal, 
 exist for an end beyond themselves ; that end is the 
 largest, freest, and richest life of which the individual 
 is capable. But who would claim that equal material 
 gifts are necessary to this ideal ? If the goal is a 
 society in which all can live out openly and health- 
 fully every faculty they possess, then " equality of 
 chance " is as good a phrase as any to express 
 the conditions that would make such life possi- 
 ble. Both of these phrases have become wearisome. 
 Yet it seems impossible to fix upon better ones, if 
 the purpose is to show what the ideal of equality 
 must be. 
 
 For a great multitude in our midst, equality of 
 chance is choked by all manner of obstacles. Here 
 is the test to our honesty in the discussion. On the 
 one side it is maintained that the average man always 
 has his equal chance ; upon the other, this is madly 
 denied. To get at such truth as there is between 
 these extremes of opinion is to see all that the prob- 
 lem can give.
 
 246 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 Let us state again what is deepest in this unabating 
 purpose of the demos. It is not for absolute or exter- 
 nal equalities. It is not for any equality that will 
 submit to nice measurement. It is for far more 
 equality than exists. It is for as much equality as 
 each is capable of seizing and using to his own and 
 others' good. All will admit that justice halts until 
 men and women in general do have essential equality 
 in using their powers. 
 
 The Utopian stage has made it plain that external 
 uniformities in every kind and degree are discredited. 
 These are but the poor letter of social justice. Its 
 spirit will not be without external tokens, but these 
 will be lightly regarded. The spirit of equality 
 will appeal to another order of evidence. It will 
 claim as the imperishable right of every child 
 born among us to have, as far as possible, the full 
 and free occasions to live its best life. A society 
 which should give this chance to all, would make 
 the nearest approach to justice. In the light of this 
 conception, we should straightway test our evils and 
 our remedies. In its light we should ask what 
 is now being done to bring these fairer results a 
 little nearer. In its light we should seek to know 
 what class now has this opportunity to make the 
 most of life, and through what agencies so great 
 a good has been attained. In its light we should 
 inquire what class is hindered and why it is hin- 
 dered from putting life to its best uses. Unerringly 
 one can point to large sections of the toiling world 
 whose first steps toward an ampler life are hopelessly 
 barred. 
 
 Let us test this by the very simplest illustrations,
 
 THE MASTER PASSION OF DEMOCRACY 247 
 
 which show us a very fountain-head of quite unneces- 
 sary inequalities. 
 
 It is not yet twenty years since a careful investi- 
 gation in Berlin showed that more than seventy thou- 
 sand of her population were living in single rooms. It 
 was found that the death-rate for this group rose to 
 the appalling figure of 163.5 P er thousand in the 
 year. On the other hand, when families had three 
 or four rooms, the death-rate fell below 20 in the 
 thousand. This would excite only incredulity if we 
 had not the same history in English and Scotch cities 
 less than a generation ago. But the sociological 
 significance of this ghastly difference is not in the 
 mere fact of such a death record ; it is as nothing 
 compared with what that mortality implies. Colonel 
 Waring believed that every one of these abnormal 
 deaths stood for more than ten times as many serious 
 and corrupting illnesses. A death-rate so unnatural 
 implies degeneracy in the entire group. A mortality 
 rate of 18 per thousand may mean a healthy com- 
 munity, but a community devastated to the extent 
 of 163.5 P er thousand is not only itself diseased, but 
 a source of general social disorder, intemperance, 
 crime, prostitution, and special forms of lawlessness. 1 
 
 Another illustration that finds its counterpart in 
 every community shows how the first essentials of 
 
 1 Professor Marshall says,* "The extent of the infant mortality that 
 arises from preventable causes may be inferred from the fact that 
 while the annual death-rate of children under five years of age is only 
 about two per cent in the families of peers, and is less than three per 
 cent for the whole of the upper classes, it is between six and seven per 
 cent for the whole of England, f 
 
 * " Principles of Economics," first edition, p. 257. 
 
 t The terrible effects upon the family when crowded into small space may b 
 seen in the first chapter of Graham Wallace's " Life of Francis Place."
 
 248 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 equality are snatched from the weak, under our very 
 eyes. It was noted at the Cambridge Associated 
 Charities that a succession of destitute " cases " were 
 traceable to a crushing indebtedness, under which the 
 victim was staggering. An investigation begun in 
 January, 1896, showed that in a few months over 
 seven hundred loans had been placed among the poor, 
 at rates of interest varying from 50 per cent to 120 
 per cent. The existing law was easily evaded by 
 frequent transfers of the mortgage, the victim pay- 
 ing from $3 to $5 for every transfer. Of over one 
 hundred cases carefully traced, a few examples will 
 lay bare the enormity of the wrong : (i) "Twenty 
 dollars were borrowed, from which $5 were at 
 once deducted for ' expenses ' ; interest charged 
 $1.50 a month (i.e. 90 per cent on $20) or 120 per 
 cent on the $15 actually received. Paid $73.50 in 
 interest, after which mortgage was foreclosed, and 
 furniture costing $150 was seized and sold, the 
 family being left Saturday night with nothing but a 
 stove and rug." (2) " Thirty-two dollars borrowed. 
 Interest $2.50 a month. When the case was taken 
 in hand at the office, $54.25 had already been paid 
 to the lender, who was still demanding $18.50." (3) 
 "Thirty dollars borrowed. Interest $2 per month. 
 This had dragged on until the wretched debtor had 
 paid $106, with $29 more to pay." 
 
 Who can assert that these people had equality of 
 opportunity, or that the heavy burden of their un- 
 equal struggle was a decree of fate ? 
 
 These cases are very bad, but they are not the 
 most extreme ones. If Cambridge is exceptional, it 
 is in being freer from cruelties like these than the
 
 THE MASTER PASSION OF DEMOCRACY 249 
 
 average large town. The great city offers a spectacle 
 of helpless entanglements of which the illustrations 
 give but the slightest hint. Do these snared thou- 
 sands have equality of opportunity ? The first step 
 toward it is barred from them by their ignorance, 
 their poverty, and the habits which these have bred. 
 The instance is the fitter for our use, because, like so 
 many sources of social inequality, it is for the most 
 part unnecessary. It is among the most hopeful of 
 sociological discoveries that the larger part of these 
 crippling conditions that make for inequality, is merely 
 a social blunder. The child in industry, the truck 
 store, a large part of the system of fining and " over- 
 time," the sweatshop, the tenement-house evil, are 
 one and all departures from the highest business 
 standard. An honored Boston physician said at a 
 gathering interested in day nurseries : " We used to 
 think that almost any treatment was good enough for 
 the babies of the poor. We know now that the best 
 which science affords is even the cheapest for society." 
 The vast material gathered in Germany, under the 
 Sickness and Accident Insurance, proves that in final 
 cash reckoning it pays to have the best appliances 
 for the sick and the injured, the best medicines, the 
 best physicians, and the best nursing. It is found that 
 no extravagance is so wasteful as a skinflint economy. 
 As a result of this splendid information, the whole 
 standard of ministering to misfortune among the poor 
 is being raised throughout the entire empire. The 
 head of a great business in Elgin, Illinois, told me, " I 
 have learned that almost all over-time work is bad 
 management; all work beyond nine hours before 
 long we shall say eight is a mistaken policy."
 
 2$O THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 Among these evils from which inequalities spring, 
 some can be stopped altogether, and all can be 
 diminished. The hiring of money at seven or eight 
 times the current rates cannot be totally extinguished. 
 There is no way given to men of protecting all 
 degrees of carelessness and ignorance from the con- 
 sequences of their folly. No more evidence is want- 
 ing, however, to show that loan associations and 
 municipal pawnshops may meet these needs among 
 the poor, at less than a third of the average pawn- 
 shop burden, and with far greater safety and con- 
 sideration for the borrower. The way has been 
 made clear for an immense decrease in this special 
 source of unequal opportunities. 
 
 What shall be said of equal opportunity for boys 
 who begin their careers as described by the ablest 
 factory inspector that Illinois ever had ? " In many 
 factories it is customary for the youngest lad to go 
 to the nearest saloon, carrying a long pole with 
 pegs in its side, and a tin can hanging from every 
 peg. On the return trip the pole lies across the lad's 
 shoulder, and the cans containing beer swing as he 
 walks. He is paid for his trouble in sips of beer. 
 The ' beer boy ' is a part of the equipment in all 
 large smithies, and, indeed, wherever work is done at 
 an excessive temperature. The workmen, full-grown 
 and able-bodied, and engaged at steady work, take 
 their beer as food or refreshment. But they have no 
 realizing sense of the effect on the little lad's growing 
 body and mind of the sips which they give him. 
 
 " A far larger number of children form the habit of 
 drinking from exhaustion. They work out of all pro- 
 portion to their strength, endure the same extremes
 
 THE MASTER PASSION OF DEMOCRACY 251 
 
 of heat, cold, noise, dirt, discomfort, and exhaustion 
 as the men among whom they work, and feel the need 
 of something they do not know what. The most 
 accessible and instantaneous means of comfort is a 
 drink, and the habit is easily and quickly formed. Even 
 where boys are restrained from drinking by the for- 
 tunate habit of carrying home all their earnings, a 
 practice widespread and beneficent, the exhaustion of 
 the long working-day, heavy and indigestible lunch, 
 and long journey to and from work, in all weathers, 
 ultimately bring a craving for stimulants. And when 
 a raise in wages comes, when the lad is fifteen or six- 
 teen, it often happens that the old wage is carried 
 home and the difference spent in drink. The example 
 of the older men counts for much in this, but physical 
 exhaustion counts for more." 
 
 I have already referred to thirty thousand homes, 
 at least, in and about New York City alone, in which 
 the sweated work of the clothing trade is done. The 
 Tenement-house Commission, with the help of the 
 most competent physicians in New York, has passed 
 judgment on this type of home. 
 
 Dr. John H. Pryor said (November 16, 1900) : 
 " So far as I can learn there are in the tenement 
 houses of New York City alone not in Greater New 
 York, but in New York City alone there are con- 
 stantly 20,000 consumptives ; that is, considering all 
 the stages of the disease. Nor does this show the 
 prevalence of the disease in the tenement houses ; 
 because it is found by post-mortem examination of 
 those dying from other diseases that very many of 
 them have forms of tuberculosis also. So that I 
 think the statement is perfectly safe that a majority
 
 252 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 of the tenement-house dwellers in New York City 
 have tuberculosis in some form. It is a disease quite 
 distinctive of tenement-house life at the present time." 
 
 This is the situation which the consumer of these 
 goods has to face. The Consumers' League long 
 hesitated to lay great stress upon these aspects of 
 filth and disease, because of their alarmist and sen- 
 sational nature. The sober and authoritative testi- 
 mony, before such a body as the Tenement-house 
 Commission, of physicians and trained nurses of the 
 highest standing makes it impossible for the League 
 to withhold this evidence from the public. The men- 
 ace to the great multitude of innocent buyers is so im- 
 mediate and so grave that agitation should not rest 
 until every buyer can have at the retail store an 
 absolute guarantee that the purchased garment is not 
 from a sweatshop or a tenement, but is made under 
 conditions so open to proper inspection as to insure 
 to the worker a tolerable existence, and to the home 
 where the garments are worn immunity from disease. 
 
 Here is a kind of cheapness that means an early 
 and decrepit age, an unfit parenthood with offspring 
 that are to be mere vehicles of that stunted and 
 wretched lineage which is the shame and peril of our 
 common Me. If the sweatshop spread diphtheria 
 and typhus, there is the hue and cry before personal 
 danger. But these diseases are the very slightest 
 elements of the real risk to the general good. It is 
 the spoiled human life with its deadly legacy of 
 enfeebled mind and body that reacts directly and 
 indirectly on the social whole. 
 
 Look again at the problem of child labor which the 
 new economic conditions of the South have rapidly 
 developed.
 
 THE MASTER PASSION OF DEMOCRACY 253 
 
 A perfectly competent committee has published a 
 report upon this subject from which I quote a single 
 page : 
 
 "From 1870 to 1880, of those employed in the 
 cotton factories, the number of men over sixteen 
 years of age increased 92.8 per cent, the women over 
 sixteen years of age increased 77 per cent, and the 
 children under sixteen years of age increased 140.9 
 per cent. 
 
 "From 1880 to 1890 the number of men over six- 
 teen years of age increased 21.8 per cent, the women 
 over sixteen years of age increased 269 per cent, and 
 the children under sixteen years of age increased 
 106.5 per cent 
 
 "From 1890 to 1900 the number of men over six- 
 teen years of age increased 79 per cent, the women 
 over sixteen years of age 158.3 per cent, and the 
 children under sixteen years of age increased 270.7 
 per cent ! 
 
 "According to the official report for 1899 from the 
 Labor Bureau of North Carolina, the state, represented 
 by Colonel D. A. Tompkins, and the only state of the 
 South presenting an official report upon labor statis- 
 tics, less than 10 per cent of the operatives in the 
 textile mills of that state were under fourteen years 
 of age. But, according to the report of 1901, those 
 under fourteen constituted nearly 18 per cent of 
 the whole number. Of the total of 45,044 textile 
 operatives, 7996 (shall we say 8000 ?) are under four- 
 teen years, and the average wage of the child has de- 
 creased from 32 cents to 29 cents per day. (See page 
 212 of the North Carolina Report of Department of 
 Labor and Printing for 1899, and page 187 of Report
 
 254 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 of same department for 1901.) The daily wage of 
 the factory children of the South is often as low as 1 5 
 cents ; it is sometimes as low as 9 cents. The North 
 Carolina figures also indicate that there, as elsewhere 
 throughout the South, the number of little girls 
 among the employees far exceeds the number of 
 boys." ! 
 
 I have heard some disputing about the literal ac- 
 curacy of some of these figures. It is claimed both 
 that they are overstated and that they are understated. 
 But no greater exactness of statement will modify 
 the ugly meaning of the page. One has here, 
 besides the manufacture of cotton, the manufacture 
 of future inequalities on an immense scale in ten 
 years an increase of children in these factories, 270.7 
 per cent ! 
 
 More than twenty thousand children are at work 
 in these mills at the present moment. It is the 
 opinion of some Southern investigators that one-third 
 of these are under ten years of age. This means a 
 heavy legacy of future inequalities. It is of course 
 natural that from the poorer farming districts, fami- 
 lies should flock to the factories for the higher wage 
 that the entire family can earn. With no legislative 
 protection, the deadliest form of the "family wage" 
 is substituted for the wage of the natural bread- 
 winner. If he have dead-beat instincts, he can lounge 
 
 1 " The Case against Child Labor," an argument by Edgar Gardner 
 Murphy of Montgomery, chairman of the executive committee on 
 Child Labor in Alabama. The other members of the committee are 
 Ex-Governor Thomas G. Jones, Judge J. B. Gaston, and Gordon Mac- 
 donald of Montgomery ; John Craft of Mobile ; A. J. Reilly of 
 Birmingham, and Dr. J. H. Phillips, superintendent of schools of 
 Birmingham.
 
 THE MASTER PASSION OF DEMOCRACY 255 
 
 at the saloon upon the money which his wife and 
 children earn. One finds them in every Southern 
 mill-town. It is under these conditions that every 
 variety of a vicious truck system of wage payment 
 springs into existence. One wanders about in some 
 of these communities in a kind of dream, as if he had 
 been spirited back into an English factory town of 
 two generations ago. 
 
 A common argument to justify this great wrong 
 is that as England had to pass through this stage so 
 must the South pass through it. This is an excuse, 
 it is not an argument. The very meaning of social 
 politics is that it gathers experience for practical use 
 in just such issues as child labor. There is no need 
 that we should pass through all the desolating stages 
 of that former experience. In the England of 1825 
 there was no precedent. Aside from the splendid 
 achievements of the English acts and preventive 
 legislation coupled with popular education, our own 
 states, like Connecticut, Minnesota, and Massachu- 
 setts, have legal limitation as to age and compul- 
 sory school attendance which check these evils at 
 their source. A competitor of Robert Owen, who 
 pronounced legal interference with child labor the 
 " maudlin sentimentalism of those who knew neither 
 business nor human nature," had been making in 
 the cotton business, according to his own admission, 
 two hundred per cent in yearly profits. Yet he 
 and his fellows held that they could not afford to 
 dispense with child labor because that would drive 
 business out of England. The Southern mills do not 
 make such profits, but some of them make thirty per 
 cent, and use the same argument that they cannot
 
 256 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 afford to do away with the child's help, because of 
 Northern competition. Northern capitalists have 
 more humiliation in this wickedness than Southern, 
 because the main issue has been long under discus- 
 sion in the North. 1 Compulsory school attendance 
 during the period in which employment is prohibited 
 is now required in seven states. In every instance 
 where this has been enforced, as in Massachusetts, 
 there has been no difficulty in keeping children out 
 of industries. 
 
 In Pennsylvania, in an atmosphere thick with black 
 dust and vibrating with the roar of the crushers, one 
 may see an army of breaker boys sorting the coal 
 and picking slate. Hundreds of these children can- 
 not be above ten and eleven years of age. The 
 parents sanction a lying certificate of age, and the 
 employers are indifferent. After three or four years 
 at the breaker, they pass to the mine proper. Equal- 
 ity of opportunity in no conceivable sense belongs to 
 these boys. If they had been born crippled or 
 stupid, that inequality would be out of our control, 
 but much of the handicap under which they now 
 struggle can be removed. Three or four years of 
 school at this age multiplies life's chances for every 
 one of these youths. 
 
 Especial emphasis is here given to those instances 
 that have to do with the child defrauded of its educa- 
 tional rights, because education in its best and larg- 
 est sense carries the deepest hope of all ultimate 
 attainable equalities. Careful training for one's 
 
 1 The absurd differences in the standard of industrial regulation in 
 our various states has this advantage for the student, that it enabks 
 him to bring into vivid comparison a score of conflicting policies.
 
 THE MASTER PASSION OF DEMOCRACY 257 
 
 tasks is two or three times more necessary than it 
 was in times that old men still remember. Excep- 
 tional force will overcome these barriers with little or 
 no schooling, but commonplace and average capacity, 
 that has to-day scant and slovenly training, is disad- 
 vantaged as never before in history. 
 
 If we bring the least disposition toward fair inter- 
 pretation, we may now see what the best spokesmen 
 in the labor and socialist movement ask. As they 
 frankly recognize the final passing away of the 
 Utopian stage, as they recognize the uselessness of 
 isolated colony schemes, their conception of social 
 equality is no longer a visionary freak, but has as 
 much soberness as most of our saner social ideals. 
 
 The " passion of the democracy " has the perfectly 
 rational aim that is expressed in the term " multiply 
 life's chances." It is a quantitative expression. No 
 influence that society has at command could give 
 complete equality to these breaker boys or to the 
 child victims in Southern mills. Yet we can give a 
 great deal more equality. If the reader wonders 
 why so poor a platitude requires statement, the 
 answer is that these simple facts are necessary to 
 show that the best of our socialist critics are asking 
 merely for these further steps toward the more equal 
 life. They are asking for what all fair men admit to 
 be a just and rational aim in social bettering. 1 
 
 1 The question of equality could of course have no complete discus- 
 sion without including the first practical purpose of a militant collec- 
 tivism, to socialize the means of production and to use the resources 
 of a fairer system of taxation to strike at the present roots of economic 
 privilege. These sources of inequality are, however, a part of the dis- 
 cussion in the entire volume.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 SOCIALISM : HISTORY AND THEORY 
 
 THERE is no audience before which it is safe to 
 speak upon this subject without careful definition of 
 terms. The stock definition is the appropriation by 
 society of the means of production. But if socialism 
 is taken at its highest point of development, general 
 definitions will gain in clearness if they are preceded 
 by some reference to history, and especially if experi- 
 ments now under trial are carefully considered. 
 
 Some one has collected " ten thousand definitions 
 of religion." One could gather as many of socialism. 
 The propelling thought behind it has so changed 
 during the last century that one seems to be dealing 
 not with one thing, but with many. 
 
 The explanation is that from the point of view of 
 history, socialism has been a growth, reflecting upon 
 one side social and trade conditions of the time ; 
 upon the other the ideals of the writer. These have 
 changed, just as ideals have changed in education, 
 in politics, and in religion. The socialism of the 
 French Revolution differs from that of our day as 
 the science and the politics of that day differ from 
 our own. It is well to know something of this his- 
 tory, but to define socialism in the terms of these 
 earlier dreams is misleading. Communism is as old 
 as human society ; socialism is essentially modern and 
 
 258
 
 SOCIALISM: HISTORY AND THEORY 259 
 
 is hardly conceivable apart from the capitalism which 
 created it. 
 
 Socialism is often defined as a philosophy, and so 
 limited, it is legitimate to use large abstractions about 
 equality, fraternity, and justice. These abstractions, 
 however, fail us at the point where our need of light 
 is greatest. That society should be just, free, and 
 fraternal wins ready assent, but how is this splendid 
 goal to be reached ? Campanella, Bacon, and St. 
 Simon, as Plato before them, tell us we have only to 
 make the wisest and best men our political officials. 
 This would be our plan also, but we are poor bunglers 
 in carrying it into practical effect. We are now and 
 then very eloquent about the good man's political re- 
 sponsibility, but are vexed to death to know the ways 
 and means through which the wisest and best can be 
 selected to govern us, and kept in their places. The 
 difficulty has not been with the statement of prin- 
 ciples, but in their everyday application. Thus 
 socialism, in its merely philosophic aspects, leaves 
 our hardest questions still unanswered. 
 
 Again socialism is treated as a religion. Poetic 
 license here reaches its climax. We are told that 
 socialism is "a life," that it is a "religion," that 
 it is an " aspiration." l The difficulty with this phras- 
 ing is that it fails to distinguish its object from 
 twenty others. If socialism is a life, a religion, an 
 aspiration, so are Buddhism and Christianity ; so is 
 the Faith-cure ; so are the Ethical Societies. These 
 vague uses of the term are not more objectionable 
 than it is to make socialism merely an affair of 
 
 1 Proudhon said in 1848, " Le Socialisme c'est toute aspiration vers 
 Pamelioration de la Societe."
 
 26O THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 economic and business reorganization. It has its 
 philosophy, it is a religion. To forget this is to deal 
 not with a whole, but with a fragment. The truth 
 still remains that for purposes of definition the eco- 
 nomic and political aspects require special emphasis, 
 because only through them do we learn how the 
 blessings of a more equal life are to be secured. We 
 need to know about questions of method and of 
 practical procedure. For this purpose, at least a 
 little history is indispensable. 
 
 History 
 
 For fervor of influence, French speculation is of 
 the highest consequence. Napoleon said of Rous- 
 seau, that without him there would have been no 
 revolution. The " later revolution of July " was 
 directly influenced in its social aspects by the writ- 
 ings of St. Simon. Great business organizers like 
 Leclaire, Boucicaut, and Godin were stirred to very 
 brilliant practical achievement by the poets of social 
 reorganization. It is yet true that these dreamers 
 throw less light on our subject than the soberer 
 thinking of English writers. Among French Uto- 
 pias, that of Fourier is perhaps the noblest of all. 
 No one ever saw the evils of competition with a 
 keener eye or described them with a livelier wit. He 
 sees that association must replace the coarse struggle 
 of self-seeking. But the main part of his philosophy 
 is a hopeless and discredited metaphysic. It is based 
 on a theory of human passions. His " Theory of the 
 Four Movements" attempts to explain how Deity
 
 SOCIALISM: HISTORY AND THEORY 261 
 
 manipulates the social mechanism ; how He divides 
 the passions ; how He classifies forms, substances, 
 properties, and colors. To understand these systems, 
 his disciples were to master impossible geometric 
 theorems, " impassioned attractions and unitary im- 
 passioned series." No one outside an asylum would, 
 I think, pretend to see the causal connection between 
 this theosophy and any existing practical reform. No 
 socialist now has anything to do with his phalan- 
 stery with its clock tower, one garret, one kitchen, 
 and one cellar. We know that men and women 
 generally do not like to live in that way. 
 
 There is that in Fourier's character for which the 
 word " sublime " is hardly too strong. His power to 
 sacrifice for an idea, his self-devotion, his tenacity 
 of purpose, dying of sheer heartache because the 
 world would not listen to him, all heighten our 
 admiration of the man. His speculative plan was 
 nevertheless fantastic. With the exception of Louis 
 Blanc, this has to be said of all the French Utopians. 
 The unfailing characteristic of these dreams is that 
 they ignore the facts of industrial history. The im- 
 agination runs riot without a check from the stern 
 facts of economic evolution. There is plenty of this 
 visionary quality in Fourier's contemporary, Robert 
 Owen, but this Welchman was trained from child- 
 hood under the severest business responsibilities. 
 He dreams dreams ; but no man in England was his 
 master in managing a great mill. Owen was born 
 into the kind of business organization which has 
 created modern socialism. His own business tri- 
 umphs were the triumphs of English capitalism ; its 
 life was his life. He is very dull reading beside
 
 262 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 Fourier or St. Simon, but he is far closer to the com- 
 petitive struggle which has forced socialism to leave 
 the thin air of Utopia for the humbler ground of 
 common experience. It is through this same expe- 
 rience that every form of continental socialism will 
 be compelled to pass. Where business is still car- 
 ried on under eighteenth-century methods, in Sicily, 
 South Italy, and much of Spain, the programmes of 
 socialism are as much in the clouds as Cabet's " Voy- 
 ages en Icarie " or Morelly's " Code de la Nature." 
 There is the same taste for resonant phrase, the 
 same faith in abstractions, the same hatred of slow 
 and toilsome preparation. As capitalism has rapidly 
 developed in the larger towns of Northern Italy, it has 
 stimulated socialism, but has made it already a differ- 
 ent thing from the socialism of the more primitive 
 Southern towns. 
 
 As modern industrialism has taken root in Ger- 
 many, and as its methods have been reflected in 
 politics, socialists during the last twenty years have 
 approached, step by step, the policy of the English 
 Fabians, just as Fabians themselves have changed 
 into almost commonplace politicians with a more radi- 
 cal, industrial and social programme. 
 
 Another reason why English tradition has excep- 
 tional value is that in no other European country do 
 business and commerce so obviously determine poli- 
 tics. Parliament is a mirror in which one sees the 
 clash of interests among landowners, manufacturers, 
 and traders. Her wars are to open or preserve mar- 
 kets. Probably in no country have economists from 
 Adam Smith down had so direct an influence upon 
 political leaders. In the United States we have long
 
 SOCIALISM: HISTORY AND THEORY 263 
 
 since learned that politics is mainly a struggle over 
 these same competitive interests. Economic doctrine 
 has, however, no considerable influence upon our lead- 
 ing politicians. The business pressure acts upon them 
 directly and simply. The nineteenth century in Eng- 
 land is invaluable for the student of socialism because 
 this intimate association of business policy with poli- 
 tics throws light upon socialist proposals. Much 
 of the earlier socialism was contemptuous of poli- 
 tics. All socialism that is becoming effective now 
 enters the political arena with a very grim purpose to 
 fight out its issues at the polls. Very important is this 
 last century in England, because the most powerful 
 of all socialist literary influences had its impulse and 
 training there. Unless an exception is made of the 
 " Wealth of Nations," no single work upon econom- 
 ics ever had greater influence than Marx's study of 
 capitalism. In spite of all perversities, this " Bible 
 of Socialism " has aroused and directed revolutionary 
 socialist thought during the last quarter of a cen- 
 tury that has been its transition from capricious 
 speculation to a great and threatening political force. 
 This study was made in England. Marx drew his 
 material from parliamentary records and from dis- 
 cussions that centred about the rising factory legisla- 
 tion. The most telling of those principles that are 
 used to carry war into the capitalist camp were 
 taken boldly from English economists of the first 
 rank. Every essential of the famous theory of " sur- 
 plus value " is of English origin. The conception 
 that "labor produces all wealth," was an economic 
 commonplace of the earlier English school. The 
 socialist takes the economist at his word. " If labor
 
 264 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 does create all wealth, why should not labor have it 
 all?" No formula has ever been used with more 
 deadly effect in the field of popular agitation. Marx 
 modifies it by his doctrine of average social labor ; 
 but for purposes of propaganda it still goes down in 
 many of the most recent socialist programmes in its 
 simplest form, " labor alone produces wealth, labor 
 alone should have it." It detracts little from this 
 author's original power to say that he found his best 
 material and his most striking formulas in England. 
 The skilled dialectic with which he puts his material 
 to use, leaves him without a peer in his own field. 
 His method is so applied to history that all social 
 development appears as inexorable necessity before 
 which the doom of capitalism is but an affair of the 
 calendar. No religious fatalism ever worked upon 
 the uncritical imagination with more irresistible effect. 
 As one listens to the familiar phrases before an 
 average workingman's audience, it is evident that if 
 this " scientific socialism " is not a religion, it acts 
 with the same mysterious power. 
 
 The reason why England best interprets our present 
 problem is that the capitalistic system first develops 
 on her soil. In the very years when France was 
 seething with the unrest of the great Revolution, the 
 English were inventing and applying those mechanical 
 processes through which capitalism was to become 
 triumphant. It is at this time that the loom, puddling, 
 and the steam-engine work their revolution. As they 
 develop, industries are driven from the private home 
 the factory town emerges, and the tools, once owned 
 by the laborer, pass finally into the possession of the 
 capitalistic employer. What modern socialism is
 
 SOCIALISM: HISTORY AND THEORY 265 
 
 fighting is the system which rests on the capitalisfs 
 ownership of this machinery. This evolution in its 
 entirety is spread before us in England during the 
 nineteenth century. The hunger for equality which 
 is the real object at which all socialism aims is deeper 
 among the French. They have put these demands 
 into more brilliant form, but for instruction as to the 
 way through which this equality may be won they help 
 us less than the English. 
 
 When Marx begins to write down his interpreta- 
 tion of English experience in mills, workshops, and 
 markets, we are introduced into a new world. From 
 this period the transformation of socialism has gone 
 on until its working programme is as clearly intelligi- 
 ble, as that of any political party in the world. It is 
 at the present moment far more definite than the pro- 
 gramme either of our republican or democratic party 
 in the United States. Neither liberal nor tory in 
 England shows a political purpose so concrete as that 
 of the socialists. Their aims may be wild or danger- 
 ous, they are not vague and indefinite. 
 
 II 
 
 Illustrations of Theory 
 
 If modern socialism is fighting the system which 
 rests on private ownership of the means of production 
 (land and machinery), upon what theory is the attack 
 justified ? Why should it be thought that because 
 land, banks, railways, telegraph, and mills are owned 
 and carried on for private profit that therefore the 
 labor world is robbed of a portion of its earnings ? 
 The completest theory is that of Marx, but many of
 
 266 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 the clearest headed among the socialists have come 
 to disbelieve the forms in which he expressed it. 
 They admit that labor does not produce all wealth 
 (even as modified by Marx), they admit that labor is 
 not held to the " mere subsistence line, " but may 
 get increased wages and added comforts. They are 
 learning that Marx's conception of concentrating 
 capital is more than doubtful in agriculture and is 
 sharply limited in many other industries. His whole 
 materialistic view of history is denied outright by 
 many of the best-equipped socialists. But socialism 
 has not been discredited because of this passing of the 
 master. Nowhere do socialists, who have lost faith 
 in the special theoretic forms of Marx, show less 
 loyalty to the cause or less hatred to capitalism. They 
 still believe that labor is exploited, and that the wage 
 system is vicious. Behind this belief is still a theory 
 a theory which may easily be stated in copy-book form, 
 but for the purposes here in view, a variety of il- 
 lustrations that are happily at hand from a dozen 
 different fields, will throw more light even on the 
 theory. 
 
 Perhaps the most persistent and universal demand 
 of socialism is that labor should receive the entire 
 product, not of course the manual laborer alone, but 
 all those as well who organize, direct, and invent. 
 This does not, as popularly supposed, include the 
 capitalist. The capital as capitalist is money lender 
 and not worker. The working employer so often at 
 the same time furnishes capital that worker and 
 capitalist are confused. Socialists object, not to the 
 worker, but to the money lender buying and control- 
 ling machinery and land for his personal profit.
 
 SOCIALISM: HISTORY AND THEORY 267 
 
 Competent critics of socialism like Dr. Menger hold 
 that this claim of labor to the total product is, not 
 only the most fundamental principle in socialism, but the 
 most revolutionary force of the present age. Even if 
 true, so abstract a statement as the laborer's claim to 
 the total product leaves our most important questions 
 unanswered. What theoretic justification exists for 
 this claim ? 
 
 It is that as industry is now organized it gives back 
 to the worker far less than his labor has produced. 
 The reason of this is that an enormous unearned 
 increment is perpetually abstracted in the form of 
 interest, rent, and profits. Those who depend solely 
 upon interest, rent, or profits from their machinery 
 are, according to this view, living upon income that is 
 earned by others. Henry George and his followers 
 have popularized this view, so far as it concerns the 
 rent of land. George held that rent derived from 
 land was income that the owner did not earn. Rent, 
 he said, arises from the growth of the community, 
 not from anything the private owner does. Rent is 
 wholly a social product, and should therefore go to 
 its creator, the community. George was not a social- 
 ist, because he did not apply this theory of rent to 
 interest and profits. These he would leave as pri- 
 vate possessions. The socialist believes that not 
 only rent, but interest and profits on goods made for 
 the market are also a social product. Quite as much 
 as rent they represent an unearned increment. 
 They, too, are social rather than individual products, 
 and should therefore pass to their owner society. 
 
 But what theoretical defence can be offered for the 
 social origin of wealth as distinct from the individual
 
 268 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 origin ? In what sense can it be said that the com- 
 munity helps the millionnaire to create his fortune and 
 possibly the larger portion of it ? The answer of the 
 collectivist is that an analysis of practically all the 
 great fortunes will show that the possessors earned, 
 by personal service, only a trifling part of their mill- 
 ions. Ground rents heap up the treasures of the 
 New York Astors. The elder Vanderbilt lays the 
 great railway into the West; but the social additions- 
 lands, city terminals, and crowding population enrich 
 it with values far beyond any service that any one 
 person can render. It may be oil, gold, copper, iron, 
 coal, coupled with special transportation privileges 
 cunningly secured through the politician ; it may be 
 a privilege like rebates wrung from a corporation 
 like the railroad which is semi-public and social in 
 character. The collectivist insists that every one of 
 these dazzling incomes can be traced to an origin 
 that is far more social than individual. To keep and 
 to restore this social increment in all its forms is the 
 aim of economic socialism. 
 
 The department stores also offer a good illustra- 
 tion. As in Chicago, Boston, and New York, these 
 stores are geographically so related to the machinery 
 of transportation that the multitude is deposited at 
 their very doors. Of a great Chicago firm, I have 
 heard it said, " It seems as if the trolley cars were 
 made for that store." It and a dozen others are so 
 grouped that every form of transportation is to their 
 immediate gain. If more trains run, if they run 
 more rapidly, if fares are lowered, the advantage 
 goes automatically to these emporiums of trade. 
 Every extra franchise that the city grants adds to
 
 SOCIALISM: HISTORY AND THEORY 269 
 
 their possessions. It is the dawning realization of 
 this that begins now to create dislike of these cara- 
 vansaries. When a lower street-car fare was pro- 
 posed in Chicago, an unexpected opposition developed 
 among thousands of people who said, " Cheaper 
 fares and then just so many more people will ride to 
 the State Street stores. Towns near Chicago oppose 
 excursion trains because they see that those who 
 return, are loaded down with things bought at the 
 great stores. Some one has called steam and electric 
 transportation "the most revolutionary fact in the 
 last century." It makes the New England farmer 
 poor, but fills the department store to overflowing. I 
 heard an attorney, who does the business for one of 
 the largest of these institutions, say, that when the 
 people came clearly to understand that every improve- 
 ment in streets, sidewalks, and traffic was a free gift 
 to the department store, they would subject them to 
 heavy special taxation. 
 
 The socialist theory is that the prosperity of these 
 stores is in large degree owing to this network of 
 improved inventions which brings customers so easily 
 to the counters ; it is owing to the growing popula- 
 tion which steam and electricity have gathered to- 
 gether. This view carries George's theory of rent on 
 to profits as it also extends it to interest. 
 
 This theory of the three rents is expressed in many 
 forms, as when SchaefHe writes, " The Alpha and 
 Omega of socialism is the transformation of private 
 and competing capitals into a united collective capi- 
 tal." Or the English Fabians, "Socialism means the 
 organization and conduct of the necessary industries 
 of the country, and the appropriation of all forms of
 
 2/O THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 economic rent of land and capital, by the nation as a 
 whole, through the most suitable public authorities, 
 parochial, municipal, provincial, or central." 
 
 Whatever form the definition takes, there is to-day 
 no clearly conceived socialism that does not aim first 
 of all at the socializing of the "three rents." If 
 socialism were to triumph and be carried to logical 
 completeness, no individual could draw a penny's in- 
 come from interest, rent, or profits. These would pass 
 to the community. That they may pass to the many, 
 rather than to the few, is the reason why in all these 
 programmes the same demands are made. The state 
 must take the railroad and the telegraph, as eventually 
 it must take the mill and the factory. The city must 
 take the lighting and the street-car lines in order to 
 divert earnings from the private to the public pocket. 
 The socialist would have the community carry on 
 these enterprises so that accruing interest and profits 
 may become the property of all, or managed (as we 
 were recently told by a high official from New Zea- 
 land) strictly for the use of the people with no 
 thought of making profits. "We hope," he said, 
 "to manage our railroads, our mines, our insurance 
 companies as you manage your post-office, solely to 
 serve the whole people and not chiefly as profit-mak- 
 ing machines in which a small minority of the people 
 can invest their surplus in order to become coupon- 
 mongers." 1 
 
 So to organize industry that the coupon-monger in 
 every form shall be suppressed is the raison d'etre of 
 socialism. It stamps this occupation as that of the 
 
 1 Chief Justice Clark of Tasmania now in this country (Nov. loxtf) 
 gives unqualified approval to this general policy.
 
 SOCIALISM: HISTORY AND THEORY 2/1 
 
 parasite, or, in rougher terms, the real dead beat of 
 modern society is to the socialist, not the tramp and 
 petty sponger, but those who live upon rent and inter- 
 est-bearing property. 
 
 Only a part of the socialists now hold to the logical 
 consequences of this theory. If forced to the letter, 
 no woman could use her sewing-machine to make an 
 apron or shirt for sale on the market. She would 
 become, with the rest of the parasites, a profit mon- 
 ger. A Massachusetts socialist, twenty years ago, 
 was cocksure that he should live to see the big stores 
 in Boston swallow up practically all the little ones. 
 Since then every variety of small local store has so in- 
 creased that it is doubtful if (per thousand of the popu- 
 lation) there was ever so large a number in the 
 history of the city. The tenacity with which small, 
 freely competing businesses retain their hold has 
 made it clear that an enormous part of profit-mak- 
 ing services is here to stay for such an indefinite 
 future that all opinions about their duration have as 
 much value as most fanciful guessing about the 
 unknown. 
 
 Thus the cannier socialists direct attention to those 
 fields upon which competition has given place to 
 combination. Here especially, if monopoly character 
 is shown, is the harvest white for the socialist sickle. 
 At this point many economists, refusing the socialist 
 creed, are in heartiest agreement with :: in one 
 respect. They admit that these monopolistic com- 
 binations may draw away from the people in form of 
 profits far more wealth than is their due. This may 
 be done by business chicane as through overcapitali- 
 zation ; it may be done through political influence that
 
 2/2 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 secures special privileges, like rebates that weaker 
 competitors cannot secure. It is for this whole class 
 of large enterprises, based on privilege and monopoly 
 of some kind, businesses in which competition has 
 passed into the stage requiring control in the public 
 interest, that many socialists now ask public in the 
 place of private ownership. As other industries one 
 by one reach this stage, they too are to be taken from 
 private hands. 
 
 That so many collectivists now confine their claims 
 to this part of the industrial field raises a nice point 
 for speculative discussion. Does the term " socialist " 
 necessarily apply to one who believes that only that 
 part of industry is to be " socialized " which reaches 
 the stage just indicated? If one believe that the 
 larger part of the world's work is to pass into "com- 
 bines " that cannot long be trusted in private hands, 
 the word " socialist " properly belongs to him. If the 
 greater portion of industry the "pace setting" 
 part of it is to be publicly controlled, the word 
 " socialism " would fitly characterize such a society. If, 
 on the other hand, it should prove that ponderous 
 organization can cover but a portion of the field ; if 
 it prove that a still larger portion of industry still re- 
 mains in open competition, " socialism " as a blanket 
 term cannot be applied to that society. It will have 
 large and vigorous socialistic functions, but others, 
 larger and more vigorous, that are individualistic. If 
 competitive and relatively small industries are to re- 
 main the " pace setters," individualism fairly describes 
 that condition. If again it turn out, as is not unlikely, 
 that the industrial world reach a kind of equilibrium 
 under which competitive and individualistic energies
 
 SOCIALISM: HISTORY AND THEORY 273 
 
 stand in some counter-weight and balanced relation 
 to collectivist functions, what then becomes of either 
 name ? 
 
 An older German socialist worker and author once 
 said to me, with much indignation : " Your new op- 
 portunists, like the English Fabians and our Vollmar, 
 are confusing every principle on which our fight is to 
 be made. No one is a socialist who does not believe 
 that all interest, rent, and profits are to be socialized. 
 A half-and-half industry is more contemptible as an 
 ideal than the present organized robbery of competi- 
 tion." This view has probably had its day because 
 so much evidence is at hand that both art and science 
 in their larger sense must inevitably develop individ- 
 ually as well as through organization. There is that 
 in organization which has the tendency to blight the 
 art spirit just where we most need its newest and 
 most original expression. One of our best American 
 wood carvers was thrown into a rage by an invitation 
 to join a trade union. Does any genuine artist doubt 
 that art suffers under the commercial organizations 
 and companies that exploit it for profit ? It is true 
 that many artists call themselves socialists in their hot 
 reaction against this same commercialized tyranny; 
 but I have rarely seen one who was not in his ideal, 
 anarchist, like William Morris, and not properly so- 
 cialist. They were hungering for the extreme indi- 
 vidualism and freedom of the anarchist's dream. 
 The interminable discussion that continues over the 
 metaphysics of anarchism and collectivism furnishes 
 curious proofs that the race sets no such value upon 
 anything as upon freedom and individuality. What- 
 ever name we apply to a society which secures these
 
 2/4 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 gifts, it will surely be one unless the race deterio- 
 rates in which liberty, variety, and individuality 
 shall have progressively freer scope. 
 
 Whatever may be said of the " new socialism " with 
 its opportunist yielding to larger experience, the 
 socialist with a formula will neither get nor deserve 
 in the future very serious attention. A universal 
 formula, like that of " the three rents," will fare no 
 better than the others. As the dialectic of the artistic 
 passion destroys every distinguishing phrase between 
 socialism and individualism, so science, in its enlarging 
 applications, may extend the regime of private prop- 
 erty holdings in which interest, rent, and profits in a 
 thousand small industries may prove more fruitful to 
 society than if they are socialized. It is no longer a 
 mere hope that power may soon be so widely and 
 cheaply distributed as to give distinct economic ad- 
 vantage to a large variety of small industries. When 
 a better manual and art training has become a part of 
 our entire education, so that no child shall escape its 
 influence, artistic industries, experimental and indi- 
 vidualized, are not unlikely to spring into luxuriant 
 existence. The probability is exceedingly slight that 
 this movement will carry with it an elimination of 
 private ownership in the individualistic sense. Nor 
 will it be different with the whole inspiring promise 
 of agriculture when science has really vitalized it. 
 Then will work in the fields and upon the soil have 
 the fascination of the studio and the laboratory. 
 
 A former member of the New Zealand government 
 said in this country, "We mean to organize all our 
 great industries more and more so that they shall not 
 be used to make individuals rich, but every advantage
 
 SOCIALISM: HISTORY AND THEORY 2/5 
 
 of cheaper service or cheaper products shall go at 
 once to the whole body of the people." I know of no 
 completer definition of socialism than to say that any 
 country in which all the important industries were 
 carried on upon this principle would be a strictly 
 socialistic society. 
 
 No source for illustration of this theory is fairer 
 than that which New Zealand and the Australian 
 colonies offer. Here is a people with self-help tradi- 
 tions like our own. The country is relatively new, 
 has exhaustless natural resources, has won a great 
 prosperity, yet the state invades, one by one, the fields 
 where private enterprise has been supreme. Not 
 only are railroad, telegraph, and street car under 
 community ownership, but also a very different order 
 of undertakings, state banking, life insurance, loan 
 funds for farmers worked through the agency of the 
 post-office. Cooperative sugar mills, cold storage, 
 irrigation, the exportation of products, cooperative 
 use of workmen with the avowed purpose of eliminat- 
 ing the contractor, are instances of government enter- 
 ing the field of private enterprise, organizing and 
 carrying on business, not first to make money, but to 
 serve the people by managing these various agencies 
 directly for their benefit. I do not maintain that it is 
 done with signal success. A good deal of it appears 
 to me to be poorly done; but the object is socialistic, 
 showing us by illustration how the collectivist word 
 becomes flesh. It is, moreover, very conscious of its 
 aim : to narrow the margin of enterprises in which 
 rents and profits go to private persons. By so far 
 as the government acts in these affairs, the field for 
 private money making is diminished. A responsible
 
 2/6 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 minister of the government says, "We propose to 
 use the full power of the state to lessen the sway of 
 the private capitalist." 
 
 The prime minister of New Zealand is taunted 
 with frightening private capital out of the coal busi- 
 ness. He replies, that the government will before 
 long work its own mines. The minister of railways 
 points to the advantage of having no stockholders 
 to whom dividends must be paid. Another official 
 glories in the fact that the abuses of the Stock 
 Exchange are diminished in direct ratio as govern- 
 ment does business for the people. 
 
 From the socialist point of view it is an irreparable 
 debauching of the people, so to organize industry, 
 that dividend-bearing stocks shall be listed by the 
 thousands upon the Stock Exchange of every city 
 and town. This is a necessity of a dividend and 
 profit-making regime. The "dead-beat hunger" of 
 the race to get something for nothing is thus aroused 
 and a pernicious speculating fever spreads among 
 the people. Honest investments, it is maintained, 
 play but an insignificant role in this vast gambler's 
 game. I asked a New York stock broker what dif- 
 ference it would make in his business if he did business 
 only with those who came to invest. He said, " I should 
 perhaps do one-tenth of the business I now do." Mr. 
 Carnegie's opinion ought to be very valuable on this 
 subject. He has just used these words : " All pure 
 coins have their counterfeits ; the counterfeit of busi- 
 ness is speculation. A man in business always gives 
 value in return for his revenue, and thus performs a 
 useful function ; his services are necessary and benefit 
 the community ; besides, he labors steadily in develop-
 
 SOCIALISM: HISTORY AND THEORY 
 
 ing the resources of the country, and thus contributes 
 to the advancement of the race. This is genuine 
 coin. Speculation, on the contrary, is a parasite 
 fastened upon the labor of business men. It creates 
 nothing and supplies no want. When the speculator 
 wins, he takes money without rendering service or 
 giving value therefor ; and when he loses, his fellow- 
 speculator takes the money from him. It is a pure 
 gambling operation between them, degrading to both." 
 
 All that is true in these charges, the socialist holds 
 to be now inevitable. If these natural treasures are 
 open to every adventurer to be fenced off as a field 
 for private exploitation, they will be made an agency 
 to play upon the fortune-hunting instinct of the 
 people. For every honest company, a score of bogus 
 ones will be put upon the market and tempt the 
 anwary by lying prospectuses in the press. The 
 remedy wanted is state ownership with such regula- 
 tion as shall secure these riches to the public, and 
 so order this industry as to prevent its becoming the 
 most perverted of lotteries. 
 
 The socialist sees again the swift and sickening 
 waste of our forests. The private profit maker, eager 
 for quick gains, lays the great hills bare, with no 
 concern for flood or drought. The socialist insists 
 that the public welfare is too much endangered by 
 the dividend and profit hunter in this field. When 
 the state owns the forest or subjects private owner- 
 ship to the strictest regulation, the devastation ceases. 
 Forest culture is then like the growing of any other 
 crop, only with slower returns. 
 
 In the mining of precious metals and with the 
 forests, according to this view, one only sees a little
 
 2/8 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 more clearly the damage* incurred through the indi- 
 vidual appropriation of the "three rents." 
 
 English Fabians now ask for the municipalization 
 of the drink traffic. There are moral dangers con- 
 nected with this trade which distinguish it practically 
 from ordinary industries, yet it illustrates admirably 
 the socialist theory. In Norway and Sweden it long 
 since came to be believed that individual profit-mak- 
 ing in the retail liquor trade was socially dangerous. 
 Legislation based upon the principle of local option 
 now turns profits, formerly made by the individual 
 saloon keeper, into the public treasury. Under the 
 " Application of Socialism to Particular Problems," 1 
 English socialists now advocate this principle in 
 their own country. As they would municipalize 
 water, gas, tramways, docks, pawnshops, slaughter- 
 houses, and bakeries, so they would turn the dividends 
 now made by the private venders of intoxicants into 
 the town treasury. 
 
 These instances of drink, forests, and mines differ 
 only in degree from other industries that constitute 
 a source from which the individual may draw income 
 in the form of rents. Evil inheres in every transac- 
 tion that bears this unearned income of private divi- 
 dends. There is no completion of the socialist theory 
 until industry is so managed by the community that 
 interest, rent, and profit are " socialized " are turned 
 from private into public possessions. It is the social- 
 ist's faith that until this is done, a portion of what 
 labor earns will go to those who have given no equiv- 
 alent for it. To restore his unearned income to the 
 whole people, the means of production land and 
 
 1 Tracts 85 and 86.
 
 SOCIALISM: HISTORY AND THEORY 2/9 
 
 machinery must pass to social ownership. The 
 conservative cry against all this is that " it destroys 
 private property." If it were charged that certain 
 forms of private property would be destroyed, the 
 criticism is just. There is in theory no destruction 
 of private property further than that involved in 
 these "three rents." A hundred forms of property 
 (slaves, highways, toll-bridges) have changed and 
 must change with advancing civilization. Commu- 
 nism in all its extremes destroys private property 
 outright. Socialism safeguards it to the extent of 
 giving absolute rights to the individual over all 
 products that he can hold for consumption. It is 
 legitimate for the critic to urge the practical objec- 
 tion that social control of land and capital would 
 dull the working ardor of the race, and thus create 
 a product so diminished that both private and public 
 income would suffer. This as a practical result might 
 prove true. The socialist theory on the other hand 
 assumes that the industrial product would increase 
 when " the tools were again in the hands of the 
 people." Up to date there is alarmingly little proof 
 of this, but it is a strictly practical issue and can alone 
 be determined by long and severe tests in adminis- 
 trative work. Before dealing with the collective 
 principle at work in its most advanced form, two ques- 
 tions should be asked, neither of which admits of a 
 too final and confident answer. 
 
 (i) Are the economic and political forces now at 
 work bringing to the broad mass of the people such 
 wages that they will feel themselves gaining abso- 
 lutely and relatively in the varying prosperity of the 
 age ? A strong case can be made out in nine-tenths
 
 280 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 of our industries to show that the wage earners' 
 yearly income purchases an increasing share of life's 
 comforts. But relatively do the masses gain in any 
 such ratio as the more favored classes ? There are 
 many statistical attempts to prove this, but I have 
 nowhere seen a sign that it carried convincing proof 
 to the laborer. There is a very general admission 
 among them that they do gain in nominal and in 
 real wages. Among those who make this admission, 
 there is an absolute scepticism about a progress that 
 stands in any fair relation to the acquisitions of the 
 well-to-do. I have heard the best statistical authority 
 known to me in the United States deny that rela- 
 tively the masses get anything like their fair share. 
 
 If, then, it should slowly become clear that a widen- 
 ing gap is opening between the " rich and the poor," 
 most of the points I have tried to make against the 
 older revolutionary socialism lose their force. I do 
 not believe this to be true, but if it should prove so ; 
 if the gulf is deepening between the " haves " and the 
 " have nots," we are upon the dizzy edges of a class 
 struggle and a consequent revolution. It is blankly 
 inconceivable that we can rapidly democratize educa- 
 tion, as we are now doing, and at the same time have 
 it visibly appear that, in any real sense, the rich are 
 growing richer and the poor poorer, without a des- 
 perate social struggle. A social system that made 
 such a result possible would stand self -condemned 
 before all fair men. To destroy it or remodel it 
 would become the most sacred of duties. 
 
 (2) It must also be admitted that if the principles 
 of " regulation " prove too weak to curb the power 
 of the corporations, the socialistic propaganda will
 
 SOCIALISM: HISTORY AND THEORY 28 1 
 
 take on bolder and more ominous forms. There are 
 very unhappy indications that many of our commis- 
 sions, whose function it is to " regulate " corpora- 
 tions in the public interest, either have no real and 
 commanding control, or they merely protect the 
 investor. 
 
 The Interstate Commerce Commission has done its 
 best for years to " regulate " the railways ; to check 
 the manipulated special privileges upon which colos- 
 sal private fortunes have been built in this country. 
 Year after year the reports of this Commission betray 
 its helplessness either to get right information or to 
 get adequate power to produce results for which the 
 Commission was established. Will the grant of fur- 
 ther powers so fortify this body that it can do any- 
 thing which the railroads are unitedly determined 
 shall not be done ? The picked skill and talent in 
 the law is theirs ; national and state legislatures are 
 filled with able men to do their bidding. 
 
 Other corporations, according to their strength, 
 have the same weapons of defence. If the thing to 
 be regulated prove more adroit and masterful than 
 the regulator, the alternative of government owner- 
 ship will appear natural and inevitable. It will be 
 said that, with railways in the hands of the govern- 
 ment, the highest legal skill and ability may there be 
 used to defend the public. I once heard a German 
 economist ask the question, " How can you in the 
 States help having great difficulties as long as private 
 interests are so overwhelming that they command 
 nine-tenths of the best lawyers ? You ought," he said, 
 " at least to have such a balance of public business 
 (like railroads, telegraphs, etc.) that you would have
 
 282 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 as many strong lawyers to fight for the public as 
 there are to fight against it." 
 
 Whatever is thought of the merits of this argument, 
 it will carry weight in proportion as the inefficiency of 
 the regulative principle becomes clear. On the other 
 hand, the possibilities of " regulation " have had thus 
 far no real test. Only half-hearted beginnings have 
 been made. As its need becomes a life-and-death 
 matter, we may meet it with requisite seriousness and 
 strength. We get much comfort by repeating, " If the 
 emergency is startling and grave enough, the Ameri- 
 can rises to the occasion." This has been so true in 
 the three or four greatest crises of our history, that 
 our resources may not fail us in this last trial of our 
 good sense. Before we topple over into a socialistic 
 community, the principles of regulation will be put 
 to full trial, nor can their promise and adequacy be 
 determined, apart from the possible cooperation of 
 our strongest business men. Within ten years many 
 of them have learned that affairs of great magnitude 
 are to be henceforth carried on in an entirely differ- 
 ent atmosphere of public opinion. They know that 
 they are to be held to a new accountability. 
 
 I have heard this opinion from a man, not quite to 
 be classed with the half-dozen giants, yet commonly 
 associated with them : " Whether we want to or not, 
 we shall be forced to do business in a new way. I 
 think we do it now in the public interest, but so 
 many people do not think so, that we shall have to 
 take that into account. With this socialistic spirit of 
 discontent everywhere growing, we have got the hard 
 task of proving to the public that we can manage 
 things better than the government or the city. If we
 
 SOCIALISM: HISTORY AND THEORY 283 
 
 can't do that, our day is done." Given enough of that 
 feeling with the purpose to act upon it, and the regu- 
 lative principle has many added chances of success. 
 
 The great issues are thus seen to depend in larger 
 degree upon the moral and intellectual character of 
 our most masterful business men. No " regulation " 
 can hinder them if they are bent alone on personal 
 gain. 
 
 There is no conclusion that does not halt before 
 this inquiry as to the future conduct of our business 
 leaders. If social responsibility is flouted, nothing 
 can stay the progress of a turgid and dangerous po- 
 litical socialism. 
 
 Yet it can be shown that socialism may develop so 
 safely as to become simply the advanced political 
 radicalism of the time a radicalism that must stand 
 before the people on its merits as a social servant. 
 If it can bake our bread, weave our cloth, mine our 
 coal, and manage transportation with more efficiency 
 and less corruption than under the private profit-mak- 
 ing system, the public will be the gainer ; but we shall 
 not take the promises of socialism without perform- 
 ance. We shall watch its attempts to light a city 
 until we are convinced that it can do it, without leav- 
 ing a burden of taxation on the public to eke out 
 slovenly management and a depreciated plant. Nine- 
 tenths of city and state business is so imperfectly done 
 that the public is right in demanding proofs and strict 
 accounts from this new stewardship. 
 
 Its tasks are of incomparably greater difficulty than 
 the book-makers would have us believe. In our own 
 case, for example, if the government take the railroads, 
 it will have the quite appalling duty of fixing rates for
 
 284 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 competing industries in different sections. It will 
 have to do this in politics. Those in Congress who 
 represent the fruit industry of the South and the fruit 
 of the far West, must struggle before committees in 
 Congress to get advantages, or prevent competitors 
 from getting them. This has plagued the German 
 government more seriously than the public has been 
 allowed to know. These political difficulties are a 
 profound weakness in Australia, as they would prove 
 with us. It is fair to reply, " But the railroads are in 
 politics already, and that in the most secret and 
 irresponsible ways ; the state would have to control 
 them politically, but at least all the chicane and blun- 
 dering would come out before the public." 
 
 The answer is not without force. I have known 
 two citizens, with large private interests in their re- 
 spective cities, take their place in the "irv council. 
 After two years both refused reelection. One said : 
 " It's not worth while ; most of the time is taken up 
 with petty contests and political trading. There is 
 so little relation between anything that I can do and 
 the larger public concerns, that I shall never advise 
 any one with important affairs on his hands to waste 
 his time as I have done." 
 
 The other said : " I gave it up because I found why 
 the strongest men in the city are indifferent to city 
 politics. It serves their private interests to have a 
 poor and purchasable city council. They know that 
 it is poor and wasteful ; but directly and indirectly 
 they make more money by using politics to defend 
 their private interests." 
 
 Students of socialism have long said that this 
 " apathy of the eminent " would continue until those
 
 SOCIALISM : HISTORY AND THEORY 285 
 
 larger businesses based on franchises passed into the 
 hands of the city. " When the whole business of 
 managing the things that touch us to the quick 
 gas, electric lights, water, street cars, etc. has to be 
 done at .the City Hall," then, urge the socialists, 
 " every imperfection and dishonesty will so strike at 
 the pockets of the citizens, that they must perforce 
 see to it that able and honest men alone are intrusted 
 with city affairs." 
 
 I have heard this opinion from a German mayor 
 in a town that owned meat markets, gas, telephone, 
 water, and street service, "The citizens cannot help 
 attending to their political duties, because bad manage- 
 ment would cost them too much and subject them to 
 such inconvenience." 
 
 It is considerations of this character, together with 
 the broadening experience of European cities, that 
 make it impossible to shirk the ordeal of thorough 
 comparative tests. It is to these tests that we must 
 henceforth trust rather than to any d priori pretence 
 of speculation as to what the city and state can do or 
 cannot do. No trial of these different administrative 
 experiments could be fairly made until within very 
 recent years. Both trade unionism and socialism had 
 to pass through stages of the severest discipline and 
 experience before any adequate comparison between 
 socialistic and private-profit methods were possible. 
 
 These changes have now come. It is my conten- 
 tion that they offer to us, as a people, a perfectly fair 
 chance, (a) to use the stupendous force at work 
 through the aggregations of labor in ways that shall 
 make these bodies more and more conservative of 
 every social value consistent with a growing democ-
 
 286 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 racy, and (6) to prepare ourselves for an oncoming 
 socialism, so that it, too, shall become an aid rather 
 than a hindrance to a more decent human society. 
 
 As socialism has been commonly conceived, I do 
 not believe it brings an answer to a single one of 
 our deepest life questions, but on the outposts of its 
 development it is undergoing extraordinary transfor- 
 mations which we shall see at their best in France.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 SOCIALISM IN THE MAKING 
 
 EXCEPT for many unhappy experiments of Utopian 
 character, socialism until recent years has shown no 
 trace of positive and constructive workmanship. It 
 has been the critic of the existing industrial order. 
 If it had rendered no other service, this activity of 
 relentless censorship would justify it. Much of the 
 best social legislation on the continent of Europe is 
 traceable directly to social agitation. Bismarck was 
 blamed for making the admission, " If there were 
 no social democracy, and if many were not afraid of 
 it, even the moderate progress which we have hith- 
 erto made in social reform would not have been 
 brought about." The greater part of socialist ener- 
 gies is still critical, and in this sense negative. The 
 days of the mere fault-finder are, however, numbered. 
 This change marks an epoch in the history of the 
 movement. So long as it played the part of caviller, 
 it took no responsibilities, nor could its pretensions 
 be tested. 
 
 Within the brief period of five or six years it has 
 become possible to apply a new and far more search- 
 ing criticism to socialism. So long as it was a mere 
 dream, so long as men felt it only as a hope, so long 
 as it remained in the realm of theory and speculation, 
 the only weapons that could be turned against i* 
 
 287
 
 288 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 were as unsubstantial as any that socialists them- 
 selves used. The patronizing strictures of the 
 practical man were as airy and doctrinaire as any 
 claims put forth by Marx, Jules Guesde, or William 
 Morris. A library of books and pamphlets has been 
 written to show the limits of human nature, the 
 limits of corporate capacity, the limits of what the 
 city or the state may legitimately undertake. Time 
 and events have not dealt kindly with these opinions. 
 Corporations now perform hundreds of services that 
 earlier writers thought altogether beyond their scope. 
 States and cities organize and carry on enterprises so 
 various that the older theories, " what the state can 
 do and what it cannot do," are very queer reading. 
 
 As long as social innovators were making fancy 
 sketches of a perfect society, criticism was scarcely 
 less fanciful. When the dream period passes into 
 experiment, the possibilities of critical observation 
 first appear. A stage of socialistic development has 
 now been reached, concerning which one may form 
 as distinct a judgment as upon the results of the 
 weather bureau or the sloyd system of education. 
 Socialism now enters upon the formidable task of 
 social reconstruction. One may roughly mark four 
 stages in its growth. It was long Utopian, then under 
 Lassalle's guidance it became political, passing thence 
 into state and municipal activities that are strictly 
 socialistic. This third stage is strangely enough no- 
 where the work of socialists, but of tories, political 
 liberals, or military governments. Its final form is 
 to unite politics with cooperative business, as in 
 Belgian cities. 
 
 At the point where socialism begins to show itself
 
 SOCIALISM IN THE MAKING 289 
 
 a force to reckon with in politics, its positive influence 
 begins. We can measure it by the compromises and 
 concessions wrung from the party in power. The 
 years immediately following the Franco-Prussian war 
 mark the rise of its political influence in Germany. 
 The law of 1884, which permits the trade unions to 
 unite, marks it in France. In Belgium its extraordi- 
 nary career had an even later beginning. Socialists 
 now sit upon the councils of more than a hundred 
 towns in France, and many of the communes are polit- 
 ically controlled by socialists, subject to the veto 
 of the prefect. This veto represents the grip which 
 an extremely centralized government has upon local 
 administration. Although the suffrage is practically 
 as free as in the United States, the limits are very 
 narrow within which a town council can introduce a 
 change of policy. I have tried in many cities to see 
 what socialistic steps have actually been taken. With 
 wo socialists in the government and nearly a million 
 votes, actual performance is singularly lacking. Here 
 one finds a drug store taken by the city, " to be run not 
 for the enrichment of the petit bourgeois, but for all 
 the inhabitants." There it is the city printing, the 
 elimination of the private contractor, or a pawnshop 
 in exact imitation of those long existing in most of 
 the French towns. Again, the city is bread maker or 
 the supplier of milk. 
 
 Grenoble owns a restaurant which furnishes daily 
 more than twelve hundred meals. The city owns 
 the land and the nine buildings upon it. That 
 the competition may not be unfair against private 
 eating-houses, rent is paid to the city, but the element 
 of profit to any individual is eliminated. If at the
 
 290 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 year's close a profit has been made, it goes to the city 
 treasury as a reserve fund to be used when the price 
 of foods is exceptionally high. It is thus run strictly 
 upon socialistic principles for social use and not for 
 private profit. With the exception of the restaurant 
 at Grenoble, all this is the result of socialist activity 
 during the last fifteen years. 
 
 The first surprise is to find how different the expe- 
 rience has been in large towns, like Roubaix and 
 Lille, from the calculated municipalization of German 
 and English cities. A score of these show an exten- 
 sion of city functions far beyond all that has been 
 done in French towns that have for years had social- 
 ist mayors and a socialist majority upon the town 
 council. The government veto accounts for much 
 of this backwardness ; but the bourbon character 
 of the French socialism, its abstract and uncom- 
 promising quality, accounts for more. The haughty 
 disdain of the Latin collectivists to work for modest 
 social improvements with any human being who is 
 not of the true faith, still confines their activity 
 to fields that bear at best a stunted fruit. 
 
 The most sober and restrained statement one could 
 give of the party activity down to the last congress, 
 would be largely the description of feuds and brawls 
 of almost incredible character. The party led by 
 Jaures and Millerand, a member of the cabinet, has 
 reached some steadiness of constructive purpose. It 
 has learned that cooperation with other social agencies 
 is a necessity. In this spirit, Millerand entered the 
 Ministry of Waldeck-Rousseau. The storm at once 
 broke over the cas Millerand. In this consent of a 
 collectivist to work with a bourgeois government, the
 
 SOCIALISM IN THE MAKING 29 1 
 
 other socialist parties see only a sinister attack upon 
 the sacred principle of the class struggle. The dis- 
 cipline of events and the increasing influence of men 
 like Jaures will in time cure this doctrinaire folly ; 
 meanwhile we have to look to the humbler work 
 within the commune to see the completed picture of 
 socialism in the making. 
 
 In most towns I asked the mayor or his secretary 
 what had been done to realize the socialist ideal. 
 Many communities have had from eight to ten years' 
 experience with collectivist administrators. The first 
 and often the paramount occupation has been to vote 
 larger budgets in favor of the poor. Sometimes the 
 aged poor in almshouses are given new freedom with an 
 extra stipend for pin money. Sometimes it is to build 
 a new creche or enlarge the older ones. If mothers 
 had previously paid small sums, this indignity is 
 omitted. Often a large sum is voted to feed school 
 children. I never could find an instance in which 
 it was even claimed that any considerable thought or 
 care had been given to distinguish between those who 
 could pay and those who could not. It appeared to 
 be assumed that every workman who could pay for 
 his children's food, would do it from native self- 
 respect. It was invariably with an air of triumph 
 that you were told, " The bourgeois spent only 50,000 
 francs on the poor, but we spent 1 50,000." In Roubaix 
 the secretary said, " We have given ten times as many 
 pieces of clothing to the poor as the bourgeois ever 
 gave." This was considered final proof that the 
 socialists were introducing a superior administration. 
 The same pride was shown in raising the pensions of 
 " socialist soldiers" ; in paying the car fares of certain
 
 292 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 city officials; in voting grants to the theatres and 
 free medical attendance to a larger proportion of the 
 poor. It was thought a disgrace that the needy should 
 have to go themselves for their free bread. It was 
 therefore voted to deliver the bread at the door. 
 These are strictly fair illustrations of what has been 
 attempted in a large number of communes. It is for 
 the most part an extremely loose and promiscuous 
 form of out-door relief. 
 
 The visitor is allowed to take copies of the weekly 
 Bulletin Municipal Officiel, in which the acts ana 
 deliberations at the City Hall are given to the public. 
 At St. Denis I was permitted to take an entire file of 
 copies from the first issue on April 5, 1891. The 
 single impression which these bulletins make upon 
 the reader is that of a very raw attempt to catch the 
 working-class vote by giving away the public money. 
 If " Citoyen Oudin " has died, the vote of the 
 city council, giving the widow 100 francs and a 
 monthly pension, is printed. It is added : " Nothing 
 of the old secrecy is now tolerated. In a democratic 
 society all things must be open to the public eye." 
 In two instances the socialists had organized a ser- 
 vice for widows with small children that is a model 
 of humane good sense. It was wisely assumed, unless 
 the family was to be broken up, that all the mother's 
 strength was due to the care of her little ones. She 
 was thus allowed a monthly pension, which she could 
 supplement by home work. It was distinctly under- 
 stood that the widow was in no way classed with 
 objects of charity, but received her pension as the 
 soldier receives his, without loss of self-respect. " For 
 cases of this kind," said my socialist informant, " we
 
 SOCIALISM IN THE MAKING 293 
 
 do not propose to spoil the whole family by putting 
 upon them the stigma of pauperism." 
 
 These rather startling attempts to cast out the 
 whole charity tradition do not exhaust all that the 
 French collectivists are undertaking, but they are by 
 far the most important. Their rawness and imper- 
 fection are not to be concealed. It is for this reason 
 that in many communes the socialists have been dis- 
 lodged. No severer test of administrative ability could 
 possibly be chosen than the care of the dependent 
 poor. If human experience has proved one thing 
 more clearly than another, it is that the whole class 
 of those who need and claim assistance cannot be 
 really helped without extreme caution and discrimina- 
 tion. If the mayor says, " We collectivists propose 
 to aid all the poor and ask no questions," he begins 
 forthwith to debauch the community, but far more 
 to debauch those who are to receive his aid. The 
 record of bourgeois society in dealing with the needy 
 lacks dignity, as it miserably lacks effectiveness. It 
 has shown a petty moral provincialism in its divisions 
 between the " worthy " and the " unworthy " poor. 
 It has nevertheless worked out, however clumsily, 
 certain tests of great value. The work before us is 
 to develop these so far that every community can 
 satisfy itself whether those asking aid have (a) the 
 ability to do any useful work, (ft) whether they have 
 the will to do it. If, being able, they refuse after 
 fair chances are given them, they should straightway 
 be put under prison constraint, preferably upon farm 
 colonies. 
 
 One of the strong men among the collectivists 
 who had struggled long with the dead beats among
 
 294 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 the poor, told me : " We have got to go a good deal 
 farther than the bourgeois dared to go. If a man 
 can work and won't, we shall put him in the com- 
 pulsory workshop where he can be taught, or, refus- 
 ing that, he shall not be allowed to escape." I 
 asked why his constituents made such bad work of it. 
 " Oh, you know everybody is crazy, one way or the 
 other, on that subject of caring for the poor ; we have 
 all got our lesson still to learn." 
 
 This chief effort in the collectivist communes has, 
 thus far, been to reorganize " public assistance." Its 
 lack of success is explained by the theoretic stage 
 which still holds a large part of the French socialism 
 They approach this hardest of practical problems 
 with sonorous sentences from Rousseau. Before the 
 election they placard the town with sentences like 
 these : 
 
 La faim, c'est le crime public, 
 
 C'est Timmense assassin qui sort de nos tdn&bres. 
 
 They announce that "girl mothers" shall be freed 
 from all disgrace; that every badge and stigma of 
 misfortune shall be removed; that "we do not care 
 to know how the misfortune came, but only if it has 
 come." 
 
 One need not deny that much nobility of motive 
 is expressed in these sentences, but they should not mis- 
 lead us into thinking that the actual work of social and 
 individual reformation is even begun by such reso- 
 nant paragraphs. Real performance is still before 
 them. The socialists complain bitterly, and with much 
 justification, that the veto power of the government is 
 so used against them, that they are left with this hard-
 
 SOCIALISM IN THE MAKING 295 
 
 est of all problems, as if the purpose were to discredit 
 their work before public opinion. But the real weak- 
 ness is in their own lack of political and business 
 discipline. The spell of abstractions is still upon 
 them to such extent that personal wrangling over 
 " great and sacred principles " makes it almost im- 
 possible to get through a congress that brings the 
 five parties together. A Belgian socialist, as success- 
 ful in business as he was in parliament, once gave 
 me letters of introduction to some of his friends in 
 France. He added : " Our socialist brothers over 
 there are still in the primary school. They are talk- 
 ing about the universe, when they have got to learn 
 to manage a shop and a small town. They abuse us 
 because we are at work at the small end with small 
 things." 
 
 This brief account would lack both truth and 
 justice, if it failed to note another high quality that is 
 perhaps at present more useful to the cause in France 
 than the best " municipal housekeeping." This is the 
 socialist appeal to the national conscience to begin 
 disarmament. Under the magnetic leadership of the 
 scholarly Jaures, thousands of Frenchmen are for the 
 first time admitting the vast stupidity of the increas- 
 ing military burdens of that people. In the name of 
 the working classes, Jaures cries halt to this criminal 
 policy. With a sustained moral passion that reminds 
 one of Mazzini, he calls upon his countrymen to rise 
 above the petty provincialism "marked off by the 
 surveyor's line," and " enter upon the ways that lead 
 toward self-respect and brotherhood." His stinging 
 utterances against the slowness and inactivity of the 
 Church, in this effort toward an international morality,
 
 296 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 has stirred multitudes of people in that country. " Is 
 the work," he asks, " which the professed followers 
 of Christ have so infamously neglected, to be done by 
 socialists ? " 
 
 In a great hall packed with students, I once heard 
 a three hours' debate on this subject, between a priest 
 and a socialist. It was the heavy task of the priest 
 to argue, throughout, for the necessity of the army, 
 " human nature being as it is." Every popular catch- 
 word about the flag and patriotism was brought into 
 skilful use, in his apology for Christian nations in 
 their elaborate preparations to carry slaughter and 
 death among their fellow-Christians. Was not a 
 great army and navy forsooth the best safeguard of 
 peace ? 
 
 The plea of the socialist was for a policy, every 
 practical aim of which should lead toward fraternity, 
 by throwing off the express signs and symbols of 
 enmity. For a long future, he admitted the neces- 
 sity of a " home militia " for possible self-defence, but 
 asked that every youth be taught ethically that all 
 preparation for offensive war is a crime against 
 humanity and the last insult to the Christ tradition 
 which stands (if it stands for anything) for peace and 
 good will among men. 
 
 I came away from this debate with a professor in 
 the local university. He said with much feeling, 
 "To have that debate here once more, would un- 
 church every student in the university and make him 
 a socialist, if it has not already done so." 
 
 It is in this spirit that socialists are uniting in a 
 very noble attempt to sting Christian nations into 
 some sense of moral shame because of this great
 
 SOCIALISM IN THE MAKING 297 
 
 iniquity. In this holiest of all crusades Jaures and 
 his followers are at the front. 
 
 This "socialism in the making" will substitute work 
 for phrases as heavier and more definite responsibili- 
 ties are thrown upon it. The process which brings 
 this safer and saner mind is seen at its best in the 
 recent history of the German movement, to which we 
 now turn.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 FROM REVOLUTION TO REFORM 
 
 I SHALL consider the German and Belgian expe- 
 rience in much detail, because it offers us the best 
 possible criticism upon the socialist movement as a 
 whole. It represents it in its later and riper stages. 
 I deliberately substitute this experience for speculative 
 discussion, confident that this actual history of failure 
 and success throws far more light upon the issues than 
 volumes of subtle theorizing. We do not know what 
 the socialistic principle can do, or what it can not do. 
 It has now made two extraordinary records ; one politi- 
 cal, the other political and economic. It is to these 
 records I now refer the reader. They furnish lessons 
 of such obvious significance that there would be little 
 hope for any people who refused to heed them. 
 
 So far as political duties alone can steady men, the 
 German social democrats have been at last forced to 
 take step with the great army of those who do the 
 ordinary work of carrying on the empire. Within 
 my own personal experience with some of the leaders 
 of this party, the change of attitude on very vital 
 points has been so radical, that one hesitates to state 
 it except in their own words. Socialists are extremely 
 sensitive about these changes of opinion within their 
 own ranks, and I shall not therefore trust to notes 
 taken during three years' residence in that country 
 and during four visits at more recent periods. 
 
 298
 
 FROM REVOLUTION TO REFORM 299 
 
 Even if it somewhat overload the text, the most 
 authoritative proofs should be given. These changes 
 have been brought about by the bearing of specific 
 responsibilities. In Germany these are almost ex- 
 clusively political. Bamberger, who with the eye of 
 an enemy watched the growth of social democracy 
 in Parliament, told me that what had interested him 
 most was to see the effect of parliamentary life upon 
 the outward behavior, the manners and dress, of 
 these representatives of the labor classes. " Even 
 those who are most persistent in marking themselves 
 off by external peculiarities, gradually get subdued 
 by their surroundings, so that in dress and bearing 
 strangers are bothered to know where the socialists 
 sit." 
 
 It is of much more weight that this subduing pro- 
 cess does not affect the outside only, but thought and 
 opinion as well. Let us take one by one the leading 
 revolutionary principles which had the sacredness of 
 a religion to the older German socialist. 
 
 (a) After their parliamentary life began, men who 
 guided the opinion of the party held, as Bellamy 
 came to believe, that the social revolution was to hap- 
 pen at a date so near, that one was safe in stating it 
 as twenty-five years at the utmost. The great struggle 
 was just ahead and was to come abruptly to an end. 
 The words of their leader, Bebel, were : " For it 
 is the last social struggle. The nineteenth century 
 will hardly be at an end before this struggle shall be 
 practically ended." 1 He even held that the entire 
 
 lM Die Frau," p. 352. (Denn es ist der letzte sociale Kampf. Das 
 19. Jahrhundert wird schwerlich zu Ende gehen, ohne dass dieser 
 Kampf so gut wie entschieden ist.)
 
 300 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 plan of the new society should be worked out before- 
 hand to the last detail. 
 
 The Protokoll of the party, as late as that at 
 Erfurt, contains the sentence, " I am convinced that 
 the fulfilment of our hopes is so near that there are 
 few in this hall that will not live to see the day." 
 
 (b) It was held and taught that this triumph of the 
 social democracy could not come peaceably, but only 
 through violence and bloodshed. In 1874, as the 
 strength of the party began to show itself, Liebknecht 
 was its chief and most instructed popularizer. He 
 writes in his "Volkstaat" these words, "Those who 
 wish a new society must work directly for the destruc- 
 tion of the old one." " It is solely a question of force 
 eine Machtfrage which is not to be fought out 
 politically, but on the battlefield," die in keinem 
 Parlament, die nur auf der Strasse, auf dem Schlacht- 
 feld zu losen ist. His "Zu Schutz und Trutz" is also 
 filled with kindred expressions. 
 
 At the Congress of 1883 the words are, " A change 
 in our industrial system through peaceable means is 
 unthinkable." At St. Gallen, in 1887, it is laid down 
 that one who teaches that the social democratic ideal 
 can be reached by constitutional and parliamentary 
 means is a humbug " er sei ein Betriiger." 
 
 These are not garbled citations but the deliberate 
 opinions of the intellectual leaders of the party. The 
 proceedings at the Congress of Wyden bear the same 
 stamp of violent purpose. Dietzgen's " Religion der 
 Socialdemokratie " is filled with it. The period, he 
 says, in which he wrote was quiet, but only because 
 forces were gathering for a catastrophe, "weil sie 
 Kraft sammelt zu eiper grossen Katastrophe." In
 
 FROM REVOLUTION TO REFORM 301 
 
 1875 Marx described the transition between the capi- 
 talistic and the final communistic society. Between 
 these two, he says, comes "die revolutionare Dictatur 
 des Proletariats." In 1891 his life-long friend and 
 ablest colleague explained this sentence thus : " You 
 wish, gentlemen, to know what this dictatorship of 
 the proletariat means? Look, then, at the Paris 
 Commune! " 
 
 (c) The struggle was sharply defined the poor 
 against the rich. It was to be the war of the prole- 
 tariat against the well-to-do. In their one scientific 
 journal it is written down, in iSgi, 1 that no people as 
 a whole is to bring in the new era. The whole bur- 
 den of the fight falls to the workman, "eine bestimmte 
 Klasse, namlich das Proletariat innerhalb aller civilis- 
 irten Volker." 
 
 (d) As capitalism advances, wages lessen, and the 
 masses sink into deeper want and misery in Marx's 
 words, " wachst die Masse des Elends, des Drucks 
 clcr Knechtschaft, der Entartung, der Ausbeutung." 
 
 (e) The teaching of the great autocrat, Marx, that 
 industries would fall as by nature into fewer and 
 fewer hands, was accepted so implicitly, that when, 
 a few years since, the first doubt was raised concern- 
 ing this teaching, as applied to the peasant farmers, it 
 was met by a storm of resentment. When Marx said 
 that the accumulation of riches at one pole was at the 
 same time the accumulation of wretchedness, slavery, 
 ignorance, brutalization, and moral degradation at the 
 other pole, 2 he included the farming class. The keen- 
 est and most faithful summarizer of Marx in England, 
 
 1 " Die Neue Zeit," 1891-1892, Heft 9. 
 
 2 "Das Kapital," p. 6ll.
 
 302 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 Dr. Aveling, says the farmer is to be extinguished 
 because the revolution is even more intense in agri- 
 culture than among factories. In Germany, Bebel 
 popularizes this opinion, and Kautsky taught that the 
 hopelessness of the farmer was inherent in the capi- 
 talistic development of society. 1 
 
 (f) Nor can one omit the question of religion from 
 this list. Twenty-five years ago the tone against re- 
 ligion was that of an acrid dogmatic atheism. A sin- 
 gle passage from Liebknecht's paper (" Volkstaat") in 
 1875 stands fairly for opinions that may be quoted 
 from twenty authoritative sources : " It is our duty as 
 socialists to root out the faith in God with all our 
 zeal, nor is any one worthy the name who does not 
 consecrate himself to the spread of atheism." 
 
 This is not merely Engels's word, " Mit Gott sind 
 wir einfach fertig " ; it is the " Zwangs-Atheismus " 
 of that period. In his " Christenthum und Socialis- 
 mus " Bebel says of the Christian religion, that it 
 stands over against socialism as fire and water. 
 Dietzgen claimed in his "Streifziige " that being other 
 than man was not possible. The Stuttgart leader 
 Schall was applauded when, in 1871, he said, "We 
 open war upon God because He is the greatest evil 
 in the world." 
 
 I do not give this array of opinions to find fault 
 with them. I give them solely to show that the 
 ablest social democrats have changed their attitude. 
 Some of these opinions have been cast out altogether, 
 and are now freely spoken of as an exhibition of 
 intellectual rawness that shows itself in the beginnings 
 of a new movement. Other points, like the last one 
 
 1 See Protokoll, 1895.
 
 FROM REVOLUTION TO REFORM 303 
 
 regarding religion, have not been discarded, but so 
 entirely modified as scarcely to be recognized. 
 
 What has occurred that so vital a change should 
 have taken place? The general answer is that the 
 strenuous experience of twenty years of political 
 agitation has given what is freely admitted a 
 larger outlook. 
 
 Let us begin with the last point (/), on religion. 
 As early as 1889, it had become clear to many of the 
 shrewdest in the party that religion had a much 
 deeper hold upon large classes, especially in the 
 farming district, than these jaunty critics in the seven- 
 ties ever dreamed. They learned that religion was 
 a larger fact than what they saw embodied in any 
 church, catholic or protestant. They learned that 
 even if it were a superstition, generations must pass 
 before its victims could be disillusionized. This had 
 become so manifest that the Protokoll of the part} 
 at Halle declares that religion must be left to the 
 private judgment of the individual. This is a long 
 step from Liebknecht's positive duty of the socialists 
 to root out religion and (mit allem Eifer) to spread 
 atheism. It is easy, moreover, to account historically 
 for the hilarity with which, at that time, men like 
 Liebknecht, Bebel, Stern, and Dietzgen mocked the 
 religious sentiment. The " intellectuals " of social 
 democracy were caught by the prevailing scientific 
 current of the time. About 1870 a crude materialism 
 was at its height. Skilful popularizers like Buchner 
 were read with eager zest by those whose joy it was 
 to discredit the faiths of the ruling classes. "Wis- 
 senchaft" was a word to conjure with. Liebknecht 
 writes, " Our party is a scientific party." Before
 
 304 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 1885, it was a dull mind that could not see that this 
 kind of materialism was repudiated by all the first- 
 rate scientific minds in Europe. 1 In 1884 I heard a 
 university professor of philosophy, in strongest sym- 
 pathy with the social democrats, say, "It is a great 
 pity that the leaders of the party do not see that they 
 are discrediting their own cause by repeating what 
 every instructed person knows to be nonsense." 
 Many of their leaders now recognize this. Malon, 
 before his death, wrote pathetic appeals to the party 
 in Europe to "spiritualize the movement," at least 
 "to bring it up to the level of the reigning science." 
 
 In his final work, " Le Socialisme Integral," he 
 pronounces the economic materialism of Marx wholly 
 untrue to the facts of life. 2 
 
 In all that was said at the Congress in Halle 
 (1891) about the relation of the party to religion, 
 the effects of this great change are clear. Even if 
 policy alone dictated the altered tone, the proof is 
 just as convincing that the party guides have learned 
 their lesson. When a member says, especially of the 
 country districts, " We get on best when we leave 
 this subject (religion) entirely alone," 3 and finds his 
 words approved, it is evident that religion is recog- 
 nized as a force with which social democrats have to 
 work. The Marxian Woltman has recently written 
 a book upon historical materialism in which he 
 teaches that religion is an abiding fact in the life of 
 
 1 A brilliant account of this change may be found in Lange's 
 "History of Materialism." 
 
 2 See also Gustave Rouanet, " Revue Socialiste," 15 decembre 1887. 
 * Auf dem Lande kommen wir mit der Religion am besten fort, wenn 
 
 wir sie ganz aus dem Spiel lassen. Protokoll zu Halle, p. 190.
 
 FROM REVOLUTION TO REFORM 305 
 
 the race. Socialism in his view has no more sacred 
 task than to add deeper spiritual purpose to all its 
 aims. 1 This is the key to the change in every point 
 we are considering. At first the arch sin is compro- 
 mise with existing society. Its God, its government, 
 its family, its cherished forms of property, are to be 
 broken in pieces. It is treachery to every sacred prin- 
 ciple to recognize legal and parliamentary methods, 
 since these involve some sort of working partnership 
 with capitalistic society. Yet that which at first was 
 a perfidy, has slowly become a virtue, even if one of 
 necessity. Step by step the inflexible antagonisms 
 have yielded to the same influences that have disci- 
 plined the race from its beginnings. 
 
 The point (e) illustrates this better still. The 
 Marxian abstraction, that the big fish of industry 
 are gradually destroying the little ones, has also been 
 "found out, " i.e. the infallibility of the generalization, 
 applied to all industry, is now known to have limitations 
 undreamed of by the master. As early as the Inter- 
 national Congress of 1868, through Marx's influence, 
 it was laid down that land was to be made common 
 property. This was repeated until the International 
 was scattered by the incessant bickering of its mem- 
 bers. In 1870 the German party at its Congress at 
 Stuttgart accepted this principle of the International 
 because " economic development made it a necessity 
 to convert land into common property." This was 
 to be worked collectively by labor associations. The 
 Congress at Gotha, in 1875, holds firmly to this plank 
 of its platform. Nearly twenty years were still to pass 
 before any one raises the question whether the great 
 
 1 L. Woltman, " Der Historische Materialismus."
 
 306 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 farming was as a fact generally swallowing up small 
 proprietors. As late as 1895 a very frequent and 
 impressive illustration, which one often heard from 
 the speakers, was the resistless march of the colossal 
 farm in the United States. It was assumed that this 
 added further proof of the infallibility of Marx's 
 insight. Before the dispute upon this point arose, a 
 purely tactical issue appeared, like that which showed 
 itself at Halle in regard to religion. 
 
 The South German socialist, Von Vollmar, knew 
 well the life and the economic condition of the small 
 farmer. He first saw that whether or not the great 
 farming was to replace the small, nothing was surer 
 than that the owner of few acres would straightway 
 pronounce every man an enemy and a blockhead who 
 proposed to take away this ownership and merge it 
 in a collective proprietorship. Would it not therefore 
 be better to recognize this fact and adjust the party 
 policy to it ? So universally was this reprobated, that 
 three years passed before the slightest real impression 
 was made on the party action. In 1894, Von Vollmar 
 was able to make his challenge felt. He first showed 
 it to be the worst of tactics to outrage the traditional 
 land hunger of the peasant. In this same year, he 
 challenged the evidence that the little farmer was 
 generally being despoiled by the great one. At this 
 date it was possible to get news from America. From 
 letters and agricultural reports it was learned that the 
 " big farm illustration " was premature. There was 
 too little good evidence to show that the economic 
 fatalities were strengthening the thesis of the prophet. 
 The testimony was that for large portions of this in- 
 dustry, the future was possibly for smaller rather than
 
 FROM REVOLUTION TO REFORM 307 
 
 for larger farming. I remember the surprise of a 
 socialist scholar and writer who told me, with some- 
 thing like consternation, that he had received trust- 
 worthy information that the " big farm " was upon 
 the whole a failure, that the tide seemed to be setting 
 in many districts in the direction of more scientific 
 methods on small areas. 
 
 This news was very disturbing to men who had 
 committed themselves with irrevocable emphasis to 
 a proposition so open to doubt. An independent 
 investigation of their own in Germany confirmed the 
 case against them. For years their speakers had 
 been telling the peasants that their future was hope- 
 less. The campaigners had used big words before 
 these agricultural hearers. " Evolution " and " science " 
 were always on their lips. It was thus very chilling 
 to hear from this same science that, as it came to be 
 applied to farming, a large part of the cultivators were 
 to find new hope and security in few acres rather 
 than in many. Few social democrats were so obtuse 
 as not to see that, at least for this section of the 
 farming class, it was the last folly to ask that their 
 holdings pass into a common possession. There 
 have been ten years of very bitter contention over 
 this agrarian issue. The social democrats have had 
 to pay the penalty which every political party that 
 fights with infallible abstractions must pay. The 
 abstraction in this instance was at best a poor sort 
 of half truth. When this was discovered, the dilemma 
 of the social democrats was serious. Their political 
 future made it impossible to drop the farming class, 
 but on what basis could the propaganda now be carried 
 on ? They could propose certain improvements in the
 
 308 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 peasant's lot, lightened taxation, easier and safer 
 credit, and the like ; but to do this, the social demo- 
 crats must commit the deadly sin of cooperating with 
 agencies already in hand by government and bourgeois 
 associations. This compromise with existing society 
 had upon all hands been pronounced the one disloyalty 
 against their principles that was never to be pardoned. 
 If one wished to raise a riot in a socialist gathering, 
 one had only to suggest some modification of doctrines 
 that would enable the party to cooperate with any 
 recognized state or social policy. Twenty years' ex- 
 perience with the farmer, and the inquiries which this 
 agitation has involved have compelled a change of 
 tactics that bears this party still further from revo- 
 lution toward the ordinary methods of an advanced 
 party politics. It is a crisis in the history of the 
 movement, because the fall of one infallible abstrac- 
 tion raises quick doubts about others. When it was 
 once felt that Marx's thesis was more than doubtful 
 as regards agriculture, the bolder minds began to ask 
 if it was true of other industries. The development 
 of social politics under the government (of which 
 workingmen's insurance is a type) has produced a 
 body of statistics about wages and conditions which 
 the social democrats know they can trust. Many 
 questions can now be tested for which there was 
 neither proof nor disproof twenty-five years ago. 
 From these and kindred sources of information, so- 
 cialists now see that the assertion that "the big 
 business is growing bigger and the small business 
 smaller," is not true, except with qualifications that 
 are very vital. 
 
 As middle-class incomes are increasing, so also
 
 FROM REVOLUTION TO REFORM 309 
 
 many types of middle-class industries were never in 
 a stronger and healthier state than at the present 
 time in Germany. The proof of this, which the 
 scholarly Bernstein has forced his German comrades 
 to face, marks all the change there is between the 
 revolutionary method of the " class struggle " and the 
 humbler method of social reform in which all men of 
 good will may unite. This change marks an end of 
 the man with a formula ; it means a victory for prac- 
 tical political opportunism in its best sense. A single 
 line from Bernstein's book reads as if Mr. Giffen or 
 Edward Atkinson had written it, " The number of the 
 possessing classes grows absolutely and relatively." l 
 
 No sentence more revolutionary than this could 
 have been written by a socialist pen. Nothing more 
 revolutionary could happen than that its significance 
 and its consequences should have patient hearing at 
 the last Congress. It means no less than a reversal 
 of political procedure. Liebknecht, in 1893, says, 
 " Compromise gives up every principle for which we 
 stand." Four years later he admits that compromise 
 has become a necessity of party action. This Nestor 
 of the party said at Hamburg, " If I can gain an 
 advantage from another party by compromise, I will 
 seize it." 
 
 Bebel also yields, and accepts what in 1893 he had 
 hotly condemned a working alliance with parlia- 
 mentary forces. 
 
 1 The whole sentence is so epoch-making in the history of socialism 
 that it should be given in full : " Nicht mehr oder minder, sondern 
 schlechtweg mehr, d. h. absolut und relativ wa'chst die Zahl der Besit- 
 zenden. Ware die Thatigkeit und die Aussichten der Sozialdemokratie 
 davon abhangig, dass die Zahl der Besitzenden zuriickgeht, dann konnte 
 sie sich in der That ' schlafen legen.' "
 
 310 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 (d) That the wages of labor, as Lassalle held, must 
 remain under capitalism on the line of bare subsist- 
 ence, auf den nothwendigsten Lebensunterhalt, 
 is likewise acknowledged to be a mistake. It was 
 first held to be a " law of nature," then qualified, and 
 finally in the form first stated frankly given up. 
 
 (c) That the great struggle was to be one of clearly 
 defined classes " proletariat against dividend-re- 
 ceiver " has been fundamental with socialists since 
 the Revolution of 1848. It was the alarm note with 
 which Marx and Engels opened their long campaign. 
 Upon none of the six points just now in view have the 
 social democrats insisted with more untiring importu- 
 nity than upon the fact that the wage-earning class 
 was separated in all its interests, as by a gulf, from 
 its foe the capitalistic class. From the first bugle 
 note of the International, " proletarians of all coun- 
 tries unite ! " down to the obscure programmes printed 
 at this day in American cities, the call is to organize 
 " on class lines." For no object have the German 
 leaders striven harder, than to deepen this sense of 
 antagonism among the workingmen, Liebknecht, 
 to the end, clung to his policy of class strife. One 
 of his last appeals was that the "class fight" be 
 maintained, "the sharper the struggle the better for 
 our party." 
 
 Yet when the veteran of the party spoke these 
 words at Hamburg in 1897, his friends knew that the 
 lash fell upon a dead horse. From the day when 
 the party turned its back on the absolutism of the 
 Marx programme, and entered on the way of legal 
 and parliamentary processes, the magic of the Klas- 
 senkampf was gone. As long as it was said, "We
 
 FROM REVOLUTION TO REFORM 311 
 
 will work with no political party, zu verwerfen ist 
 jeder Pakt mit einer andern Partei, we will fight the 
 state's attempt to win us by its workingmen's insur- 
 ance or by any other palliative, so long was there life 
 and meaning in the shibboleth of class antagonism. 
 It is now resolved to go to the polls with any party 
 that can give them temporary help. They must give 
 and take. It must in the same spirit welcome every 
 " palliative," even if it mark but an inch toward their 
 distant goal. All this is now being done by the social 
 democrats in Germany with a heartiness that marks 
 the greatest change in the practice and theory of the 
 movement. 
 
 It is to be observed that these lessons have been 
 learned through the experience gathered in political 
 agitation of thirty years. Until the fall of Bismarck, 
 the government did all in its power to tighten the 
 hold of the social democrats upon every revolutionary 
 conception they held. As long as the iron hand of 
 the chancellor was felt in drastic laws that made 
 socialist opinion criminal, the counter policy was one 
 of " Macht und Gewalt." The first important utter- 
 ance that I have seen from any socialist, in favor of 
 conciliatory and parliamentary measures, was after 
 these laws were revoked and the present emperor 
 had admitted that the social question was of momen- 
 tous consequence and should have every attention 
 that the government could give it. 
 
 A dozen years ago, I heard the bitterest denuncia- 
 tion of the state labor insurance, by socialists who now 
 defend it in public speeches. " It is not enough," 
 they urge, "but all there is of it is good." Steps in 
 factory legislation that were once jeered at are now
 
 312 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 approved. Whether for the Reichstag, Landtag, or 
 the common council of the city, socialists now cooper- 
 ate, not alone in elections, but in the general policy 
 of social and industrial improvement. 
 
 Last year in the province of Brandenburg, socialist 
 municipal representatives met for deliberation. It 
 perplexes one to find a proper term of comparison 
 between the present discussion and those that filled 
 the air at such gatherings ten years ago. The ques- 
 tions are now about the introduction of direct employ- 
 ment by the city, of extending the franchise, of a better 
 tenement-house bill, of the hours of labor, of extend- 
 ing municipal control over the street cars, etc. When 
 party tactics are chiefly directed to agitation of this 
 kind, the Klassenkampf in its former sense, if not 
 quite dead, is no longer alive. 
 
 To have struck at its roots this vicious growth 
 of the class fight is the chief moral triumph in the 
 changes here noted. As these sectional hatreds are 
 overcome, the ground is first reached on which the 
 longed-for social reorganization can begin. The con- 
 ditions that shall make such reorganization possible 
 can spring neither from hate nor suspicion. They 
 can come only from a completer sense of a common 
 and not a divided social destiny. 
 
 If we look once more at socialism in which the 
 ideals of business and of politics really unite, we shall 
 have the final illustration of the collectivist theory at 
 work with results more remarkable still. 
 
 The German and Belgian experience offers society 
 its chance of wise and generous cooperation.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 SOCIALISM AT WORK 
 
 SOCIALISM in its advanced stage is seen at its best 
 just now in Belgium. A small country, sore pressed 
 in its industrial struggle by its great neighbors, Eng- 
 land, France, and Germany, its capitalists have been 
 driven to the closest cutting of the wage scale. They 
 have used new mechanical inventions to weaken the 
 trade union, in order to employ women and young 
 apprentices more freely. Constant recourse has been 
 had to the law against coalitions in the same spirit 
 that we now use injunctions. Especially among the 
 mining and iron industries, t strikes were frequent, 
 prolonged, and bitter. Behind the formation of this 
 party were the long, riotous strikes in that great in- 
 dustry of the country, coal mining. There were the 
 same traditional abuses that have been the shame of 
 our own coal region, systematized pilfering from 
 the miners in the loading and weighing of coal, 
 in deductions by sale of powder and through the 
 truck stores, and a vicious use of credit. The final 
 result of all this was to throw these masses into a 
 sullen and determined political opposition. Social- 
 istic organization began with the appearance of the 
 International in 1866. At the first Congress in 
 Ghent, 1877, the Marxian policy was adopted. There 
 was an instant revolt of the autonomists, or anar-
 
 314 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 chist sections. There was the same bitter internal 
 strife that everywhere appears during the period of 
 abstractions. 
 
 Two years after this first Congress, a movement 
 began which for twenty years has added increasing 
 strength to the cause. In 1879 a socialist working- 
 man in Ghent, Edouard Anseele, angry at the inces- 
 sant bickering over phrases and programmes, began 
 an experiment with a cooperative bakery. In 1898 
 I went about this city with M. Anseele to see the 
 stores, the bakery, and splendid club-house with its 
 great garden. He said : " The plan of bombarding 
 capitalism with loaves of bread has succeeded beyond 
 any dream I ever had. I knew that the wage system 
 was doomed, and that competition must yield to coop- 
 eration, but I did not expect to see, while I am still 
 young, six thousand loyal members in this small city. 
 They tell us we are atheists and without a religion ; 
 but without a religion these poor families would not 
 sacrifice all they have to build up our cooperative in 
 Ghent. It is our religion to found a society in which 
 the poor shall have just as many chances for leisure, 
 good homes, and the best education that their talent 
 deserves. We believe we can do this only by train- 
 ing the common people to create more and more 
 wealth themselves without the parasites. We there- 
 fore begin by shaking off as many middlemen as we 
 can drive to productive work, by doing better our- 
 selves what they did. We began with bread, because 
 it is the great necessity of us all. All who buy our 
 bread are fighting the sweater who works his laborers 
 in mean dens fourteen and fifteen hours. Every loaf 
 that we make stands for a clean shop, three and
 
 SOCIALISM AT WORK 315 
 
 four hours' less work per day, and the principle of the 
 minimum wage. To buy of us means brotherhood 
 instead of war. To make this better method succeed 
 in the teeth of capitalism requires of our members 
 great sacrifices at the start. They are making them 
 because of their enthusiasm for the freedom of the 
 cooperative state." 
 
 I went later with M. Anseele to see the " Home of 
 the People " the centre of social and educational 
 life. I expressed surprise that a body of working- 
 men could have bought a building and grounds of 
 such pretensions. "Ah, but we got it cheap," he 
 answered ; " it was the club-house of the capitalist 
 politicians (the liberals). They are now so near a 
 wreck that they could not afford to keep it. They 
 were furious when they found that their political 
 social rendezvous had become a possession of the 
 socialists." 
 
 The incident is not without significance. It is as 
 if the socialists in Chicago or New York should buy 
 the Union League clubs. Since the founding of the 
 Parti-Ouvrier, political liberalism with its laissez-faire 
 traditions has so far perished that all sorts of con- 
 servative and property interests have joined hands to 
 fight the common foe socialism. Until 1879 there 
 was obstinate resistance by workingmen against all 
 proposals to take their party into politics, just as our 
 own farmers' and trade-union organizations have so 
 often set themselves against political affiliations, but 
 may like their Belgian fellows be driven solidly into 
 politics. 
 
 In 1880, definite and systematized political agitation 
 began. I had pointed out to me in Brussels the saloon-
 
 316 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 in which the policy of 1885 was framed. As English 
 trade unions in earlier days were forced to meet in 
 drinking places, because no hall could be hired, the 
 workingmen here meet in saloons. My companion, 
 M.Van Loo, actuary of the company, who told me this, 
 was showing me the veritable " Palace of the People," 
 just rising on the heights and overlooking Brussels. 
 " Now," he said, " a strong party among us is making 
 for temperance, and we mean to put a ban on all 
 gatherings where the passion for drink can be used 
 to pay for our meeting places." 
 
 Trying once to find the mayor in a socialist com- 
 mune in France, I was told by a catholic gentleman : 
 "The mayor? Oh, you will find him in the saloon." 
 He was in the estaminet, but the scornful comment 
 was not quite fair. Hundreds of saloons are kept by 
 men who have been blacklisted because they were too 
 active in the cause of labor. They became saloon- 
 keepers both as a means of sustenance and because 
 the agitation could in this way be best carried on. 
 These men were found everywhere in Belgium. Sym- 
 pathy naturally led the laborers to patronize this type 
 of drinking place. The principal organ of the party, 
 Le Peuple, was first printed in a saloon. A Brussels 
 lawyer told me that one great good of the Maison du 
 Peuple in the different towns was that the displaced 
 laborer found a natural home there. He thought the 
 cause of temperance among the working classes had 
 been distinctly furthered by the socialist institutions. 
 On a fete day, one may see hundreds of families in 
 and about their clubs, taking their pleasure far more 
 safely than in private saloons. Several of the social- 
 ist centres have voted to exclude altogether the sale
 
 SOCIALISM AT WORK 317 
 
 of strong alcoholic drinks, in spite of the pecuniary 
 loss and the driving away of many comrades. In the 
 widely circulated almanacs of the cooperators one 
 may find crisp and telling extracts upon the evils of 
 alcohol. At one of the first sittings of the council 
 when the Maison du Peuple was opened in Brussels, 
 it was voted to organize a campaign against the liquor 
 abuse. 1 
 
 This quite magnificent building, which cost work- 
 ingmen a million francs, is to Brussels what the 
 " Vooruit " is to Ghent and " Progres " is to Joliment. 
 These are the three leading centres of socialist work 
 and agitation. I went first in Brussels to see the 
 great bakeries, where no employer or middleman has 
 any footing. In 1897 they were producing in this 
 city alone ten million kilos of bread. Nearly one 
 hundred thousand francs were, in six months of the 
 year, credited to the purchasers in benefices. Five 
 thousand francs were set apart to extinguish the debt 
 on their great club-house, and about thirteen thou- 
 sand for the propaganda. The membership, in 1899, 
 reached eighteen thousand heads of families, repre- 
 senting nearly one hundred thousand people. Bread 
 was made in such quantities that three centimes' re- 
 bate per loaf gave back to the buyers one hundred 
 and fifty thousand francs. Since the beginnings in 
 Ghent more than fourteen hundred cooperative soci- 
 eties have been established. These include credit 
 associations, creameries, and groups of farmers for 
 the common buying and selling. Many of these are 
 
 1 In a collectivist hall in a mining district near Charleroi, I saw tem- 
 perance placards of a kind that one would expect to see in a hall of the 
 Women's Christian Temperance Union.
 
 3l8 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 purely business enterprises, but are greeted by collec- 
 tivists as further stages in the extinction of the middle- 
 man. This whole movement is economic, but at the 
 same time political. The English cooperation, from 
 the store to the wholesale departments, thence to the 
 cooperative wholesale workshops, is socialistic in that 
 it extinguishes thousands of profit-making middlemen. 
 The business gains go automatically to the sixteen hun- 
 dred thousand purchasers. The Belgian cooperatives 
 are all this and more. They use their profits for the 
 express purpose of spreading socialism. Their thirty- 
 three members of parliament, their schools and lec- 
 tures, their press and pamphlet literature, make heavy 
 drafts upon their resources. Literally, millions of 
 small pamphlets have a free distribution among work- 
 ingmen not yet in sympathy with socialism. They 
 believe that capitalism and the wage system are the 
 root and perpetuation of social inequalities. They 
 believe that the reigning politics is but a reflex of 
 these private business interests. They therefore use 
 for then- weapons, cooperation and political agitation ; 
 the shareholders en masse hold the political opinions 
 of the party. I asked a member of parliament which 
 was considered the more important, politics or busi- 
 ness. " I cannot tell," he answered; "we go to the 
 polls and the workshop for the same end, to make 
 a decent human society possible." 
 
 The economic and business basis of this cult already 
 includes drug stores, creameries, breweries, shoe and 
 furniture making, groceries, coal depots, and markets. 
 In addition, they now have old-age insurance, which 
 gives pensions at sixty years of age to those who have 
 been twenty years members.
 
 SOCIALISM AT WORK 319 
 
 At Ghent the doctor is free, as well as medicines 
 from the socialist pharmacy. In centres like Charle- 
 roi and Joliment where the labor troubles have been 
 at their worst, the growth of these cooperatives has 
 been rapid. I saw one at Roux in its very beginnings ; 
 Four years later, its property had an official valuation 
 of above two hundred thousand francs. At Joliment 
 the membership has reached twelve thousand. Bak- 
 eries, meat markets, pharmacies, were prosperous; but 
 the brewery was the source of even more pride. Its 
 profits in 1899 were ten thousand francs. My guide 
 insisted that the brewery was even a moral institution ; 
 " We go much less to the saloon, on boit cette excel- 
 lente biere cooperative maintenant en famille." The 
 enemies of this collectivist propaganda tell you that 
 it is coarsely materialistic, not only destitute of reli- 
 gion, but destitute of intellectual and aesthetic ideals. 
 I looked with some care at their libraries, which rep- 
 resent several thousand volumes. These had been 
 gathered by members whose daily wage does not, I 
 think, average one dollar and a quarter. Would hard- 
 working men and women, with this income, pay for 
 such luxuries if lower motives alone moved them ? 
 There were hundreds of volumes which any scholar 
 would gladly possess. The selection was both serious 
 and intelligent. Bibliothtques populaires everywhere 
 abound in Belgium and are freely patronized by the 
 working class. As for art, one of the first sections 
 at the Maison du Peuple, in Brussels, was founded in 
 order to further aesthetic interests. While I was in 
 Belgium, two lectures were given on the relation be- 
 tween economics and art. Lectures were announced 
 on Wagner and William Morris and one "On the
 
 320 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 Evolution of Art," by one of Belgium's most eminent 
 lawyers, Senator Picard. 
 
 A socialist character in one of Henry James's 
 stories goes to Italy. As the great masters work 
 upon his imagination, the disturbing thought first 
 comes to him that socialism would cut these noble 
 canvases into tiny bits for common distribution. 
 This awful suggestion appears to bring him back into 
 the beaten path of respectable opinion. This concep- 
 tion of socialist views about art is extremely popular, 
 but it is even more naively untrue than that other 
 current philistinism that " socialists want to make 
 everybody equal." Whether a collectivist society 
 would, as many artists believe, give the world again a 
 great art, cannot now be told, but the effort to create 
 the impulse and the conditions under which such an 
 art would have its inspiration, is very real. The most 
 important party paper, Le Peuple, contains articles 
 upon aesthetics from the best-known names in Bel- 
 gium. It was a socialist deputy that led the dis- 
 cussion in Parliament in favor of a subsidy to restore 
 the Abbaye d'Aulne. It was this party that urged the 
 ministry to have some policy of making the govern- 
 ment railroad stations beautiful, from an artistic point 
 of view, and to extend the instruction in the museums 
 and art schools, so that people should benefit more 
 freely from these institutions. Nor has any one done 
 more in Belgium to extend what we should call uni- 
 versity extension than many members of the Parti- 
 Ouvrier. These efforts to enrich the life of labor, 
 together with the attempts to lessen the evils of drink, 
 indicate that the term " a coarse materialism " carries 
 with it more prejudice than truth.
 
 SOCIALISM AT WORK 321 
 
 Federation and its Hopes 
 
 The work of federating all the socialist societies has 
 begun. The delegates of sixty-six cooperatives met 
 in Brussels in 1898. A centre for registration was 
 established, and the first wholesale purchases for the 
 smaller groups have since been made. Above one 
 hundred associations have already united in this 
 federation. The workingmen hope that the eco- 
 nomic advantage of this large organization buying 
 and producing for the smaller societies will compel 
 outside cooperators to affiliate with them. The cream- 
 eries have already federated, having in Brussels a 
 central market for the sale of butter and cheese. The 
 Moniteur Officiel gives a list of above four hundred 
 cooperative societies founded from 1898 to 1900. 
 The purely productive cooperative is, as everywhere, 
 in the minority, but fifteen new ones are recorded in 
 the year 1899. 
 
 The statement of a socialist deputy shows us very 
 clearly what his party is trying to do, and why a bitter 
 resistance comes now upon the scene. "We have," 
 he says, "proved once for all that in an increasing 
 number of industries the employer and middleman 
 can be dispensed with. Nearly two thousand coopera- 
 tives exist now in Belgium. They are upon the farm, 
 in the workshop, in hundreds of loan and credit as- 
 sociations. In more than twenty different kinds of 
 businesses, distributive and productive, cooperation 
 has come to stay. We ask for freedom to extend 
 this method throughout the country. In the fields 
 where cooperation could work, we can show that three 
 millions of francs a year can be turned from the
 
 322 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 pockets of useless middlemen into the pockets of all 
 the purchasers of these products. If in any industry 
 we make cooperation a success, that of itself proves 
 that the middleman was a parasite ; that he has been 
 living upon the labor of others and not upon his own 
 producing power." 
 
 This outspoken purpose together with the steady 
 march of cooperative business has aroused the activity 
 of a powerful opposition. It is busy in city councils 
 and with parliamentary leaders. It is perhaps busi- 
 est of all in the catholic church, where a virulent hos- 
 tility has developed, although it is not primarily 
 economic, but moral and religious. Many noble men 
 among the priests agree with the economic policy of 
 the socialists, as do many of the Christian Socialists 
 among the protestants ; but religiously and morally 
 the catholics hold the socialist influence in abhorrence. 
 It is believed to subvert all organized worship and to un- 
 dermine the monogamic family. A mass of popular 
 catholic literature is now spread through the country 
 filled with quotations of socialist opinion on the 
 church and on the family. The immediate fear of the 
 church is that socialists are turning the workingmen 
 into enemies to all religious authority. A catholic 
 professor told me that this fear had a terrible justifica- 
 tion through all the large industrial centres. To save 
 the workingmen, the catholics have also started, both 
 in distribution and production, scores of cooperative 
 associations. They have opened halls, reading rooms, 
 and lecture courses. At their congresses upon the 
 social question, clubs of wage earners troop in under 
 gay banners, and much of the programme has to do 
 expressly with the material interests of labor.
 
 SOCIALISM AT WORK 323 
 
 Another kind of opposition has yet more interest. 
 It is the cry of alarm raised by thousands of small 
 traders. There is here no question of morals or 
 religion, but of business. Their occupation as profit 
 makers is put in such peril that a clamorous appeal 
 goes up to the political authorities to save them from 
 the cooperator. There has even been an International 
 Congress at Antwerp 1 in the interests of small traders. 
 It was under the patronage of the Chief of the Cabinet 
 and of the Ministers of Industry and Justice. To 
 this Congress the association of business men made 
 their appeal. A few lines from their spokesman 
 are worth reproducing : " It is indisputable that the 
 cooperatives are bringing confusion into the field of 
 the small traders. In the districts where the most 
 powerful of the socialist societies are found, innumer- 
 able wagons carry bread to the home, but carry also 
 other articles, like drugs and syrups, which are sold 
 below the prices of other pharmacies." It is admitted 
 in the address that prices generally are lower at the 
 socialist counter. The appeal closes with the request 
 that cooperators be allowed to sell only to their own 
 members. If this is granted, " la misere du petit 
 commerce serait moins grande." The fact that 
 private business suffered seems nowhere to be ques- 
 tioned. A professor in the University of Ghent, Oscar 
 Pyfferoen, closes a pamphlet on " The Small Busi- 
 ness Man " with the words, " The middle classes are 
 at the present moment being driven to the wall by 
 the deadly blows they have received in the struggle." 
 Powerful friends have taken up the question before 
 
 1 A bulky report of 729 pages, La Petite Bourgeoisie, has been pub- 
 lished by Schleppens in Brussels, 16 rue Treuenberg, 1900.
 
 324 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 government. M. Gilliaux, a deputy from Brussels, 
 asks " if the authorities are to stand idle while thou- 
 sands of business men are extinguished." The social- 
 ists admit this to be their purpose, and they are more- 
 over accomplishing it. 
 
 The president of the Federation of National Inde- 
 pendents, L^on Theodor, began his speech in Parlia- 
 ment with the words, " It is time to act ; small merchants 
 and employers are menaced with destruction, if prompt 
 and energetic remedies are not forthcoming. From 
 an economic point of view, their disappearance would 
 be an evil ; from the point of view of the nation, a 
 calamity." 
 
 At Ghent, a commission has been taking evidence 
 against cooperatives during 1900. The charges are 
 humorously like the bill of particulars brought in this 
 country against the department stores. It is seen 
 that cooperation cannot be stopped, but may it not 
 be made harmless ? Cannot la petite bourgeoisie be 
 saved from destruction ? The proposals made to the 
 government are that distributive and productive socie- 
 ties shall not be allowed to combine, that they shall 
 sell to no one except their own members, that they 
 shall be prohibited from all political activities, that 
 no one shall be hired from the outside to fill any 
 administrative position, etc. They would have the 
 trade unions, as such, engage in no commercial busi- 
 ness. The greatest of objections is the intensity of 
 competition which the cooperative has raised against 
 " honest business." 
 
 As the German government has adopted a " Mittel- 
 stands Politik " to strengthen the middle class, that it 
 may act as a buffer against socialism and be protected
 
 SOCIALISM AT WORK 325 
 
 against the Grossindustrie, so the Belgian government 
 now votes its first subsidy to encourage counter- 
 organization in the middle-class commerce. A sec- 
 ond congress was held last year in Switzerland to 
 give an international character to the whole move- 
 ment. 
 
 The government has thus done what socialists long 
 since urged. When middle-class business raised its 
 first complaints, the socialist reply was, " Associate 
 yourselves, if you are ground by the great industry 
 on one side and by our cooperatives on the other, 
 band together as we have done, and reap the same 
 advantages." 
 
 This advice was jocose, as the socialists hold that 
 these middle-class associations, as they develop, will 
 be forced at length to affiliate more and more with 
 the cooperatives, " They will be forced to do business 
 with us on the cooperative method, and thus be edu- 
 cated away from the spent individualism which is now 
 their weakness." It is also believed that middle- 
 class organization will offer an easier field for propa- 
 ganda. When the farmers began to learn the 
 advantages of cooperation in creameries and mutual 
 credit associations, the socialists began a new cam- 
 paign to convince them that cooperative business was 
 fraternal and democratic, and that the meaning of 
 this was democracy in politics. The Brussels group 
 has bought a large farm, and already counts one 
 farmers' association as a convert. 
 
 This brief history carries with it a better explana- 
 tion of socialism than any formal proposition embodied 
 in programmes. It is better because, step by step, we 
 see the theoretic policy moulded and determined by
 
 326 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 its actual struggle to do business in open competition 
 with its enemy, the capitalist employer. Steadied by 
 these heavy, yet delicate responsibilities, the socialist 
 politics has been so chastened by its fifteen years' 
 experience that one of the strongest men of the party 
 told me : " We have learned that to run the affairs of 
 a town or of the government is immensely more diffi- 
 cult than any of us supposed. If we had the chance 
 to assume government responsibility, we should refuse 
 it, because we are not yet ready for it." 
 
 Even the more ideal expression of what they hope 
 to bring about is now stated in different language. A 
 noble scholar, Hector Denis, who has dedicated his 
 life to this party, and is now socialist member from 
 Liege, gives an invaluable statement of the changes 
 observable in the hopes and purposes of the party. 
 The period dominated by Robert Owen's influence, 
 he calls that of 1'altruisme ide"aliste. Its disinterested 
 devotion was heroic, but men and women were asked 
 to respond by qualities that were not yet developed in 
 them. The greed and jealousies, created by ages of 
 competitive conflict, were too slightly modified to meet 
 Owen's feverish expectations. His hope that men 
 would work for a common capital as faithfully as for 
 private gains, was generous but unwise. 
 
 The reaction comes with the Rochdale pioneers of 
 1844. The cooperative ideal remains, but the self- 
 regarding instincts are not lost sight of. The in- 
 crement of gain goes no longer to a middleman, neither 
 does it go communistically into a general fund, but 
 very definitely to individual purchasers. The heavy 
 race egotism has to be long disciplined by this form of 
 cooperation. We may still be cheered by that far-
 
 SOCIALISM AT WORK 327 
 
 off ideal in which " all for each and each for all " shall 
 have, even in the processes of the world's wealth get- 
 ting, a higher fulfilment. 
 
 This truce of the idealist, with the stubborn reali- 
 ties of human nature, appears throughout this Belgian 
 movement in ways so significant that they furnish, I 
 believe, the most luminous hints that modern social- 
 ism anywhere offers. 
 
 Though far younger than the German party, this 
 Belgian contingent began by stating its economic 
 programme, with that doctrinaire exactness which is 
 easy where there has been no experience. There 
 is no difficulty in writing unanimous and sounding 
 resolutions that "the laborer shall have the whole 
 product," that "none should work longer than eight 
 hours," that "work by the day should replace piece 
 work," that "the taking of interest is theft," that 
 "all should be paid according to their needs." Such 
 opinions were religiously held by thousands of Belgian 
 collectivists less than twenty years ago. They are the 
 current formulas of propaganda until they undergo 
 the tests of practical experiment. These experiments 
 have been made in Belgium. They have been made 
 long enough and in such variety, that the results can- 
 not be mistaken. 
 
 In 1898 I visited a large number of businesses car- 
 ried on by workingmen socialists; bakeries, pharmacies, 
 breweries, clothing and furniture and boot making, to- 
 gether with many distributive stores. I had learned 
 from socialist statements that a few years of hard 
 work in the drudgery of managing men and women 
 workers, so well as to make the business succeed, had 
 refashioned several articles of the creed. I will give
 
 328 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 as faithfully as I can report them, the reasons that 
 the socialist managers and members assigned for these 
 compromises, (a) I had been to a private bakery to 
 see if machinery of later and better type was there used 
 than in the socialist bakeries. I found in this in- 
 stance that the socialists had the newer and more per- 
 fect machines. I asked the manager if the men did 
 not object to these inventions because they would 
 displace labor. " Yes," he answered, " we had to fight 
 that out, but it never caused us much trouble, because 
 it was easy to show that if we own the machines, the 
 better they are, the better it is for us." But do they 
 not as a fact displace the men ? I urged. " Yes, of 
 course, but they make more work somewhere else 
 which some of our men must do. Besides, we know that 
 the more bread we can turn out with the best machin- 
 ery, the better wages we can pay and the shorter hours 
 we can give." It was, of course, never held by 
 any sane socialists that machinery was other thar 
 good if owned by the community ; but here these men, 
 out of a very brief experience, had learned all that any 
 economist or business man could teach them as to the 
 reasons why machinery is good. They had, moreover, 
 learned one lesson, about which the bourgeois world 
 is still in a very muddled state ; namely, that in those 
 instances in which new machinery really displaces 
 men at such time of life as to leave them in want, the 
 plainest duties were left undone, until work was found 
 or some form of insurance had brought relief. This 
 was one of the reasons for the insurance system of 
 the Vooruit in Ghent. They had rationally connected 
 cause and event, building up a system of " benefits," 
 under which some clear conception of social justice
 
 SOCIALISM AT WORK 329 
 
 was realized. The injured or the aged had his burden 
 lightened by a systematized and logical plan. The 
 family is not helped as a matter of charity, but as a 
 conceded right. 
 
 () I next found women working ten hours and men 
 hard by, nine hours. In my collectivist catechism, I 
 pointed to the opinion that eight hours should be the 
 maximum for all ; that five or six would probably 
 suffice. " Yes," he said, " we have been disappointed ; 
 we thought that we could make that rule universal, but 
 it would not work. A great deal of our business can 
 be managed with eight hours, and sometime we shall 
 do all of it so ; but at present, much of the simpler 
 work would lose so heavily under eight hours that 
 we could not carry it on. We shall push on toward 
 shorter hours just as fast as conditions will allow." 
 I asked if a compulsory eight-hour law would help. 
 " No," he replied, " not for the kind of work in which 
 we have found that nine and ten hours will produce 
 more than eight. If France, England, and Germany 
 could be held to eight hours in these special indus- 
 tries, we could stand it ; but that is not yet possible. 
 We have got to work it out ourselves and lower the 
 time by continual tests, to see where we can do it 
 without loss." The entire literature of the eight- 
 hour movement has not developed one line beyond 
 the good sense of this socialist workingman who was 
 receiving, when I saw him, one dollar and twenty 
 cents a day. 
 
 (c) Closely analogous to this, are the altered con- 
 ceptions about the minimum wage and piece-work. 
 It was fundamental that all workers in the collectivist 
 regime should be paid the minimum wage, a sum
 
 330 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 below which the daily earnings should not fall. This 
 principle still holds, but modified so ingeniously as to 
 increase our respect for their practical intelligence. 
 When it was found that the sewing girls in Ghent 
 often produced so little, that the minimum wage 
 took all the profit or even left a loss, it was decided 
 and rigidly enforced that a minimum product should 
 be a condition of the minimum wage, i.e. work 
 enough should first be done before this wage prin- 
 ciple should be applied. My first amazement at this 
 tribute to common industrial experience gave place 
 to admiration when the reasons appeared. " We could 
 not," it was said, " allow a given wage in all kinds of 
 work and with all sorts of workmen. Some will 
 trifle, gossip, waste their own time and that of others. 
 Some men care more for the saloon, and some girls 
 more for flirting and prinking than for their work. 
 We are still too imperfect to apply such a rule without 
 modification and exceptions." Ingenuity in manag- 
 ing the doctrine reached its climax as he added, 
 " Mais vous savez qu'il faut exiger un minimum de 
 production puisqu'il y aura un minimum de besoins 
 a satisfaire," we must require a minimum product 
 because they all have a minimum of wants to be 
 satisfied. Was ever more admirable agility shown 
 in doing effectively what had to be done, and then 
 furnishing a theory for it ? The three Massachusetts 
 towns in which I have seen the minimum wage ap- 
 plied to laborers, were sorry bunglers compared to 
 these workingmen of Ghent. One of these said to me, 
 " I think it very likely that men will always have to do 
 a given stint of work before they can be given any 
 set reward." This is evidently near akin to piece-
 
 SOCIALISM AT WORK 331 
 
 work. Collectivists, as well as many trade unions, have 
 long and obstinately objected to working by the piece, 
 because it is a method by which the employer can set 
 a too rapid pace for the whole group of laborers. 
 
 Time-work was given a thorough trial in Ghent and 
 elsewhere. A great deal of the cooperative work 
 can be done by those receiving day wages, but much 
 of it cannot be so done for reasons that are as old as 
 the history of human toil. The loafer will shirk his 
 responsibility under a time wage. Pointing to work- 
 ers of both sexes in a shoeshop, my informant said : 
 " Many here could be paid by the day and would not 
 shirk, but many of them have been tried, and will not 
 earn what is paid them. That young fellow worked 
 here for months for four francs a day; when his prod- 
 uct was measured, I found that he had earned much 
 less than this. He was then put on piece-work, in 
 company with others, when it soon appeared that he 
 was doing from a third to twice as much work, with- 
 out any injury to him." These tests (with the same 
 results) are the commonest experience throughout 
 ordinary industry. The collectivists, once seriously at 
 work, learn quickly what the race has learned, and 
 learn moreover to defend their practice by the same 
 reasons that any private manufacturer would give. 
 The dead beat is indeed more objectionable in a coop- 
 erative t because all see that his sloth or shabby work 
 hurts every member of the group. An article in Le 
 Peuple gives this reason, as it urges a careful consid- 
 eration of the best methods of wage payment, s'il 
 ne serait pas possible de perfectionner les modes de 
 remuneration usitees dans les cooperatives. 
 
 Once familiar with these facts, it brought no sur-
 
 332 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 prise to find in the same workshop an elastic scale 
 of wages. Whether by the day or by the piece, the 
 variations were as great as would be found in some 
 private factories. In a small shop, filled with sewing 
 girls, one small group was paid by the piece at a rate 
 that could not have given more than two francs a day. 
 When I asked about this, it was said, " Those shirts sell 
 on the market as low as forty cents, so we can't pay 
 very much." The great lesson that wages are condi- 
 tioned by the amount of product and by competitive 
 prices on the market, had been thoroughly learned. 
 Price lists were studied in the central office, and the 
 amount of foreign competition carefully estimated. 
 
 The impression deepened upon the visitor, that 
 these men had learned the limitations under which 
 practical business is done as thoroughly as those 
 bred in the outside world. They maintain earnestly 
 that the socialistic principle, under which the laborer 
 is to have the total product, is in no way violated. 
 " Our one aim is to make wages just as near the sell- 
 ing value of the product as possible. They can't, of 
 course, have all they make, because of so many inci- 
 dental expenses. We have interest charges, rent, and 
 our managers to pay." He admitted that all collec- 
 tivists were against interest and rent, but pleaded 
 very sanely in excuse that they must have capital to 
 buy machinery, horses, wagons, etc. " Men won't let 
 us have their money without interest," he said ; " we 
 must, too, have land and buildings, and owners must 
 be paid for these as they are paid for their capital." 
 He told me they even borrowed money at current 
 rates from their own members. Sometime, he added, 
 the community will own all this machinery and capi-
 
 SOCIALISM AT WORK 333 
 
 tal, and then rent and interest will be at an end. 
 Then we shall sell our products as close to cost as 
 possible and profits, too, will disappear. 
 
 Here was the doctrinaire socialist, but in his most 
 harmless form. He saw as well as another why in- 
 terest and rent were at present necessary and must 
 long remain so. He and his fellows had learned this 
 in the only way in which the race ever learns any- 
 thing, by exercising those industrial functions out of 
 which interest and rent naturally arise. In their fort- 
 nightly discussions at the Maison du Peuple all these 
 things were from time to time discussed. In no 
 assembly does a mere theorist have so hard a time. 
 They are doing the kind of work which furnishes all 
 the reasons that are needed for the argument. The 
 members that loan their own savings to the coopera- 
 tive know why they take interest. They all know 
 from day to day the difficulties that arise; why one 
 set of workers can work in three shifts of eight hours 
 each ; why another set must work nine hours, and 
 another nine and a half ; why three and a half francs 
 is as just for one man as seven francs a day for 
 another. It is with this sure knowledge susceptible 
 of tests in every shop that the cranks are subdued. 
 They have the same proportion of them as society in 
 general, and they can manage them much better. 
 
 Another fascinating subtlety in socialist discussion 
 has been that which concerns the extra payment of 
 ability. There is no commoner charge against the 
 further democratized administration of business than 
 that it would not pay for the talent requisite to suc- 
 cess. Can common laborers ever be made to under- 
 stand that the ability to organize and direct a great
 
 334 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 business must be paid enormous salaries? Is not 
 capacity to direct, to buy, and to sell in great quanti- 
 ties as rare and as precious as genius ? Is not labor 
 the beast, as Mr. Mallock assures us, and the em- 
 ployer the man upon his back ? What horse can 
 fitly estimate the reward due to its rider ? There is 
 doubtless much hard truth in this objection to a more 
 democratic ordering of business, but even less doubt 
 is there that the argument in favor of huge salaries 
 has been a good deal overworked. I have heard one 
 of the ablest insurance men in the country admit that 
 it had been ridiculously overvalued in his own busi- 
 ness. " There has been," he said, " a world of 
 favoritism in these great salaries." Germany, Aus- 
 tria, New Zealand, manage different forms of in- 
 surance on a very large scale, but do not find it 
 necessary to pay salaries that remind us in the 
 least of many paid in the United States. 
 
 It was long said that English cooperation would 
 fail, except within very narrow limits, because the 
 ordinary members would never consent to pay really 
 strong men as managers. This has proved to be 
 one of the least of its difficulties. I once asked a 
 man who is at the head of a business, whose transac- 
 tions represent more than thirty millions of dollars 
 a year, if managers could be found (in case of his 
 death) at a salary of three or four thousand dollars a 
 year. "That bugbear does not trouble us any more," 
 he answered. "We train them within the coopera- 
 tive ranks as fast as we can use them. I have five 
 men near me now, any one of whom is as capable as 
 I am." This illustration is necessary because the 
 socialist answer loses its force unless the educational
 
 SOCIALISM AT WORK 335 
 
 scheme is kept in mind. He knows that as long as 
 the masses are ignorant, they will set slight value on 
 mental gifts. It is for this reason that so much prom- 
 inence is given, in many of the socialist platforms, 
 to compulsory education of a far more comprehensive 
 character than now exists. They are incontestably 
 right in asking that during the entire formative 
 period of growth all children should be kept at school. 
 Let these schools be enriched by the best that manual 
 art and industrial training can offer, then the appre- 
 ciation of ability will be assured. It is one of the 
 reasons why the collectivist brotherhood, the world 
 over, is so at one against the desolating waste of 
 militarism in all its forms. It would use these thou- 
 sands of millions yearly to train citizens. To the 
 children of the poorer classes it would give an 
 education as complete and thorough as that which the 
 rich can command. Collectivists urge that a genera- 
 tion, in which every boy and girl is trained to the 
 verge of manhood and womanhood, will know ability 
 and value it after its qualities. 
 
 These are their hopes ; meanwhile the great mem- 
 bership in the cooperatives is now learning to dis- 
 tinguish very sharply between the dolt and the man 
 of gifts. I asked in Brussels, why a certain man 
 was paid a little more than five times as much as the 
 lowest laborer. " Because he is worth it," was the 
 reply. " As our works enlarge, we shall have to pay 
 still higher salaries. The great rewards of the com- 
 petitive business we shall not pay, because other 
 motives will enable us to secure first-rate capacity, 
 just as the manager of the Vooruit gives us his best 
 strength, but has never received twelve hundred
 
 336 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 dollars a year. He has been asked many times to 
 take charge of private concerns for a high salary, but 
 he is not even tempted. He is in parliament, he has 
 great influence, his leadership is recognized, and these 
 things are more to him than to imitate the bourgeois. 
 The greatest service we are doing is to educate 
 many men just like him." 
 
 I once asked the English cooperator, Mitchell, 
 why he gave his services as manager for so small a 
 salary. I had been told that he had many times 
 been offered much higher compensation. He re- 
 plied : " I think I have the respect of my Rochdale 
 cooperators. I have a good deal of power, I have 
 great faith in the cooperative ideal, and these things 
 satisfy me." This is the contention of the collectivist, 
 that when business is done from a deeper sense of 
 common interests tous pour un et un pour tous 
 other than purely money motives will move strong 
 men to work hard in business for far smaller rewards, 
 precisely as they now so work in science, in art, in 
 armies, and in the best of our politics. 
 
 That these Belgian workingmen so quickly learned 
 that the rarer gifts should be more amply recom- 
 pensed and could give rational grounds why this is 
 done, indicates that further difficulties of the kind 
 that may arise in the future will be met with the 
 same practical wisdom. 
 
 Thus, what have been thought by individualistic 
 critics to be the craziest notions in the collectivist 
 programmes, are found to be tempered to moderation 
 by some fifteen years of continuous routine work in 
 bearing common business burdens. It has been 
 learned that the methods of remuneration, hours of
 
 SOCIALISM AT WORK 337 
 
 labor, piece-work, the uses of interest and rent and 
 extra compensation of ability, are facts to be dealt 
 with in the same practical spirit as they are dealt 
 with under the old wage system. When I said to a 
 manager in Charleroi, " Except that you get rid of 
 middlemen and thoroughly democratize your busi- 
 ness, your actual work is done much as it is done 
 elsewhere." " Yes," he said, " only we make it plain 
 that all forms of rent and undertaker's profit are like 
 so many weights hung about the neck of labor. 
 We are to get rid of them as fast as we can throw 
 them off. The capitalists propose to keep them and 
 get up all sorts of reasons to show that they are a 
 blessing. Our method of association has already 
 proved that thousands of profit makers are unneces- 
 sary. We prove it, because we serve the consumer 
 better without the middlemen, and thus force him 
 to produce things instead of living by cutting off an 
 unnecessary profit. We mean to carry this work on 
 until all the workers are so well educated that they 
 can do business together, with their own machinery 
 and capital, producing things and distributing them 
 as nearly at cost as we can, and lowering the hours 
 as far as we are able to." To my suggestion that 
 this was not a very revolutionary programme, he 
 replied, " When we talk about revolution, all we mean 
 is evolution hurried up." 
 
 When large bodies of workingmen are educated 
 to the point that they are willing to pit their work- 
 ing methods openly and fearlessly against competitive 
 industry, asking only that the trial be a fair one, I 
 submit that no more conservative and hopeful influ- 
 ence could be introduced into modern society. Not
 
 338 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 a single cooperative centre has been made a success 
 without disciplining the members into a spirit of cau- 
 tion and prudence in the application of business 
 principles. Every added business burden will in- 
 crease the care and responsibility that steadies their 
 politics, as it steadies their industrial management 
 The aim of socialist politics is invariably to transform 
 industry. But this politics will never be freed from 
 the delirium and the dangers of unreal hopes and 
 tipsy schemes, until it is disciplined by the weight of 
 business duties and obligations. Political duties alone 
 have precious lessons for the German social democ- 
 racy. Belgian collectivists are learning both together. 
 They have added to their obligations in politics the 
 severe accountabilities of industrial management. 
 
 As the story of this hard won experience has 
 lengthened ; as it has been repeated and discussed 
 in every detail among the workers for a dozen years, 
 another change has taken place : the statement of 
 principles grows painstaking and judicious. It is 
 admitted that the great questions are more complex 
 and difficult than had been supposed. The bumptious 
 and cocksure tone is tempered by wholesome doubts. 
 Big and sanguine generalizations do not pass without 
 challenge. Within the very camp of the socialists 
 arises a new criticism of almost every sonorous affir- 
 mation upon which the older collectivism was built. 
 For example, the state was " to absorb all means of 
 production." One may now hear this chaffed at by 
 the most loyal members of the party. It is seen that 
 innumerable lesser forms of machinery may be left 
 to private ownership. The straight logic of collec- 
 tivism would permit no woman to own her loom,
 
 SOCIALISM AT WORK 339 
 
 if she made upon it articles for sale. The same 
 logic would cry thief to the petty landowner if 
 he sent his vegetables to market. All private ap- 
 propriation of land and machinery for profit-mak- 
 ing purposes, is high crime before the severe con- 
 sistencies of this theory. The small sponger may 
 be less harmful than the great one, but he is a 
 sponger still. The socialist humor has begun to 
 work freely upon this subject. I have been told: 
 " We do not wish to make the theory ridiculous by 
 forcing it to its last consequences. We shall not dis- 
 turb the small man in la petite Industrie, whether on 
 the land or in the little shop. It is the great industry 
 that we attack." This position has, moreover, even 
 in the collectivist doctrine, this justification : many 
 of the ablest writers have held that only when the 
 great industry has driven the small industry to the 
 wall has the time for socialist action arrived. 
 
 With this qualification the strongest exponents of 
 Belgian collectivism still maintain the integrity of 
 their theory. Therefore, the plot of ground, the 
 small shop and mill with a few helpers, may be left 
 in private possession until they are brought to ruin 
 by their great competitors. 1 
 
 The most vigorous exponent of this party, M. Vander- 
 velde, objects to Dr. Schaffle's famous definition, "the 
 collective appropriation of all the means of production 
 and circulation." " We do not," says this writer, " want 
 all the means of production, but the great and leading 
 industries." He admits that collectivism is but partial 
 until the small employers also disappear. But mean- 
 
 1 See " Le Socialisme en Belgique," pp. 259, 261, by Destree et 
 Vandervelde.
 
 340 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 while the lesser industries are to be left free to develop 
 as they will. 
 
 The practical consequences of this attitude are as 
 noteworthy for this party as they are for society in 
 general. Socialist writers before audiences and in 
 their printed appeals will still protest solemnly and 
 indignantly that these changes are free from incon- 
 sistencies and of slight significance. My reply to 
 this is that the man who made these qualifications 
 and obvious compromises a dozen years ago, was in 
 every continental country pronounced a renegade. 
 Long after English Fabians had settled to the hum- 
 bler tasks of political and industrial opportunism, it 
 was common to hear continental socialists speak of the 
 Fabians as a group of bourgeois imitators that would 
 only bring disgrace upon the cause by betraying its 
 fundamental principles. When the Belgian coopera- 
 tives began to develop so far as to hold the collec- 
 tivist politics in some restraint, many of the brother- 
 hood in France classed them contemptuously with 
 the Fabians, as " mere reformers." 
 
 Those who believed in a flawless economic dogma, 
 and in revolutionary and heroic remedies, were right 
 to count these reformers as enemies. From the 
 moment the ways of practical compromise were 
 opened, every step has led to affiliation with the 
 ordinary methods of social improvement. The full 
 force and significance of this show at once in the 
 practical growth of the cooperative. In the country 
 it must have capital and therefore a system of saving. 
 The pest of the Jewish usurer is the first obstacle to 
 overcome. One weapon against the usurer has proved 
 so effective that no practical man can ignore it the
 
 SOCIALISM AT WORK 341 
 
 Raiffeisen Bank or some form of Mutual Credit Asso- 
 ciation. Instead of the usurer's twelve to fifteen per 
 cent, four and five per cent, on better and easier terms, 
 may be secured. Therefore the collectivists adopt 
 these agencies, the very purpose of which is to widen 
 and strengthen private property in the very forms 
 that socialism has pronounced parasitic. In the last 
 statement I have received, which records the works 
 and purposes of the party, the socialists are urged 
 to make all possible use of Raiffeisen credit banks. 
 There is even praise of the catholic Abb6 Mellaerts 
 who introduced them into Belgium. These banks, 
 says the socialist deput from Liege, " rendent de r^els 
 services" "don't go to the great banks, but save 
 your own money. Lend and borrow for four per cent, 
 and win for yourselves economic independence." J 
 
 1 The contrast between the sobriety of the Belgian socialism that 
 has had fifteen years' business experience and the socialism in the 
 neighboring French towns is full of lessons. 
 
 The red flag is a sacred symbol, and one of the most popular gayeties 
 is to insult the national emblem le drapeau tricolore. 
 
 Citizen Dormoy is applauded when he points to the national flag at 
 the Congress at Montlucon and says, " Sous les plis duquel le bour- 
 geois a commis toutes les trahisons envers la patrie." 
 
 This is the grim and bitter emphasis which is still put upon the 
 determined apartness of the class struggle. One form which this 
 tenacious illusion takes is the uproarious approval of the " universal 
 strike." At every congress since that at Calais, 1890, to that at 
 Rennes, in 1898, this tumultuous resolution is passed, " Let the world's 
 workers lay down their tools; let the millions in every land who pro- 
 duce the wealth stop all toil, and the infamous parasite of capital will 
 soon capitulate." Some talk like this is still tolerated among the 
 Belgian collectivists, but the comrades who guide the movement have 
 learned that it is nonsense. They have come to know first, that the 
 workers will not unite in any such insane escapade, and second, that 
 if they did, it would work chiefly to their 9wn undoing.
 
 342 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 For dramatic interest there is even a more startling 
 recommendation. If the great Lassalle had one 
 enemy upon whom he poured more scorn than upon 
 any other, that man was Schultze-Delitzsch. All that 
 was scathing and venomous in the German tongue 
 was showered upon this founder of credit banks for 
 town populations. They were to serve the small 
 needs in the town as Reiffeisen met them in the coun- 
 try. What would this high priest of socialism have 
 said, to find in authoritative socialist sources, a single 
 generation after his death, a cordial recommendation 
 of Schultze-Delitzsch's banking scheme ? To Las- 
 salle, every use that the workingman made of these 
 credit banks " added a link to the chain that bound 
 him." The very gospel of "self-help" for which 
 Schultze stood is now advocated simply and directly 
 in the catechisms for popular socialist instruction. 
 (Almanack des Cooperateurs Beiges y 1900.) The 
 truth is that the cooperatives have done their work 
 so well that the members see the necessity of saving, 
 borrowing, lending, even if in forms that violate every 
 theoretic principle of socialism. They have learned 
 that the very principle of association, on which their 
 whole structure must be built, gets its strength 
 through the encouragement of private ownership, not 
 only of " property for consumption " which the theory 
 allows, but of property that creates personal rent and 
 profits. Precisely that has come about which the old 
 guard of revolutionaries predicted : " Once begin to 
 compromise," they said, " with the reform which city, 
 state, or bourgeois has sanctioned, and we are lost. 
 Our glory and our strength is in fighting the existing 
 order, not in preserving and improving it." Whether
 
 SOCIALISM AT WORK 343 
 
 for loss or gain, the irrevocable step has been taken. 
 The party is once for all committed to the slower and 
 humbler ways of industrial and political reforms sanc- 
 tioned by an experience far wider than that which 
 any socialist party can claim. 
 
 All that is best in socialism will gain by this change. 
 It need abate no jot or tittle of its purpose to win for 
 society every increment of gain that proves to be 
 " unearned." The transformation that we have fol- 
 lowed now forces it, however, to use means and 
 methods that are educational ; that furnish, as they 
 are applied, their own tests of success or failure ; that 
 tend steadily to unite men as friends, and not to divide 
 them as enemies. 1 
 
 1 The very essence of " self-help " as applied to the work of these 
 cooperatives is seen in the following question and answer in a catechism 
 of 1899. 
 
 D. Que peuvent done faire les travailleurs? 
 
 R. Profiler de leurs moments de loisir pour s'instruire, apprendre 
 & se diriger eux-mmes au lieu de remettre le soin a d'autres d'agir 
 pour eux, et enfin tacher de comprendre et d'utiliser la force qui reside 
 dans la Cooperation, p. 17.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 NEXT STEPS 
 
 THESE changes of temper, of method, and of pur- 
 pose open to society every chance that could be 
 asked for the industrial and social renovation that 
 in some way must come. The real peril which we 
 now face is the threat of a class conflict. If capital- 
 ism insists upon the policy of outraging the saving 
 aspiration of the American workman to raise his stand- 
 ard of comfort and of leisure, every element of class 
 conflict will strengthen among us. When a despatch 
 is sent to a Southern state, asking for a car-load of 
 negroes to break a strike, we see in concrete form 
 what this use of subject and lower races may mean. 
 Every added cable, wire, ship, and railway which 
 destroy space, make it easier for capital to turn the 
 lower labor standard against the higher. The com- 
 ing of these cheaper immigrants will be a help, if 
 they are not used to break the power of the unions. 
 Labor organization, in spite of every unhappy fault 
 that can be laid to its charge, stands for the higher 
 standard of living. To break it means longer hours, 
 lower wages, and a bitterer competition among the 
 workers. 
 
 A New York builder, angered by delays upon his 
 structure, tells me : "If it were not for the union, I 
 could finish it in two-thirds of the time. I could get 
 
 344
 
 NEXT STEPS 345 
 
 ten hours a day out of them, and I could get them 
 one dollar and a half cheaper. I could bring in 
 young fellows from the country, and everything 
 would hum." Yes, that is precisely what he could 
 do. He could have great speed, cheaper product, and 
 fewer annoyances ; but it would all be at the expense 
 of that higher standard of labor for which the unions 
 are making their desperate struggle. The cause of 
 labor is, upon the whole, their cause. The harassing 
 annoyance under which builders and architects, for 
 example, now suffer, is the price we have to pay for 
 a more democratized form of industry that some- 
 where in the future must come. Unless every ideal 
 of a more equal life is to be given up, this passion 
 should be welcomed for the uses to which it can be 
 put. The way of safety is to educate it, the way of 
 danger is to deride and defeat it. 
 
 We have only to humiliate what is best in the as- 
 piration of the trade union, and then every worst fea- 
 ture of socialism is fastened upon us. There is no 
 danger in socialism that for a moment compares 
 with that part of its working propaganda, dear to the 
 extremists the class struggle. To make men believe 
 in the fatalities of this social warfare is the dead- 
 liest work in which any human being can engage. 
 To make men disbelieve it, by organizing agencies 
 through which the luminous proof appears that men 
 can do their work together, with good-will, rather 
 than hatred in their hearts, is as noble a service as 
 falls to us in this world. To show the possibilities of 
 this more fraternal and peace-bringing process, I have 
 laid much stress upon the changes in the German and 
 Belgian socialism. There could be no better news
 
 346 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 from Germany, for instance, than the new chances 
 which these changes offer for the socialists and trade 
 unions to work together rather than in enmity. 
 
 In 1890, there were perhaps two hundred and fifty 
 thousand trade-union members. In 1899 there were 
 nearly six hundred thousand. These can now frater- 
 nize politically with socialists in the common aim of 
 securing legislative and industrial improvements. 
 
 Middle-class sympathizers of every sort can also 
 join hands with social democrats for the same re- 
 forms. As the feeling of a purely class conflict fades 
 out, the real unity will be seen to be, not one of voca- 
 tions, but of opinion and purpose. The party has 
 from the first owed its impulse and guidance largely 
 to those who never were workingmen. Liebknecht, 
 Marx, Engels, Lassalle, Guesde, Jaures, Hyndman, 
 Brousse, Ferri, Vandervelde, Kautsky, Denis, are 
 but a few of the many to show what the party has 
 gained from those who were in no sense proleta- 
 rians. Indeed, no darker illusion has ever troubled 
 the whole labor question than the assumption that 
 there is an identity of interests in the entire body of 
 wage earners as against some other class. The 
 Klassenkampf rests on this illusion. This was one 
 of the weaknesses of the Knights of Labor. General 
 interests came into speedy conflict with special trade- 
 union interests. The strength of the Federation of 
 Labor is that it has thus far shown skill to avoid this 
 error. It is admitted that the interests of separate 
 unions, glass-blowers, stone-cutters, locomotive engi- 
 neers, may at any time be much closer to that of the 
 employers than to that of the miners, shoemakers, or 
 printers. Large leeway is therefore given for the
 
 NEXT STEPS 347 
 
 play of special, as against general, interests. Every 
 sympathetic strike brings this fact at once into 
 evidence, so that some of the wisest labor leaders now 
 unite in condemning the sympathetic strike. 
 
 Nearly one-half of the strikes in the last quarter of 
 a century in this country are put down by Colonel 
 Wright as " successful," but the sympathetic strike 
 proper is an almost uninterrupted story of defeat. 
 In warning the soft-coal miners not to engage in this 
 kind of strike (1902) John Mitchell told his hearers 
 he had never known a sympathetic strike to succeed. 
 Trade unionism at its best has so far discovered the 
 great fact of the solidarity of interests that it may 
 easily be led to cooperate rather than to antagonize. 
 If we are moved by reason and fairness, its whole 
 massive strength can be turned against our greatest 
 danger the class struggle, as it may be saved from 
 the worst error of the English unions, the limitation 
 of output. 
 
 This is possible, of course, only through measures 
 that are educational ; that act slowly upon the habits 
 of thought and action. But the word " education" 
 leaves us in the air, until we know, with some pre- 
 cision, what it is to be, and how it is to work. This 
 must first be made clear. At the Remuneration 
 Conference, in London, I886, 1 there was gathered 
 perhaps as able a group of men for the discussion of 
 the social question as has ever met for this purpose : 
 statesmen, economists, business men, and artisans. 
 
 In an informal gathering, I heard an evening's 
 dispute in which practically every point of view was 
 represented : the individualist of every shade, the 
 
 1 Report of Industrial Remuneration Conference.
 
 348 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 single taxer, the positivist, socialist, and the business 
 man, who was, as so often happens, by common con- 
 sent, the gayest theorizer present. The result of the 
 long symposium was what has often been noted 
 practical agreement as to the social ideal toward 
 which effort should be directed. All alike wanted a 
 society in which opportunity should be organized so 
 fully and so fairly that each could have every chance 
 which his character and ability, industry and good-will, 
 made possible. There was general consent that 
 society, as now organized, does not offer equal 
 chances except to a small minority. The brilliant 
 publicist, Frederic Harrison, after thirty years of 
 hard work upon English social problems, said at the 
 morning session, that the need of social reorganiza- 
 tion had come to be so urgent that unless it could 
 be brought about, we were to be left in a condition 
 "which is hardly an advance on slavery or serfdom." 
 There was also agreement that society, through 
 individuals, or associations, or laws, has power to re- 
 move much of this injustice. With one exception the 
 agreement here came to an end. The causes of so 
 much injustice, and above all the means for its re- 
 moval, excited dissensions. The thing to be aimed at, 
 the far ideal of social relationships, awoke no dis- 
 cords among the disputers. A society in which each 
 may live out generously and gladly his largest and 
 freest life ; a society in which each capability may 
 have free play, with the infinite social variety which 
 that implies, was the Utopia in which all believed. 
 Then came bickering and dissent of opinion over 
 ways and means of reaching so fair a goal, and finally, 
 to the common surprise, agreement again agree-
 
 NEXT STEPS 349 
 
 ment that whatever changes befall or measures are 
 adopted, the race must have a training and a discipline 
 it has not yet received. Education, to which all alike 
 looked forward, was thus the panacea and harmonizer. 
 Happily, for the evening's peace, no one raised the 
 question as to the kind of education necessary for 
 this high service, and we went our ways pleased with 
 the illusion which a stately platitude often gives. 
 
 That education must at least go hand in hand with 
 social betterment, will be disputed by none. When, 
 however, education is used as a stop-gap to every 
 proposal, we shall, if we are intelligent, make objec- 
 tion. The hoariest commonplace ever used against 
 reforms has the same character, " You can't do any- 
 thing until you have changed human nature." What 
 service this ancient saw has done from age to age 
 against every hint of abuse to be overcome ! That 
 " golden conduct will not come from leaden instinct," 
 has been thoroughly drilled into us. 
 
 We accept the admonition, but shall reply, if we 
 are wise, that it does not greatly help us, unless 
 something very definite is added about methods and 
 details. A community that is civilized enough to tax 
 itself for an education under which the bookish 
 tradition should be accompanied by several years of 
 first-rate art and manual training, under which the 
 science, begun in the school garden, would make the 
 farm as interesting as the laboratory or the artist's 
 studio, would go far to wipe out a whole class of social 
 dangers and inequalities. It would take a quarter of 
 a million children from maiming industries and from 
 street avocations, keeping them at habit-making 
 processes until they were seventeen years of age.
 
 350 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 This elimination of the child from bread-winning 
 occupations would lighten the crushing weight of 
 competition upon the very class that now staggers 
 most heavily under it. 
 
 Clear and immense as the gain of this better edu- 
 cation would be, it does not meet all our difficulties. 
 There are in the meantime other duties to be met, and 
 another sort of education for which our need is at 
 least as great. 
 
 From an educational point of view, what is the 
 most unanswerable charge that can be brought 
 against our current industrial system ? It is that, 
 as a large part of this system now works it creates 
 suspicion, aversion, or stolid indifference which may 
 be worse. Great portions of our competitive business 
 have come to act upon the wage earner in ways that 
 train him neither toward sympathy with his employer 
 nor toward a sense of social responsibility. The 
 " great business," managed by agents under direction 
 of absentee proprietors, has intensified this evil. A 
 mine operator living on the spot said to me : " Our 
 mining population has been getting worse and worse 
 each year. They do not trust us nor we them, and 
 I think one reason is that the direction of the business 
 has so largely fallen into the hands of men who live 
 in the big cities, and have therefore little knowledge 
 of the workmen and little real sympathy with them. 
 They have to trust to bosses and agents who, in order 
 to make a good showing, have to take it out of the 
 men." 
 
 But of far more than this special kind of industry, 
 is the main fact true. I once showed to a manager 
 of one of our largest department stores a summa-
 
 NEXT STEPS 351 
 
 rized plan of the cooperative method in the famous 
 Bon Marche" in Paris. By the very nature of its busi- 
 ness organization it binds an army of clerks to the 
 store and its interests. The American manager said, 
 " I know the Paris store well ; we can beat it in many 
 ways, but in one way it beats us : their organization 
 educates and ours doesn't." He was proud of the 
 trained clerical efficiency in his own store, but by 
 education under the cooperative influence he meant 
 a discipline that brought an ever enlarging sympathy 
 with the business in its entire social relations. If 
 then, we are to use the word " education " as a remedy 
 for industrial weaknesses, we should understand that 
 all that is outside and apart from the interior active 
 business processes cannot make in the workman 
 those habits of thought and of action which society 
 most needs. Neither our business nor our politics 
 is any longer safe unless education means at least 
 as much as this, the sum of influences which act 
 upon the laborer continuously in his daily craft. Much 
 of our industry educates in the sense of producing 
 every degree of skilled performance. It may do 
 nothing to educate socially or fraternally. It has 
 come very widely to do the exact opposite of this. 
 There can be no " remedy " deserving the name that 
 does not recognize the necessity of so modifying the 
 relations of employer and employed that the daily 
 work shall instruct both parties in those things that 
 bind together, rather than antagonize. It is the 
 obvious curse of a great part of competitive work 
 that it now induces antagonism between manager 
 and helper. It does this in an increasing number of 
 industries not accidentally, but in the very nature of
 
 352 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 the working relation between them. This autumn, 
 in Milwaukee, Chicago, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Cleve- 
 land, Columbus, and Cincinnati, I heard the testi- 
 mony of business managers of affairs into which 
 strong unions had come, but with no organized rec- 
 ognition by employers. The testimony was almost 
 a unit upon this point. " The relations with our men 
 are getting to be so strained and so delicate that they 
 cannot go on without some change that is more than 
 mere patchwork." The man standing at the head of 
 his business in Chicago said, " It has been getting 
 gradually worse and now is so nearly intolerable 
 that I wonder why we do not all quit business." 
 While blaming trade unions for this, every one of 
 these gentlemen had come to recognize that the 
 trade union could not be got rid of. 
 
 This situation has then to be faced, organized capi- 
 tal and organized labor side by side, both alike grow- 
 ing in strength. For a quite indefinite future these 
 must work together. In what spirit and through what 
 methods is this inevitable fellowship to be carried on ? 
 I have just put this exact question to the second 
 largest coal operator known to me. He answers thus, 
 " It is my deliberate opinion that we must continue to 
 fight the unions with all the strength we possess, it 
 will be safer than any hopeless attempt to educate 
 them into common sense." 
 
 I have tried to show that if he, and those who 
 think with him. should do this and succeed, we should 
 have an increase of stormy political socialism. Bui 
 the attempt will be difficult. Public opinion will more 
 and more demand that labor shall have every right 
 of organization (with federation and representation)
 
 NEXT STEPS 353 
 
 to which capital lays claim. Late in the recent strike 
 I found in a town of the middle West, the leading 
 business men (in no way interested in bituminous 
 coal) generous subscribers to the striking miners. 
 Judges, bankers, editors, and even the president of 
 a corporation were among the subscribers. One of 
 the richest and most active business men told me, 
 " I and most of my friends would have subscribed 
 every month until those miners got their claims be- 
 fore a fair arbitration board." 
 
 This is the new force of public opinion with which 
 the old dictatorial and arbitrary method of the em- 
 ployer (especially in semi-public corporations) will 
 henceforth have to deal. In this surly fellowship be- 
 tween organized capital and organized labor, both par- 
 ties have to be educated. The lesson for the employer 
 is, that some way has to be found in which work can 
 be carried on with complete recognition of associated 
 labor. This will involve such modification of the famil- 
 iar, arbitrary, and individualistic method as to admit 
 what in most of the great business, is essentially the 
 spirit of a partnership. In letter and in law this is still 
 far in the future, but the spirit of it will have to be 
 admitted and acted upon. I have given the consenting 
 testimony of first-rate men of affairs upon this point. 
 The coal operator, just quoted, said to me, " What I 
 hate is, that we can't really recognize organized labor 
 without getting into a box ; our men would soon think 
 they were in some way partners with us." 
 
 A soft-coal operator in Illinois, who has definitely 
 recognized the miners' association, said, " It gives me 
 the chills sometimes to hear my men talk as if they, 
 too, were actually in the business." The process 
 
 2A
 
 354 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 may add fever to the chills, but it is the way through 
 which the unwilling parties have to pass. We can- 
 not encourage millions of low-class laborers to come 
 to us without incurring responsibilities. From the 
 first act of Congress at the close of the Civil War " to 
 encourage immigration," to the action of companies 
 to " assist in carrying out the intention of Congress," 
 the class which makes much of our trouble has been 
 encouraged to come. Anthracite operators welcomed 
 the " Slav " because he could keep wages down and 
 break strikes, as was done in 1887-1888. Those who 
 have profited by these luxuries of " wage depressors " 
 and " strike breakers " should no longer shirk corre- 
 sponding responsibilities. 1 
 
 Moreover, once getting this polyglot multitude here, 
 what has been done to civilize them by those who have 
 grown rich from the miners' toil? In many journeys 
 I have found two paltry gifts in all those blackened 
 districts, calculated to civilize and soften conditions. 
 
 In one of the richest of the towns, washed by a 
 noble river running too swiftly for safe bathing, 
 I asked a citizen why, in such a place, there were no 
 public baths. The evening had brought to the pretty 
 banks hundreds of miners and their wives. I got 
 this answer : " I live among the swells myself. We 
 have a lot of them. They are sometimes here, some- 
 times in Europe. All their riches came from 
 royalties, or in some way from the mines. I made a 
 canvass for baths because the miners and their 
 families have to live in such dirt and because the 
 luxury could be given to thousands of these men and 
 women at so reasonable an outlay. No influence 
 
 1 House Reports, 5Oth Congress, 4147, 2d session.
 
 NEXT STEPS 355 
 
 that I possess can produce the slightest effect. We 
 have some nobly charitable women and a few men 
 who will give to the local hospital, but as for any 
 sense of responsibility for these thousands of miners, 
 it has no existence." Careful search might show some 
 startling exception to this charge ; but this gentleman's 
 opinion is that of every investigator of this region. I 
 have looked at scores of great industries at home and 
 abroad, but nowhere have I ever seen a blacker con- 
 trast between great private gains and any sense of 
 civic responsibility for the masses who wear out their 
 lives in and about the mines. My object in calling 
 attention to this ungracious fact is to show where ulti- 
 mate responsibility must also be fixed for lawlessness 
 and disorder that break out in time of great excitement. 
 That kind of population, so long and so dangerously 
 neglected, will develop some brutal types, as naturally 
 as the miner's occupation tattoos him with scars. 1 
 
 In this industry as in many others, the time is now 
 passed when patriarchal benignities, mere "doing 
 something for the laborers," will meet the need. Less 
 and less will labor be deceived by any dole of pat- 
 ronage. In the class of industries here considered, 
 organization of employer and employed must now find 
 a working relation that educates, because of the very 
 nature of the affiliation in which they stand to each 
 other. A common education must replace a one-sided 
 benevolence. 
 
 Before reaching the details of this relationship, the 
 frailties and offences of labor organization have to be 
 
 1 For a vivid contrast in method and result, see Annual Report of 
 the Sociological Department of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, 
 1901-1902.
 
 356 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 stated. They are as real as any upon the side of 
 capital, even if there is more excuse for them. The sin 
 and the weakness of the trade union has been (i) in 
 its attitude toward the non-union man ; (2) in its sullen 
 aversion to new inventions ; (3) in its too willing as- 
 sent to check the output of work ; (4) in its tendency 
 to discourage the best endeavor among the better and 
 stronger workers ; (5) in its too free use of the 
 sympathetic strike; (6) in a far too reckless use 
 of the boycott. 1 The worst of our unions are 
 guilty of every one of these counts against them. 
 The average union is guilty in the case of part of 
 them, but the best and strongest unions have already 
 risen pretty clearly and cleanly above them all. 
 Enemies of the unions are fond of telling us that " if 
 all unions were like the locomotive engineers, business 
 interests would be safe." Yes, but that is what this 
 body of workmen has slowly reached. Its earlier his- 
 tory is black enough. Other unions have grown safe 
 only through experience and responsibilities. The 
 advance guard of unionism is at the present moment 
 in the United States one of the most conservative in- 
 fluences active among us. After life-long familiar- 
 ity with the trade union, Commissioner C. D. Wright 
 states that "as a rule trade unions oppose strikes"; 
 that they "are growing more and more conservative." 
 " As a rule they are friendly to machinery." z 
 
 1 That the boycott is not in itself an evil is seen in the fact that most 
 decent people boycott something. It may be the saloon, the brothel, 
 and the gambling den, or a vicious play at the theatre. In a proved 
 case of injustice or indecency this " organized disapprobation " has its 
 moral justification. The trade union abuse of this lies in the fact of 
 the too frequent, reckless, and indiscriminate use of the boycott. 
 
 * See Contemporary Review, November, 1902.
 
 NEXT STEPS 357 
 
 It has been shown that our trade unions have be- 
 come socialistic, but it is a socialism that is safe, 
 if we do our duty. It is safe because it asks for a 
 tentative extension of city or state functions. It asks 
 this, knowing that if a city cannot manage electric 
 lighting, for example, better than a private company, 
 the people are not in the least likely to continue that 
 sort of socialism. If it prove that city management 
 is more wasteful, less alert to apply new inventions, 
 more reckless of the peoples' interest, they will not 
 continue this inferior policy. 
 
 The kind of training which strong trade unionism 
 (like the Federation of Labor) brings to the workers, 
 leads them to understand how slowly and how experi- 
 mentally these changes must be made. I have sat 
 through a week's session of the Federation of Labor, 
 learning there that nowhere is the socialist who makes 
 silly or wild proposals so instantly and so summarily 
 disposed of. Nowhere does a crank have a harder time 
 of it. If we omit certain unions in the more corrupt 
 cities, where the leaders learn bad habits by imitation 
 and are too frequently bought and sold, there is at the 
 present moment in this country no more powerful in- 
 fluence to train men for citizenship than the influences 
 at work in the best and strongest labor organizations. 
 This is true of the Federation ; it is true of separate 
 unions like the printers, trainmen, iron moulders; 
 many of the longshoremen, and cigar-makers. 
 
 But especially do these older and stronger unions 
 learn to check dangerous and revolutionary opinions. 
 If there is any considerable threatening socialism of 
 the latter sort in our midst, it has no such enemy as 
 the trade union. As the trade union strengthens, its
 
 358 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 influence against turbulent and revolutionary projects 
 steadily increases. The only agency that will prevent 
 the spread of this conservatism is the fatuous obstinacy 
 which insists upon defeating completer labor organi- 
 zation. 
 
 No one can study the growth of the trade union 
 in every country, where capitalistic organization within 
 ten years has made its great strides, without seeing 
 that the new ambitions and successes of unionism are 
 probably as great an event socially and industrially 
 as the " trust." The least astute must now see that 
 the trade union has already won a strength that is 
 neither to be ignored nor too much affronted. The 
 puerile cry to " down " the trust is only matched 
 for inanity by the cry to down the trade union. 
 Both are attempts, through organization, to check 
 certain evils which an unreined competition at last 
 produces. Both equally must be accepted for their 
 uses. 
 
 In the case of both, we have to learn that oldest 
 and hardest lesson to distinguish between uses and 
 abuses. Has federated capital fewer abuses than 
 federated labor ? The abuses of the trade union are 
 far more open and ill-mannered ; they appear on the 
 surface to violate more impudently social usages by 
 which we set great store. But if both trust and 
 union could have impartial analysis, there is no 
 social good (like freedom and human rights) that 
 would not be found to suffer in deeper and more 
 dangerous ways from the abuses of certain capital- 
 istic organizations than from those of labor. The 
 problem is to check and eliminate the abuses of both. 
 Legal procedure will play an indispensable part in
 
 NEXT STEPS 359 
 
 this, but education will play a part weightier still. 
 Most of the stronger labor leaders in the United 
 States are now ready to use their combined influence 
 in favor of an organization that shall be strong 
 enough and intelligent enough to put no undue check 
 upon new machinery or upon the output of labor. 
 They are more and more against a reckless use of 
 the sympathetic strike. The best of them say openly, 
 that the whole policy shall be to train their men into 
 fairness toward non-union men. The head of the 
 garment workers tells me, "You may say without 
 qualification that this is our aim, and that we shall 
 work steadily toward such an education of our men 
 as finally to bring it about." The head of the loco- 
 motive engineers says expressly that they will in no 
 way intimidate non-union men. Mr. Sargent of the 
 firemen's union writes : " When strikes are declared, 
 the men should go home and stay there. If any men 
 can be secured to take their places, let them take 
 them. In the past there has been too much coercion 
 and too little instruction and education along these 
 lines." 
 
 Mr. Gompers, John Mitchell, Harry White, give in 
 the same strong testimony as to the purpose of edu- 
 cating their followers up to broader and sounder prin- 
 ciples. In The Garment Worker, November 22, 1902, 
 an editorial dealing with the unions contains these 
 words : " Browbeating or violence on their part can- 
 not be defended. Where that is resorted to, the ethi- 
 cal purpose of the movement becomes obscure, and 
 hatreds are engendered that offset the brotherly spirit 
 upon which it is founded. No matter how serious the 
 evils to be combated, barbarism cannot be overcome
 
 360 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 by more barbarism. If the benefits of the union can- 
 not be made apparent to the non-member, and if the 
 influence which they can exert collectively is insuffi- 
 cient to induce him to join, then their cause has little 
 strength." 
 
 Aroused at last upon these questions, let the public 
 take these men at their word ; hold them to the re- 
 sponsibilities implied, and try to aid them in seeing 
 that they are fulfilled. Merely to fight the trade 
 union is to get back from it all that is worst in it and 
 nothing that is best ; merely to fight it, intensifies the 
 very ills we most condemn. To help it educationally 
 is to work in sympathy with its general purpose, 
 while showing no quarter to abuses which the leaders 
 themselves admit. Those who now direct labor or- 
 ganization have learned, within ten years, the almost 
 resistless power of public opinion to determine the 
 issues of a quarrel when that opinion is once 
 awakened. 
 
 What the fighting class of employers has been slow 
 to learn, is that they are losing their power of disciplin- 
 ing their own workmen. In industries where union- 
 ism is inevitable, the arbitrary rule of the employer 
 has seen its day. The man who has power to 
 discipline the workmen is more and more their own 
 trade-union leader. In the work of education and of 
 discipline, the employer must now actually have the 
 help of his workmen's representative. There is hap- 
 pily nothing to invent or create anew in the modus 
 operandi. The mechanism is already in use and the 
 education has begun. It is among the printers, the 
 longshoremen, the soft-coal miners, the iron moulders, 
 and the Boston carpenters. It is the "joint agree-
 
 NEXT STEPS 361 
 
 ment" between employer and employed which in- 
 volves complete recognition of labor organization. 
 Contracts have to be made periodically between dele- 
 gated committees as to wages and all important con- 
 ditions under which the work is done. It involves 
 systematized arbitration not from without but from 
 within. It puts every natural difficulty in the way of 
 the strike. It involves organized discussion between 
 masters and men on every interest that concerns their 
 common occupation. 
 
 In Chicago, that squally home of rough and undis- 
 ciplined trade unionism, I was told by the able lawyer, 
 A. F. Hatch, who some thirteen years ago drew the 
 agreement between the printers and the Daily Press 
 Association, that " it has worked upon the whole with 
 the best of results. It has been put once to the great- 
 est possible strain, but the men stood by their con- 
 tract in spite of extreme provocation." The manager 
 of one of the two or three largest stove manufactories 
 in the United States told me : " We have tried it a 
 dozen years and it has settled all questions on this 
 subject for us. Its best trait is that, as it works, it 
 trains the men to see the limits within which they 
 can get advantages. It makes the men more conser- 
 vative and it makes us more considerate." 
 
 The joint-agreement has had its severest tests 
 among the low-class miners of the soft-coal regions. 
 In much criticism that has been given me in Illinois 
 from employers, the worst was that it made the miners 
 " too aggressive for what they considered their rights." 
 " They want to take too much of the business into 
 their own hands, as if they were part owners." That 
 the agreement should have worked so long among
 
 362 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 these rough and untrained nationalities, is perhaps 
 the greatest tribute to its future promise. The real 
 irritation of these employers is that their old power 
 of absolute decision is now called in question. In the 
 long period that is now coming to an end, the em- 
 ployer has been dictator not only of his own business, 
 but of interests which concerned his workmen as well. 
 The laborer has now entered the fight to divide this 
 authority. He insists upon taking his part in the 
 discussions (as to hours, wages, conditions), which are 
 strictly his business also. 
 
 The employer will long continue to fight for the 
 whole power. The only limit he likes is implied in 
 the phrase, " Take this work at a given wage or leave 
 it." A thoughtful and law-abiding miner in Spring 
 Valley told me in time of a strike : " I was brought 
 here and urged to buy a home for my family ; I have 
 half-paid for it ; we have a grievance which they will 
 not arbitrate, but they tell me if I don't like the work 
 to leave it. I cannot leave without sacrificing the 
 savings of twelve years. They tie me to this spot 
 and then tell me to submit or get out." This man 
 was fighting for a chance to help decide the conditions 
 under which he worked and lived. 
 
 This is what the employer now calls "interfering 
 with my business." He expects sympathy when he 
 asks, " Shall I manage my own business or not ? " 
 Yes, he shall manage his own business, but precisely 
 what his own business is, calls for new definitions. It 
 is here organized labor is carrying on its struggle. 
 It is trying to determine what, in the business, 
 should be decided by labor and what by employer. 
 Where the trade union has become fair, it knows
 
 NEXT STEPS 363 
 
 and admits that the employer must have absolute 
 and instant control over all that strictly concerns him 
 as managing director. 
 
 This contest over ultimate decisions between em- 
 ployer and employed is so at the heart of the whole 
 issue that I submit an actual instance, every detail of 
 which is very recent history. An employer complains 
 that the trade union objects to his discharging two 
 incompetent workmen. If it were a fact, the union 
 would deserve every rebuking condemnation that 
 could be given to it. Scores of unions are constantly 
 exercising these small tyrannies, but the employers 
 have so long had the habit of making a charge of 
 incompetence in order to get rid of trade-union men, 
 that unions strike back in self-defence. In this in- 
 stance, however, I give a letter which the secretary 
 of a great group of trade unions writes to a local 
 labor agent on this subject of what is the workman's 
 business and what is not. 
 
 " Mr. - , foreman of - , informs me that your 
 only reason for calling out the men was that he 
 refused to continue in his employ two men laid off 
 for incompetent work, and that even your business 
 agent admitted that the work of the men was imper- 
 fect. If such is the case, your action in withdrawing 
 the men was not justified. This office, as well as the 
 National Union, is opposed to forcing upon an em- 
 ployer men whose work is not suitable. It is just 
 that sort of thing that creates needless opposition to 
 the union, and causes no end of trouble. Your union 
 is the only one that would make such a demand. 
 Where members are made to believe that they cannot 
 be discharged, no matter what they do, they become
 
 364 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 careless, and the poor workman falls back upon the 
 protection of the union. The employer has got to 
 sell the goods, and he assumes the risk, consequently 
 he alone can be the judge as to the quality of work. 
 As long as he pays the union scale and does not dis- 
 criminate against active members, that is all you can 
 expect of him. 
 
 " Now I trust you will not place us in a position 
 where the General Executive Board will have to 
 decide against you. 
 
 "Yours Fraternally, 
 
 " HENRY WHITE, General Secretary'' 
 
 This is in no way an exception. It is a frequent 
 decision of the chief officers affiliated with the Fed- 
 eration of Labor. What a critical public is slow to 
 understand is that this is a powerful and increas- 
 ing influence in most of our stronger trade unions. 
 Under the joint-agreement, it will increase still more. 
 I have known the head of a labor organization, after 
 seeing that the employer was right, to force one of 
 his own unions back to work by sending non-union 
 men (scabs) to bring his men to reason. The worst 
 and most dangerous forces of ignorance in the unions 
 can be disciplined far more effectively by those who 
 direct the unions than by the employers. Directors 
 of those affairs into which unionism has come, must 
 use this influence of labor leaders to preserve order, 
 efficiency, and good behavior among the men. The 
 cynical observers of the union have not learned the 
 kind of power that the best leaders can exercise over 
 their men. In a formidable strike I asked an em- 
 ployer why he refused to treat with the union. He
 
 NEXT STEPS 365 
 
 said, "The men have become bumptious and surly, 
 and we had to fight it out." I then put this question 
 to the trade-union official, " Would you make a defi- 
 nite public statement, and promise that if you were 
 ' recognized ' and the responsibility thrown sharply 
 upon you of keeping your men peaceably at work, 
 giving absolute power to the employer to discharge 
 every incompetent and unmanageable workman, 
 could you and would you take that responsibility ? " 
 His instant reply was : " That is precisely what we 
 want. If the employer will not use these excuses to 
 break our union, but will discharge only the men who 
 are impudent, or disobedient, or do bad work, he shall 
 have every assistance we can give him to clear out 
 such men. We can make it hotter for those men 
 than he can. They are afraid of our power, they 
 are not afraid of his. Give us the responsibility with 
 an adequate contract, and I will promise before the 
 public to keep our men at work. I should like to 
 have the full glare of public opinion thrown on us. 
 We would promise publicly that if we cannot disci- 
 pline our own men, and let the employer discharge 
 every man fairly proved to be troublesome, lazy, or 
 incompetent, we will confess as publicly that trade 
 unions are a failure." 
 
 Now if we care for the thing called education, 
 responsibility of this character must be given. 
 " Fighting it out " is one resource, but it is stupid 
 and objectless. The joint-agreement, practically 
 adapted to each business after its nature and condi- 
 tions, is not free from perplexities, but every step in 
 its application and enforcement educates in the only 
 possible direction in which industry must move, if it
 
 366 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 moves in the way of progress. There is no ray of 
 hope except in some method that forces the two par- 
 ties to work more and more together, instead of more 
 ana more apart. There is nowhere a substitute for 
 this compelling common action that teaches the 
 employer what is just, possible, and right in the new 
 claims of labor, and teaches labor the difficulties and 
 the limitations within which modern business can be 
 made a success. 
 
 Let the disciplinary influence of the joint-agree- 
 ment do its work for some years, and " incorporation " 
 will at least get the hearing which is now impossible. 
 To reach this incorporation by the help and sympathy 
 of the union is far safer than to imitate England's 
 recent step of forcing incorporation. Force will 
 merely increase the socialistic temper of the unions. 
 To win them by the slower processes of education 
 through added responsibilities is a far safer policy. 
 
 Toward this, the joint-agreement will help. I do 
 not make the absurd claim that this systematized 
 understanding between the two parties is a panacea. 
 Because the word "panacea" is rejected, it does not 
 follow that the more modest proposal may not have 
 what is relatively a very supreme importance. The 
 evidence is overwhelming that this importance may 
 be fairly attributed to the joint-agreement if only 
 employers will bring to it something of their real 
 strength and sympathy. It gives us arbitration in 
 its very highest form ; that is, from within. It gives 
 it in the one way to secure every enlightening educa- 
 tional advantage. It is to the joint-agreement that 
 we must look for our best answer to all premature 
 calls for trade-union incorporation. At present the
 
 NEXT STEPS 367 
 
 unions are right in rejecting it. Multitudes of men, 
 especially among the newer immigrants, would see in 
 this power of the court a reason for not joining the 
 unions. Until they have reached a greater strength 
 and stability, incorporation would hamper them in 
 the best work they are now doing. But the point 
 I urge is, that the joint-agreement does a far better 
 educational work. To keep agreements voluntarily, 
 is a much higher discipline than to do it under force. 
 For many years unions have actually kept con- 
 tracts when employers have genuinely and heartily 
 cooperated with the joint-agreement. 
 
 There is no such convincing proof of this as the 
 fifteen years' trial between masters and men in the 
 Boston Building Trades. The agent of the em- 
 ployers, W. H. Sayward, who brought about this 
 agreement, conducting it with growing success for 
 eighteen years, allows me to say that under it scores 
 of strikes have been prevented, millions of money 
 saved, and the most delicate questions, like the limi- 
 tation of output and apprentices, the use of the boy- 
 cott, the conflicts between different unions, and the 
 sympathetic strike, are now so far understood as a re- 
 sult of this education that they are no longer feared. 
 
 Speaking from the side of the employers, Mr. 
 Sayward says : " My experience has convinced me 
 that labor thoroughly organized and honestly recog- 
 nized is even more important for the employer than for 
 the workmen. It makes possible a working method 
 between the two parties which removes one by one 
 the most dangerous elements of conflict and misunder- 
 standing." 
 
 It is from these building trade unions, in cities like
 
 368 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 Chicago and New York, that many of our worst abuses 
 have come. It is here that the architect, as between 
 the devil and the deep sea, has his most tormenting 
 experience. It is here that the bribing and buying 
 of walking-delegates have done their pernicious work. 
 Mr. Sayward says, " Not one of these evils is neces- 
 sary, they can be educated out of the way." Where 
 the union has been openly recognized under this joint- 
 agreement, and the representatives of employer and 
 employed have learned the habit of meeting difficulties 
 as they arise, the terrors of the walking-delegate and 
 the "scab" begin to disappear. The name "walking- 
 delegate" is replaced by "business agent." Mr. Say- 
 ward says : " I no longer either fear or object to the 
 walking-delegate. I see that he is a necessity to 
 the best work of the union." In an address before 
 the National Association of Builders, 1 Mr. Sayward 
 criticises the employers for saying that they will not 
 treat with the unions until they are improved. " This," 
 he says, " is like asking the child to swim but not go 
 near the water." The employer must take part in 
 this educational work as a very condition of its success. 
 In closing this address, Mr. Sayward said, " that either 
 for the building trades or other lines of work, these 
 intricate and involved matters will not take care of 
 themselves ; they cannot safely be intrusted to one of 
 the interested parties alone; both parties must have 
 equal concern, must act jointly, not only in their own 
 interests, but, in effect, in the interests of the com- 
 munity." 2 
 
 1 Held in Washington D.C., October 28, 1902. Printed in the 
 American Architect for November 22, 1902. 
 
 2 See Appendix, p. 381.
 
 NEXT STEPS 369 
 
 For that trouble-breeding portion of industry here 
 discussed, the joint-agreement is all that any " solution" 
 can be; namely, the next best practical step toward 
 a rational industrial method. These agreements are 
 not of universal application. They apply at points 
 where unionism is inevitable ; where the wage sys- 
 tem is under such strain as to require modification 
 in the direction of a more democratized manage- 
 ment. Every scheme that is not inherently educa- 
 tional is worthless, because the clash of the trust and 
 the trade union is raising new issues for which an 
 enlarged social morality is necessary. 
 
 I have seen an extremely decorous group of per- 
 sons listening unshocked to the story of a corporation 
 which had for years systematically debauched the 
 local legislature and with cool deliberation brought 
 small independent firms to ruin. It was said, " Oh, 
 but the corporations must do it to avoid blackmail ; 
 and as for ruining other people's business, that is 
 only the law of progress." When this same company 
 heard an architect tell of the slugging of a non-union 
 man, there was an instant spasm of moral exaspera- 
 tion. For a perversity of unfairness like this, the 
 one need is light and larger experience. The embit- 
 tered workman is often as fantastic in his unfairness. 
 The story of a " heaved brick " at the scab shocks 
 him as little as these prosperous diners were shocked 
 by the greater sins of the corporation. There is 
 little hope save in educational processes that enlarge 
 the perspective of both. 
 
 Among educated folk generally, there is thus far 
 apparently no hint of what the word "scab" symbolizes 
 to the unionist. I write no word of defence for a
 
 370 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 single abuse connected with it, but the time has come 
 when some honest attempt should be made to under- 
 stand a force of such extraordinary persistence and 
 prevalence. Without such understanding, we can- 
 not even conceive an educational plan, to free this 
 feeling from its abuses. 
 
 A concrete instance will give more light than an 
 argument. 
 
 During one of the strikes I had a guide through 
 the collieries below Wilkesbarre. I found him in a 
 modest cottage for which he had paid, in nineteen 
 years, all but three hundred and seventy-five dollars. 
 He and his wife had made a garden. Flowers were 
 abundant, and vines had been trained into a pretty 
 arbor. Here six children had been born. Here 
 three of them had died. If associations that knit 
 into sensitive tissue every deeper human experience 
 influence any of us, they are not likely to have left 
 unmoved the owners of this simple home. 
 
 This man and his mates had struck. They asked 
 that their grievances be considered before some fair 
 tribunal. The employers refused to arbitrate, but 
 began forthwith to bring in outside labor to take the 
 place of the strikers. I give this miner's view of the 
 situation, not as a final answer to the hard question 
 involved ; I give it, confident that no answer is worth 
 stating which does not carefully take his view into 
 account. " We asked for months," he said, " that 
 certain conditions under which we work be changed. 
 The employers would not listen to us, and we struck. 
 Now while we are simply waiting to have our dispute 
 fairly settled, they bring in outside men and take 
 away our work. I was brought here by the last
 
 NEXT STEPS 371 
 
 foreman and urged by the company to buy our home. 
 It cost us years of saving. Now they tell me to get 
 out if I don't like the work here. I can't get out. 
 This is my home, with all my friends, my church, my 
 union. There is no other industry here except the 
 railroads, and they won't look at a man fifty-four 
 years old." 
 
 No fair person, with the imagination to put himself 
 in another's place, will believe that the letter of legal 
 justice meets all that there is in this case. Neither 
 will such person fail to understand why this miner 
 was bitter against the outside workman who was 
 willing to come in to take the miner's place during 
 the dispute. 
 
 In this special strike, who was this outside non- 
 union man (the scab) ? Hundreds of them were men 
 in other industries steadily at work. It was the time 
 when republican orators were saying with much 
 truth, " Every man is at work." These men were 
 hired for a better wage to leave their work, to take 
 the job of another who was for a time asking to have 
 his demands considered. There are now men in our 
 cities whose business it is to hire themselves out as 
 "strike breakers." Asking no questions as to the 
 right or wrong of the strike, they are ready to go 
 hither and yon to take the places of other men. I 
 have seen miners who had learned from those inside 
 the mine that those who had taken their places were 
 brought from a city outside the coal region where 
 they were regularly employed. It is a terrible strain 
 upon average human nature to look upon this with 
 the coolness and self-restraint of the disinterested ob- 
 server. In spite of the provocation, personal vio-
 
 3/2 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 lence should be met with the swiftest stroke consistent 
 with justice. Scarcely a value of our civilization equals 
 that of law and order. But the real rights of these 
 miners are not settled in this instance, after the law 
 has done its work. 
 
 A question remains which is not yet settled. 
 Morally, and on grounds of good policy, we have 
 still to meet this issue of the non-union man in 
 time of strike. No generalization is yet possible, but 
 in cases like the above, when troops of men have 
 been expressly encouraged by the company to buy 
 their houses, non-union men should not be brought in 
 to break the strike until every fair resource of arbi- 
 tration has been exhausted, even if it drives us to 
 compulsory arbitration. To refuse arbitration, and 
 then hire private retainers of the Pinkerton type, 
 will not long be tolerated by a fair public. The 
 irritants and the dangers are not only too great, 
 they are not necessary. The joint-agreement avoids 
 them. Under its provisions, work is not stopped 
 until the forces of arbitration have done their work. 
 
 We repeat the phrase, "Oh, if the trade unions 
 only had really competent leaders." Let us learn 
 another phrase that is quite as apt, " Oh, if the great 
 business had leaders competent enough to avoid the 
 unnecessary sources of suspicion and bitterness 
 among their workmen." 
 
 A wise use of the joint-agreement, made elastic 
 and practically adapted to varying conditions, is one 
 long, sure step toward such leadership, and toward 
 the common educated good will upon which industrial 
 peace depends.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 A FINAL QUESTION 
 
 IT has been shown what is possible with labor or- 
 ganization when, with intelligence and open-minded- 
 ness, masters and men unite under orderly methods. 
 We have finally to ask in what spirit another dis- 
 quieting presence rising in our midst is to be met 
 We may save ourselves a world of trouble by trying, 
 first of all, to bring to bear upon socialism enough 
 intellectual sympathy to understand it. Only in rare 
 instances have our business men, or the public gen- 
 erally, honestly tried to know what the immense 
 sacrifices behind the trade union really mean. At 
 this late day, because of compulsion and incon- 
 venience, we are putting forth some effort to under- 
 stand the industrial struggle for existence from the 
 point of view of labor organization. It is now seen 
 that a little of this tardy wisdom could have saved 
 the vast waste of the coal strike by doing in the 
 beginning what public opinion compels us to do 
 many months afterward. The joint-agreement of the 
 Boston Building Trades would not only have saved 
 New York and Chicago inconceivable sums, but 
 would meantime have educated both parties to the 
 contract so that a sea of future ills could be avoided. 
 
 The opportunity is given us to be wiser with the 
 coming socialism than we have proved ourselves with 
 
 373
 
 374 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 trade unions. The German and much more the 
 Belgian experience which has been given, show us 
 that socialism has now developed so that an educa- 
 tional cooperation with it is possible. We cannot at 
 present have the Belgian cooperative. For a con- 
 siderable future our battle will be in cities and with 
 public-service corporations. For the highest educa- 
 tional purposes this gives us every advantage that we 
 need. Thus the final question, as distinctly moral 
 as it is one of self-interest, I conceive to be this : 
 Are we as a people willing to put in practice those 
 methods which increase this educational cooperation ? 
 I have given much evidence to show that the trade 
 union, socialism, and business management, taken 
 at their best, are now so far in touch, that a common 
 working basis of industrial and administrative experi- 
 ment is at least possible. It is through these 
 experiments that our best discipline is to come. 
 There are splendid hopes for a well-ordered industrial 
 society if we are brave enough and generous enough 
 to recognize these possibilities of agreement and to 
 use them educationally. 
 
 On the need of industrial reconstruction ; on the de- 
 fects of the wage system ; on the abuses of the trade 
 union as well as of the trust ; on the need of extend- 
 ing legal regulation, there is now a very remarkable 
 consensus of opinion among able writers, economists, 
 business men, labor leaders, and socialists trained 
 by experience. This general acquiescence does not, 
 of course, extend to details or to methods. It gives 
 us, nevertheless, so broad a ground of common sym- 
 pathy and understanding, that it should be made the 
 basis of a new educational and experimental activity.
 
 A FINAL QUESTION 375 
 
 When one of the strongest of the coal operators 
 admits (see p. 32) that there is no hope except in a 
 frank recognition of the unions and the consequent 
 common education that would follow, that kind of 
 employer should be brought into relation with labor 
 men who, for the same reason, are asking recognition. 
 Employer and employed here speak the language of 
 a common experience. 
 
 When a first-rate railroad president of large ex- 
 perience with labor says (see p. 33) that in these 
 days a man who is not strong enough to work with 
 labor organizations is not strong enough for his posi- 
 tion, we wish to add him to the group. When the 
 head of a very successful corporation (see p. 195) 
 says that in large concerns like his own, not only 
 the trade union but the spirit of partnership should 
 be recognized, we add him to this new fellowship. 
 It is very common to hear this type of business man 
 admit that in large affairs the arbitrary, traditional 
 expressions, "my business," "take it or leave it," "I 
 will manage it as I like," are soon likely to be classed 
 properly with the elder Vanderbilt's " the public be 
 damned." These business men of larger outlook are 
 increasing precisely as a safer and more conservative 
 type of labor leader is increasing. Every device 
 which brings these and those like them together, has 
 in it the binding and educational influence that alone 
 makes for social safety. 
 
 As the socialist makes his appearance as he soon 
 enough will among our mayors and town council- 
 lors, he should be met in the same spirit. As in the 
 case of the trade union, we should welcome the joint- 
 agreement for the teaching power that is in it, so
 
 3/6 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 socialism should be taken at its word. Once in office, 
 it should have safe tether for practical experiment. 
 
 The socialist asks for a profound social reconstruc- 
 tion to the end that a new justice and a new brother- 
 hood may obtain among men. The admissions that 
 much of this criticism is just; that much of this 
 organization is necessary and right, are from success- 
 ful men of affairs who have the gift and the courage 
 to take the social point of view rather than judge so 
 vast a question from the ground of immediate private 
 interest. 
 
 As we bring these disinterested admissions face to 
 face with socialist criticism, when it also has learned 
 to take the social point of view, we stand not in 
 sharply divided and hostile camps, but on a common 
 ground where men of good will can work together. 
 
 For example, between the older socialist, who be- 
 lieved that the wage system held the whole labor 
 world on the margin of bare subsistence, depriving 
 him of every hope of advance, and the individualist 
 who has nothing but praise for the wage system, there 
 is no ground for reconciliation. But if the individ- 
 ualist has come to see the imperfections of this rela- 
 tion between employer and employed, and the socialist 
 has come to recognize what the wage system has 
 actually accomplished, there is at once room for sym- 
 pathy and cooperation. My claim is that precisely this 
 is being brought about. Such a possible sympathetic 
 understanding already exists upon the most essential 
 points in dispute, if we select in each of the opposing 
 groups the most socially developed intelligence. 
 
 A man who has managed with brilliant success, 
 for many years, from one to five thousand men,
 
 A FINAL QUESTION 377 
 
 tells me that the day is near at hand when the 
 present methods of wage payment must undergo 
 very radical changes ; that it is too inelastic to meet 
 the new conditions of industry ; that it results in 
 enormous waste through strikes ; that the old idea 
 of contract needs modification. He does not profess 
 to know how these changes are to be brought about, 
 but thinks it is likely that the spread of industrial 
 training will more and more make it possible to admit 
 groups of workmen into a practical partnership in the 
 business. He affirms that a good deal of business, that 
 is most vital to the whole public, has already reached 
 a stage in which the business ideas upon which he 
 was brought up seem to have no place. Now I am 
 certain that if this man were to spend an evening 
 with socialists like Von Vollmar, Bernstein, Miller- 
 and, Anseele, and Professor Hector Denis, he would 
 find so much in common that he would not think of 
 them, or they of him, as separated by an impassable 
 gulf. He would not think of them as moving east 
 while he was moving west. His own admission about 
 the defects of the wage system would bring them 
 near enough, not only to understand each other, but 
 to see that some measure of practical cooperation 
 would be easily possible. These socialists have 
 learned as much that is favorable to a long-continued 
 use of the wage system as this business man has 
 learned of its defects. 
 
 A Belgian socialist, after some years' experience 
 in managing a cooperative bakery, told me : " I was 
 taught to believe that payment by wages was the 
 deadly economic sin, but I don't see how we can ever 
 do anything but modify it a good deal. If business
 
 378 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 is highly organized, we shall continue to pay some- 
 thing very like wages. We shall continue to employ 
 a class of middlemen that I used to think unpro- 
 ductive, because they did not actually make things. 
 But to get products where people want them is just 
 as necessary as to make them, and those who do this 
 have to be paid." I should go far to listen to a dis- 
 cussion between this socialist and the business man 
 just quoted on the changes in the wage system, which 
 both admitted to be desirable. Each would have 
 understood the other's speech ; each appreciated the 
 other's difficulties. 
 
 Twenty years of hard work under responsibilities 
 has brought socialism to the point where it may be 
 cooperated with in ways that educate and at 
 the same time furnish the very evidence we need 
 as to the superiority or inferiority of its meth- 
 ods. The first demand of the socialist mayor or 
 town council is to set aside the contractor and build 
 the schoolhouse or the sewer directly by the city 
 employees. This represents in theory a step in the 
 socializing of profits. If they should succeed in this, 
 the community gains. If, by doing poorer or costlier 
 work, they fail, the failure goes down at once to 
 their discredit. 
 
 A people as fearless and as careless of tradition as 
 we claim to be, should welcome the occasion to say : 
 "You socialists condemn our private profit-making 
 regime. It is true we have made poor work in 
 managing our cities. There has been extravagance 
 and corruption. You come with promises to improve 
 upon this. You shall have a perfectly fair chance 
 to put your methods on trial before the community.
 
 A FINAL QUESTION 379 
 
 You shall do enough city work without the profit 
 maker to furnish your own evidence. If, in expense 
 or in excellence, you can serve the city better, the 
 credit shall be yours. To prove that the contractor 
 is a useless burden to the taxpayer, will bring you 
 new votes. 
 
 From a confidence like this, no social interest could 
 suffer. It throws upon the collectivist innovators a 
 burden of work so serious that its educational influ- 
 ence acts with automatic directness. Under this 
 responsibility of doing things, they learn the sound- 
 est lessons upon the very points where ignorance is a 
 social and industrial danger. Day by day, made ac- 
 countable for results, they learn the value and place of 
 new machinery ; they learn prudence in lowering the 
 hours of labor ; they learn the risks of limiting their 
 output, and the necessity of applying the minimum 
 wage with business caution ; they learn why the "uni- 
 versal strike " is a folly and why the wage system is 
 still of service ; they learn that cooperative substitutes 
 must come gradually and prove their superiority step 
 by step. Best of all, they learn that the Mecca of 
 the cooperative commonwealth is not to be reached 
 by setting class against class, but by bearing common 
 burdens through toilsome stages, along which all who 
 wish well to their fellows can journey together. 
 
 The noblest word that I have ever heard from any 
 cooperator was this : " You cannot make this more 
 democratic business work, without calling on more 
 and more people to help you. If it should ever 
 conquer the hand-to-hand fight of competition, then 
 everybody, whether they wanted to or not, would 
 have to help everybody else."
 
 380 THE SOCIAL UNREST 
 
 The habits which gain strength from this conscious- 
 ness of mutual aid would give to labor the serenity 
 and delight which it has too rarely known. 
 
 This dream of a day when life's work even the 
 drudgery and the routine may be done with the 
 ennobling sense that every energy of hand and brain 
 helps the many as it helps the doer, has in it the most 
 sustaining of all enthusiasms. 
 
 To work slowly and painfully toward this end is a 
 possibility that need not be deferred. The sacrifices 
 that it requires are the surrender of many things that 
 are now our vexation and our curse. Some aban- 
 donment there would have to be of a stiff and con- 
 temptible class pride ; much yielding of domineering 
 temper; some shattering of idols where doting wor- 
 shippers pay homage to the meanest symbols of 
 social inequality. We shall survive even these depri- 
 vations. They are losses which make no man poorer, 
 but rather add to the riches of us all
 
 APPENDIX
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 A SJNGLE illustration of a trade-agreement is here 
 given to show its exact character in one industry. 
 
 It is this type of joint organization which was con- 
 sidered in great detail by employer and employed at 
 the recent meeting of the Civic Federation in New 
 York, December 8, 9, and 10. 
 
 From seven different industries the testimony by 
 masters and men was overwhelming as to its ef- 
 fectiveness. 
 
 The following is the last joint agreement of THE 
 JOINT COMMITTEE of THE MASTER CARPENTERS' ASSO- 
 CIATION OF THE CITY OF BOSTON and THE UNITED 
 CARPENTERS' COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF BOSTON AND 
 VICINITY, created under agreement of the two bodies 
 to settle all questions of mutual concern to employers 
 and workmen in that trade, without strikes or lock- 
 outs, and have decided upon the following 
 
 WORKING RULES 
 
 to govern employers and workmen in that trade for 
 the term ending May I, 1904, acting under the fol- 
 lowing 
 
 DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES 
 
 In carrying out these rules the parties thereto, that 
 is to say the members of the Master Carpenters' Asso- 
 ciation of the City of Boston and the members of the 
 
 381
 
 382 APPENDIX 
 
 United Carpenters' Council of the City of Boston and 
 Vicinity, are to sustain the principle that absolute per- 
 sonal independence of the individual to work or not to 
 work, to employ or not to employ, is fundamental, 
 and should never be questioned or assailed, for upon 
 that independence the security of our whole social 
 fabric and business prosperity rests, and employers 
 and workmen should be equally interested in its 
 defence and preservation. Inasmuch as the United 
 Carpenters' Council is now being recognized as a 
 proper body to cooperate with in settling all matters 
 of mutual concern between employers and workmen 
 in this trade, it shall be understood that the policy of 
 The Master Carpenters' Association shall be to assist 
 the said Council and its constituent Unions to make 
 their bodies as thoroughly representative as possible. 
 
 WORKING RULES 
 
 1. Hours of Labor. 
 
 From May I, 1903, to May I, 1904, not more 
 than eight hours' labor shall be required in the 
 limits of the day, except it be as over-time, with 
 payment for same as herein provided, except in 
 shops, where the time shall be nine hours. 
 
 2. Working Hours. 
 
 The working hours to be from 8 A.M. to 12 M., 
 and from i P.M. to 5 P.M., with one hour for dinner, 
 during the months of February, March, April, May, 
 June, July, August, September, October. During 
 the months of November, December, and January 
 each employer and his employees shall be free to
 
 APPENDIX 383 
 
 decide as to the hours of beginning and quitting 
 work, always with the understanding that not more 
 than eight hours shall be required, except as over- 
 time, as herein provided for. 
 
 3. Night Work. 
 
 Eight hours to constitute a night's labor. When 
 two gangs are employed, working hours to be from 
 8 P.M. to 12 M., and from i A.M. to 5 A.M. 
 
 4. Over-time. 
 
 Over-time to be paid for as time and one-half. 
 
 5. Double Time. 
 
 Work done on Sundays, Fourth of July, Labor 
 Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas days to be paid 
 for as double time. 
 
 6. Wages. 
 
 From date of this agreement to May i, 1903, 
 the minimum rate of wages to be 35 cents per 
 hour. From May i, 1903, to May i, 1904, the 
 minimum rate of wages to be 37^- cents per hour. 
 
 7. Pay Day. 
 
 Wages to be paid weekly at or before 5 P.M. of 
 the established pay day of each employer. 
 
 8. Waiting Time. 
 
 If any workman is discharged, he shall be entitled 
 to receive his wages at once, and failing to so 
 receive them, he shall be entitled to payment at 
 regular rate of wages, for every working hour of 
 waiting time which he may suffer by default of the 
 employer. If any workman is laid off on account
 
 384 APPENDIX 
 
 of unfavorable weather, he shall not be entitled to 
 waiting time. If any workman is laid off on 
 account of lack of materials, he shall be entitled to 
 receive pay for every working hour at the regular 
 rate of wages until notified that work must be tem- 
 porarily suspended, and in that event he shall be 
 entitled, on demand, to receive his wages at once, 
 the same as in case of discharge. Should an office 
 order be issued to a workman in payment of his 
 wages, the workman shall be entitled to additional 
 time sufficient to enable him to reach the office to 
 receive payment. 
 
 9. Business Agent. 
 
 The Business Agent of the Carpenters' Union 
 shall be allowed to visit all jobs during working 
 hours to interview the Steward of the job, and for 
 this purpose only. Nothing in this Rule shall be 
 construed as giving such Agents any authority to 
 issue orders controlling the work of workmen, or to 
 interfere with the conduct of the work, and any 
 infringement of this Rule shall make the Agent so 
 infringing liable to discipline after investigation.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Ability, restriction of, by trade unions, 
 7 ; question of extra payment of, 
 
 333-337- 
 
 Accidents, indemnification for indus- 
 trial, 49-50, 208-221 ; relation of, 
 to machinery, 209-213. 
 
 Adams, Henry C., quoted, 76, 77, 80, 
 166. 
 
 Age of workmen in factories, 201-202. 
 
 Agriculture, failure of Marx's thesis 
 as applied to, 306-308. 
 
 Alabama, child labor in, 27, 29, 254. 
 
 Ames, Fisher, 76, 79. 
 
 Anarchists, artists posing as social- 
 ists really are, 273. 
 
 Andros, Sir Edmund, 73. 
 
 Anseele, Edouard, 314-315, 377. 
 
 Antwerp, International Congress at, 
 in interests of small traders, 323. 
 
 "Application of Socialism to Par- 
 ticular Problems," cited, 278. 
 
 Apprentices, limitation of, 4-5. 
 
 "Arbeiter Frage, Die," Lange's, 155. 
 
 Arbitration, necessity for, shown by 
 coal strike of 1902, 20-21. 
 
 Aristocracy, Jefferson's natural, 244- 
 
 245- 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, on social inequal- 
 ity, 160. 
 
 Arnold, Thomas, quoted, 160. 
 
 Art, for working people in Belgium, 
 319; socialistic views about, 320. 
 
 Asquith, Herbert, on laws concern- 
 ing industrial accidents, 214. 
 
 Atheism, of older German socialists, 
 302; later modification of views 
 concerning, 303-305. 
 
 Australia, compulsory arbitration in, 
 41 ; social legislation in, 104 ; pol- 
 
 icy in, of using railroads, tele- 
 graphs, etc., first for social service, 
 221, 275-276; social colonies in, 
 241. 
 
 Austria, legislation concerning in 
 dustrial accidents in, 213. 
 
 Aveling, Dr., 302. 
 
 B 
 
 Bacon, Francis, 259. 
 
 Bacon's Rebellion, an example of 
 early discontent, 72. 
 
 Bakeries, cooperative, in Belgium, 
 3I4-3IS, 3I7-3I8, 328. 
 
 Barnett, Canon, on the social ques- 
 tion, 166. 
 
 Bars, private, in coal fields, 12-13. 
 
 Barton, Sir Edmund, quoted, 41. 
 
 Bebel, 241 n., 299, 302, 303, 309. 
 
 Beer boys, 250. 
 
 Belgium, government interference in 
 industrial affairs in, 52 ; socialism 
 in, 5 6 . 57-59, 289, 313-343. 
 
 Bellamy, Edward, 136, 230-232, 240- 
 241,299. 
 
 Benton, Thomas H., on land grants 
 to railroads, 114-115. 
 
 Berkeley, Governor, 72-73. 
 
 Berlin, high death-rate in, due to 
 overcrowding, 247. 
 
 Bernstein, 309, 377. 
 
 Bishop of Durham quoted by labor 
 editors, 167. 
 
 Bismarck, Prince, on social democ- 
 racy, 287; effect of fall of, on 
 social democracy, 311. 
 
 Blacklist, the, 35. 
 
 Bon Marche, cooperative method in 
 the, 350-351. 
 
 Boston, legal checks on sweating in, 
 
 2C 
 
 385
 
 386 
 
 INDEX 
 
 29; early labor discussions in, 84- 
 
 8s- 
 Boston and Maine Railroad and New 
 
 Hampshire politics, 57. 
 Boston Building Trades, working of 
 
 joint-agreement in the, 367-368. 
 Boycott, the, 35; use of, in early 
 
 strikes, 86 ; one weakness of trade 
 
 unions, 356. 
 
 Brace, Charles Loring, quoted, 87. 
 Breaker boys, 18, 256. 
 Brewery, a cooperative, at Joliment, 
 
 3!9- 
 Brockton, socialism in, 64-65 ; strike 
 
 of lasters' union at, 192. 
 Brousse, 346. 
 Brussels, cooperative bakeries in, 
 
 317. 
 
 Bryan, W.J., 79. 
 Burns, John, 107. 
 
 Cabot, George, 76. 
 
 Cahoon, J. B., on state regulation of 
 semi-public industries, 125. 
 
 Cairns, Professor, quoted, 162. 
 
 California, subserviency of, to rail- 
 roads, 47. 
 
 Campanella, Tommaso, 259. 
 
 " Canons of Etiquette," Jefferson's, 
 228. 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 51 n., 159. 
 
 Carnegie, Andrew, quoted on trade 
 unions, 37 ; on speculation versus 
 legitimate business, 276-277. 
 
 " Case against Child Labor, The," 
 Murphy's, 254. 
 
 Cass, Lewis, 115. 
 
 Catholics, lower ratios of insanity 
 and suicide among, than among 
 protestants, 97 n.; opposition of, 
 to socialists in Belgium, 322. 
 
 Chamberlain, Joseph, 214. 
 
 Chance, the demand for equality of, 
 24+7245. 
 
 Channing, W. E., sermon by, quoted, 
 80-81. 
 
 Charity, socialism and, in France, 
 291-294. 
 
 Chase, Mayor, of Haverhill, 65-66. 
 
 Chase, Salmon P., quoted, 77. 
 
 Chevalier, Michel, 85. 
 
 Chicago, characteristics of trade 
 unionism in, 361. 
 
 Child labor, 27-28, 29, 207-208, 252- 
 256. 
 
 Civic Federation, the, 51. 
 
 Clark, Chief Justice (of Tasmania), 
 270 n. 
 
 Clay, Henry, on land grants to rail- 
 roads, 113-114. 
 
 Club-houses for working people in 
 Belgium, 316-317. 
 
 Coal mining in Belgium, 313. 
 
 Colonies, experiments in social, 228- 
 234, 236-237 ; in Australia, 241 ; 
 uselessness of, recognized, 257. 
 
 Combinations of coal-mine operators, 
 19-20. 
 
 Communism, J. S. Mill on, 165 ; the 
 literal interpretation of equality, 
 241-243; private property de- 
 stroyed outright by, 279. 
 
 Community of Equality, Owen's, 
 228-229. 
 
 " Condition of the Working Class in 
 England in 1844," Engles's, 51 n. 
 
 Consumers' League, the, 252. 
 
 Consumptives in New York tenement 
 houses, 251-252. 
 
 Cooperation in America, causes of 
 failure of, 2-3. 
 
 Cooperatives, Belgian, 317-319; oppo- 
 sition of small traders to, 323; 
 commission for taking evidence 
 against, 324. 
 
 Cordwainers, strike of, in Philadel- 
 phia (1805), 86. 
 
 Cotton gin as illustrating benefits of 
 machinery, 177-178. 
 
 Courts, trade-union suspicion of, 34- 
 35, 41-42. 
 
 Craft, John, 254 n. 
 
 Crank, one definition of, 89. 
 
 Creameries, federation of Belgian 
 cooperative, 321. 
 
 Debate between priest and socialist 
 on disarmament, 296.
 
 INDEX 
 
 387 
 
 Debt, imprisonment for, 86-87 ; cases 
 of destitution traceable to, 248. 
 
 Denis, Hector, 346, 377 ; concerning 
 Belgian socialist party, 326. 
 
 Denmark, legislation concerning in- 
 dustrial accidents in, 213. 
 
 Department stores, 268-269. 
 
 Deschanel, 54. 
 
 De Vogue, 55 ; quoted, 167 n. 
 
 Dicey, Edward, 56, 60. 
 
 " Die Frau," Bebel's, quoted, 299. 
 
 Dietzgen, 300, 302, 303. 
 
 Disarmament urged by French so- 
 cialists, 295-296. 
 
 Discontent, the origin of the social 
 question, 68-69; early examples 
 of, 72-85 ; rise in standard of liv- 
 ing a cause of, 93-96 ; education 
 as a cause of, 96-97 ; in Germany, 
 98-100; politics as an outlet for 
 modern, 105-106. 
 
 Dole, Charles F., quoted, 100 n. 
 
 " Domestic Service," Salmon's, 109- 
 no. 
 
 Douglas, Stephen A., on land grants 
 to railroads, 115. 
 
 Drink traffic, municipalization of, 
 278. 
 
 Drinking, formation of habits of, 
 250-251. 
 
 Dwight, President Timothy, 80. 
 
 " Earthly Paradise," Morris's, quoted, 
 170. 
 
 Education, critical discontent with, 
 at present, 70 ; as a cause of dis- 
 content, 96-97 ; necessity of, for 
 social betterment, 347-349; the 
 kind of, needed, 350-352. 
 
 Eliot, President, 35. 
 
 Ely, Richard T., 118-119. 
 
 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, use of, in 
 labor literature, 160; on ma- 
 chinery, 170, 172. 
 
 England, trade unionism in, 3; fac- 
 tory legislation in, 27, 29, 30, 50- 
 51, 255 ; legislation in, concerning 
 industrial accidents, 213, 216. 
 
 Engels, 51 n., 302, 310, 346. 
 
 Equality, the desire for, 222-225 ; Jef- 
 ferson's effort for social, 227-228 ; 
 Owen's experiment in, 228-229; 
 communism the literal interpreta- 
 tion of, 241-243; of opportunity 
 real object of socialists, 244-245. 
 
 Experience, American disregard for 
 lessons of, 24-25. 
 
 Fabians, the English, 269, 273, 340; 
 municipalization of drink traffic 
 demanded by, 278. 
 
 Factory legislation, 28-29, 4^, 207- 
 208; in England, 255; approved 
 by social democrats, 311-312. 
 
 Farm, argument by German socialists 
 over " the big," 306-307. 
 
 Farmers, feeling among, concerning 
 the " money power," 133-140; dis- 
 content of, really due to monopoly 
 privilege, 142-143; German so- 
 cialists and the, 306-308. 
 
 Farmers' Alliance, the, 132-133. 
 
 Farmers' organizations, 131 ; politics 
 in, 131-133; errors of, due to 
 ignorance of real issues, 141-142. 
 
 Farms, deplorable influence of large 
 Western, on country life, 188-189 ' 
 cooperative, in Belgium, 317, 321, 
 
 3 2 5- 
 
 Federation of Labor, the, 346, 357. 
 
 Ferri, 346. 
 
 Fiske, John, quoted by socialist 
 speakers, 165-166. 
 
 Foreigners, in trade unions, 3 ; lead- 
 ership of, in trade unions, 3 ; as coal 
 miners, 20; effect of, on wages, 
 48, 344 ; encouragement given, to 
 come to the United States, 354; 
 responsibilities incurred by en- 
 couraging, 354-355- 
 
 Forests, socialist views of, 277. 
 
 Fourier, the Utopian conception of, 
 260-261. 
 
 France, Le Play societies in, 42 ; gov- 
 ernment interference in industrial 
 affairs in, 52-55 ; legislation con- 
 cerning industrial accidents in, 
 213, 216 ; political rise of socialism
 
 388 
 
 INDEX 
 
 in, 289; socialist experience in 
 municipalities of, 291-294; so- 
 cialism in, contrasted with that in 
 Belgium, 341 n. 
 
 Gaston, Judge J. B., 254 n. 
 
 George, Henry, 84, 107, 108, 136, 222, 
 267. 
 
 Georgia, child labor in, 27. 
 
 Germany, social discontent in, 98- 
 ico ; use of literature by industrial 
 leaders in, 155-159; legislation 
 concerning industrial accidents 
 in, 213, 216-217; sickness and 
 accident insurance statistics in, 
 249 ; socialism in, 289, 298-312. 
 
 Ghent, cooperative bakery in, 314- 
 
 315. 
 
 Gladden, Dr., on partnership be- 
 tween politicians and corporation 
 managers, 150. 
 
 Gladstone, W. E., 59, 109 ; cause of 
 tory hatred of, 223. 
 
 Godin, 242, 260. 
 
 Godwin, William, 223. 
 
 Gompers, Samuel, 359. 
 
 " Gospel of Wealth," Carnegie's, 
 
 37- 
 Greeley, Horace, advice of, now out 
 
 of date, 91. 
 
 Grenoble, socialist restaurant at, 289. 
 Griswold, Roger, 76. 
 Guesde, Jules, 288, 346. 
 Guise, Godin's foundry at, 242. 
 Gunton, George, 35. 
 
 H 
 
 Hadley, President, quoted concern- 
 ing separation of laborers and 
 capitalists, 93; concerning ma- 
 chinery, 171 ; on machinery and 
 labor, 200 n. 
 
 Hamilton, Alexander, 76, 79. 
 
 Harrison, Frederic, 166, 348. 
 
 Hatch, A. F., on the joint-agree- 
 ment, 361. 
 
 Haverhill, socialism in, 64-65. 
 
 Helvetius, 244. 
 
 Herbert, Auberon, 107. 
 
 History, indifference of Americans 
 to lessons of, 24-25. 
 
 " History of the Anthracite Coal In- 
 dustry," Dr. Robert's, 115. 
 
 " History of Materialism," Lange's, 
 
 155-157, 3<H n, 
 " History of the United States," 
 
 Adams's, quoted, 75, 76, 77. 
 Hohenlohe, Prince, quoted, 99-100. 
 Home of the People, Ghent, 315. 
 Howells, W. D., 166. 
 Hugo, Victor, quoted, 159 n. 
 Hyndman, 346. 
 
 Illinois Central Railroad, land grants 
 to, 113-115. 
 
 Imprisonment for debt, 86-88. 
 
 Incorporation of trade unions, 34, 
 366-367. 
 
 Increment, the unearned, 267. 
 
 Indebtedness, destitution traceable 
 to, 248. 
 
 Individual, J. S. Mill on liberty of 
 the, 165. 
 
 Individuals, wrong in ownership of 
 machinery by, 169-170. 
 
 Inequality, American passion for, 
 234-235 ; biological origin of, 243. 
 
 Injunction, the, not a modern in- 
 vention, 85-86. 
 
 Injuries, treatment of victims of in- 
 dustrial, in the United States, 49- 
 50; question of indemnification 
 for, 208-221. 
 
 Insurance, accident, 208-221 ; sick- 
 ness and accident, in Germany, 
 249; present-day views of Ger- 
 man socialists concerning state 
 labor, 311; old-age, in Belgium, 
 318 ; Vooruit system of, in Ghent, 
 328. 
 
 Interference, so-called, of trade 
 unions, 38-39. 
 
 Interstate Commerce Commission, 
 comparative helplessness of, 281. 
 
 Inventions, attitude of trade unions 
 toward, 5-6; unexpected benefits 
 derived from, 173-174. 
 
 Irish, leadership of, in trade unions, 3.
 
 INDEX 
 
 389 
 
 Italy, legislation concerning indus- 
 trial accidents in, 213. 
 
 J 
 
 Jackson, Judge, on labor unions, 34. 
 James, Henry, misrepresentation of 
 
 socialist character by, 320. 
 Japan, the so-called awakening of, 
 
 69. 
 
 Jaures, 290, 295, 296, 297, 346. 
 Jefferson, Thomas, 76, 79-80; effort 
 
 of, after social equality, 227-228 ; 
 
 on the " natural aristocracy," 244- 
 
 245- 
 
 Jenks, J. W., 8 n. 
 
 Joint-agreement, the, between em- 
 ployer and employed, 2-3, 360- 
 372; operation of, in Boston 
 Building Trades, 367-368; text 
 of a, 381-384. 
 
 Jones, Thomas G., 254 n. 
 
 Journals, labor, use of writings of 
 recognized authorities in, 160- 
 168. 
 
 Justice, not charity, sought by 
 laborers, 205-207. 
 
 K 
 
 Kautsky, 241 n., 244, 302, 346. 
 
 Kidd, Benjamin, 56. 
 
 King, Horatio, on land grants to 
 railroads, 115. 
 
 King, Rufus, 76. 
 
 Kingsley, Charles, 51 n. 
 
 Klassenkampf in Germany, end of, 
 310-312. 
 
 Knights of Labor, 133 ; one weak- 
 ness of, 346. 
 
 " Kunst und die Revolution," Wag- 
 ner's, 157. 
 
 Land, grants of, to railroads, 113- 
 
 "5- 
 
 Lange, F. A., 155 ; quoted, 156-157. 
 Lassalle, 288, 310, 342, 346. 
 Lasters, strike of, at Brockton, 192. 
 Law, necessity of, for governing some 
 
 employers, 208. 
 Legislation, industrial, 41, 43-44 ; 
 
 factory, 28-29, 4^, 207-208, 255, 
 311-312; on drink traffic, 278. 
 
 Leo III., Pope, on the present social 
 state, 167. 
 
 Le Peuple, organ of Belgian social- 
 ists, 316, 320, 331. 
 
 Le Seur, Alexander, 228. 
 
 Liberalism, decay of political, in 
 Europe, 56-60. 
 
 Libraries, working people's, in Bel- 
 gium, 319. 
 
 Liebknecht, 300, 303, 309, 310, 346. 
 
 " Life of Francis Place," Wallace's, 
 247 n. 
 
 Lighting, public control of, 119-120, 
 270. 
 
 Lille, socialist experiment at, 290. 
 
 Lincoln, Abraham, on the equality 
 of man, 224-225. 
 
 Literature, on social questions, great 
 increase of, 124 ; ignorance of 
 business men of trade-union, 144- 
 147 ; socialist, in Germany, 155- 
 159 ; European, on social matters, 
 160-168. 
 
 " Looking Backward," Bellamy's, 
 230-232, 240-241. 
 
 Loubet, President, 53 n. 
 
 Lowell, James Russell, 26, 166. 
 
 M 
 
 Macdonald, Gordon, 254 n. 
 
 Machinery, trade unions and, 6, 35- 
 36, 190-199; Professor Smart on 
 results of invention of, 161-162; 
 ownership of, should be by the 
 people according to socialists, 
 169-170 ; various writers concern- 
 ing, 170-172; virtues connected 
 with, 173-178 ; no displacement of 
 labor by, but the contrary, 179- 
 182; effect of, on wages, 182-184; 
 sometimes an evil, 186-188 ; effect 
 of use of, on Western farms, 188- 
 189; indemnification for injuries 
 due to, 208-221 ; proposals of 
 socialism concerning evils due to, 
 220-221 ; as viewed by Belgian 
 socialists, 328 ; trade unions grow- 
 ing more friendly to, 356.
 
 390 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Maclure, William, 228. 
 
 McMaster, John Bach, quoted, 74- 
 75, 82-84, 8S - 
 
 McNeil, George E., 35. 
 
 Maison du Peuple, the, 315-317. 
 
 Mallock, W. H., 244, 334, 
 
 Malon, 244, 304. 
 
 Marshall, Professor, 247 n. 
 
 Marx, Karl, 8-9, 51 n., 263, 288, 301, 
 304, 305, 308, 310, 346. 
 
 Massachusetts, factory legislation in, 
 29; socialist mayors in, 64-65; 
 strikes in (1834), 85; the mini- 
 mum wage applied in, 330. 
 
 Mather, Increase, 73. 
 
 Maurice, F. D., 239. 
 
 Mellaerts, Abbe, credit banks intro- 
 duced into Belgium by, 341. 
 
 Middlemen, elimination of, by Bel- 
 gian socialists, 314, 318, 321-322; 
 a class of, admitted by Belgian 
 socialist to be necessary, 378. 
 
 Mill, J. S., extracts from, used by 
 labor agitators, 164-165 ; convic- 
 tion of, that machinery has not 
 lightened labor, 171-172. 
 
 Millerand, 53, 377; in Waldeck- 
 Rousseau ministry, 290-291. 
 
 Miners, working of joint-agreement 
 among, 361-362. 
 
 Mitchell, John, 126 ; plea of, for law 
 and order in strikes, 149 ; on sym- 
 pathetic strikes, 347; on educa- 
 tion of trade unions up to broader 
 principles, 359. 
 
 Mommsen, Tneodor, quoted, 158- 
 
 159. 
 
 Money power, feeling against the, 
 133-135; importance of popular 
 hostility to, 139-142. 
 
 Morley, John, 59, 166. 
 
 Mormons, the, 233-234. 
 
 Morris, William, 166, 288; on ma- 
 chinery, 170-171, 172; aversion 
 of, to Bellamy's scheme, 241; 
 more anarchist than socialist, 
 
 273- 
 
 Murphy, Edgar Gardner, 254 n. 
 Mutual credit associations, Belgian, 
 
 341- 
 
 N 
 
 Nasmith, James, on effect of intro- 
 duction of machinery, 172-173. 
 
 Negro, effect of employment of, on 
 wages, 28, 344. 
 
 New Hampshire, connection between 
 railroads and politics in, 57. 
 
 New Orleans, opposition in, to trade 
 unions, 39 n. 
 
 Newspapers, limitations of benefits 
 of, 172. 
 
 New Zealand, social regulations in, 
 30, 41, 104, 116, 221, 270, 274-275. 
 
 North Carolina, labor statistics in, 
 
 253-254- 
 
 Norway, legislation concerning in- 
 dustrial accidents in, 213 ; legis- 
 lation concerning the drink traffic 
 in, 278. 
 
 O 
 
 Opportunity, demand for equality of, 
 244-245; lack of, due to over- 
 crowding, 247; lack of, due to 
 indebtedness, 248 ; lack of, due to 
 tenement-house conditions, 251- 
 252. 
 
 Organization of business interests 
 and of labor, present-day neces- 
 sity for, 30-32. 
 
 Overcapitalization, of coal com- 
 panies, 23 ; in trusts, 60-61. 
 
 Overcrowding, degeneracy resulting 
 from, 247. 
 
 Owen, Robert, 255, 261-262, 326; 
 Utopian experiment of, 228-229. 
 
 Pace setting in factories, 35, 36, 191- 
 
 193- 
 
 Partnership between employer and 
 laborer, recognition of, 195-106 ; 
 non-recognition of, 197-199. 
 
 Paternalism practised by capitalists, 
 46-47. 
 
 Patrons of Husbandry, founding of, 
 
 131- 
 
 Paulsen, Professor, 99 n. 
 Pawnshops, municipal, 250. 
 Pearson, Professor, 55.
 
 INDEX 
 
 391 
 
 Peasants' Revolt, the, 70. 
 
 Pennsylvania, subserviency of, to 
 railroads, 47. 
 
 Pensions, old-age, 50. 
 
 Peoples party, the, 133, 141. 
 
 Petite Bourgeoisie, La, 323 n. 
 
 Philadelphia, strike of cordwainers in 
 (1805). 86. 
 
 Philanthropy, dislike of wage earners 
 for, 203-205. 
 
 Phillips, Dr. J. H., 254 n. 
 
 Picard, Senator, 320. 
 
 Pickering, Timothy, 76. 
 
 Piece-work, trade unions and, 6-7, 
 35-36; versus time-work, among 
 Belgian socialists, 330-331. 
 
 Ploughs as illustrating benefits of 
 machinery, 177. 
 
 Politics, railroads and, 47, 57 ; modern 
 social unrest finds an outlet in, 
 105-106; in farmers' organiza- 
 tions, 131, 133 ; in England de- 
 termined by business and com- 
 merce, 262-265. 
 
 Pollock, Sir Frederick, on laws con- 
 cerning industrial accidents, 214. 
 
 Poor, socialist help of the, in France, 
 291-294. 
 
 Populism in the United States, 58. 
 
 Powder, sale of, by operators to coal 
 miners, 13, 313. 
 
 Press, the, as a means of expressing 
 discontent, 90-91. 
 
 " Principles of Economics," Mar- 
 shall's, quoted, 247 n. 
 
 Printing machinery, no displacement 
 
 of labor by, 181. 
 Profit sharing, 40. 
 Proudhon, socialism defined by, 
 
 259 n. 
 Pryor, Dr. John H., quoted, 251- 
 
 252. 
 Publicity, demand for, in semi-public 
 
 businesses, 23-24. 
 Pumpmen in coal mines, 14. 
 Pyfferoen, Oscar, 323. 
 
 Question, the woman, 97-98; the 
 social, 107-109, 112-125, X 43! I 44~ 
 
 168 (see Socialism) ; the servant, 
 108-112. 
 
 Quincy, Josiah, on Thomas Jeffer- 
 son, 77. 
 
 Railroads, effect of control of, by 
 coal-mine operators, 19, 20-22; 
 subserviency of Pennsylvania and 
 California to, 47 ; politics and, in 
 New Hampshire, 57 ; government 
 land grants to, 113-115; farmers' 
 organizations and, 133 ; influence 
 of, on quality of men, 176 ; acci- 
 dents to employees on, 209-210; 
 Interstate Commerce Commis- 
 sion does not regulate, 281. 
 
 Reeves, W. P., 104. 
 
 Reform, the Great, in England, 70. 
 
 Regulation, futile efforts at, by gov- 
 ernment commissions, 281-283. 
 
 Raiffeisen Bank, the, 341. 
 
 Reilly, A. J., 254. 
 
 Religion, as a factor in former peri- 
 ods of unrest, 81; decay of author- 
 ity in, a source of unrest, 101-102 ; 
 power of, in Utopian experiments, 
 233-234 ; " ten thousand defini- 
 tions " of, 258 ; and German social 
 democracy, 302-305 ; socialists 
 and, 322. 
 
 " Religion der Socialdemokratie," 
 Dietzgen's, 300. 
 
 Remuneration Conference in Lon- 
 don, 347-349- 
 
 Rent, George's theory of, 267. See 
 George, Henry. 
 
 Restaurants, socialist, 289. 
 
 Rogers, Thorold, quoted, 161. 
 
 Roosevelt, President, 53. 
 
 Rosebery, Lord, quoted, 59. 
 
 Rouanet, Gustave, 304 n. 
 
 Roubaix, slow work of socialism at, 
 290. 
 
 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 223, 260. 
 
 Ruskin, John, use of, in labor jour- 
 nals, 161 ; on machinery, 170, 172, 
 219. 
 
 Ruskin, Tennessee, Utopian experi- 
 ment at, 233.
 
 392 
 
 INDEX 
 
 S 
 
 St. Simon, 223, 259, 260. 
 
 Salaries, question of, in proportion to 
 ability, 333-334. 
 
 Salisbury, Lord, 214. 
 
 Salmon, Professor, 109. 
 
 Saloons as meeting places of social 
 agitators, 315-316. 
 
 Say, Leon, 53. 
 
 Sayward, W. H., 367-368. 
 
 Scab, the, in early labor troubles, 
 85; terrors of, disappear under 
 use of the joint-agreement, 368; 
 significance of the, to unionists, 
 369-372. 
 
 Schaeffle, Dr., 107, 157, 269, 339. 
 
 Schall, atheistic statement of, 302. 
 
 Scherer, Edmond, 55. 
 
 School attendance, compulsory, 255, 
 256. 
 
 Schultze-Delitzsch, the town credit 
 banks founded by, 342. 
 
 Schwab, Charles M., and trade 
 unions, 38; concerning care of 
 injured employees, 206-207. 
 
 Secretan, Charles, quoted, 160 n. 
 
 Servant question, the, 109-112. 
 
 Seward, William H., on land grants 
 to railroads, 114. 
 
 Shakers, the, 233-234. 
 
 Sicily, socialism impossible in, 262. 
 
 "Small Business Man, The," Pyf- 
 feroen's, 323. 
 
 Smart, Professor, quoted, 161-162. 
 
 Snobs, examples of American, 234- 
 235- 
 
 Social democrats, Bismarck on, 287 ; 
 rise of, 299 ; leading principles of, 
 299-302; and religion, 302-305; 
 consideration of principles of, 
 3S~37; modification of views 
 of, 308-312. 
 
 Social question, what is meant by, 
 107-109; cause of increase of 
 interest in, 112-125; economic 
 significance of, 143; inevitable- 
 ness of, 144-168. 
 
 Socialism, education in, by strike of 
 1902, 20-21 ; in France, 53-55, 
 289-297, 341 n. ; effect of trusts 
 
 on, 60-61; effect of enmity be- 
 tween capital and labor on, 64- 
 65; in Massachusetts cities, 65; 
 the embodiment of present-day 
 unrest, 106; as displayed in the 
 farmers' organizations, 133-136; 
 proposals of, concerning evils due 
 to machinery, 220-221 ; of present 
 day is not communism, 242, 278- 
 279 ; definition of, 258-259 ; history 
 of, 260-265 1 illustrations of theory 
 of, 265-286 ; in Germany, 298-312 ; 
 in Belgium, 313-341 ; in France 
 and in Belgium contrasted, 341 n. 
 
 " Socialisme en Belgique, Le," 339. 
 
 " Socialisme Integral, Le," Malon's, 
 304- 
 
 Socialists, opposition of catholics to, 
 322. 
 
 "Social Salvation," Dr. Gladden's, 
 quoted, 150. 
 
 Sociology, private and public theories 
 in, 7-9. 
 
 Southern Pacific, California and the, 
 
 47- 
 
 Spahr, Dr., tables by, showing dis- 
 tribution of wealth, 163. 
 
 Spain, socialism impossible in, 262. 
 
 Speculation, dangers of rage for, 78 ; 
 early, 78-79; versus legitimate 
 business, 276-277. 
 
 Spencer, Herbert, 26. 
 
 Standard of living, rise in, in United 
 States, 93-96 ; in Germany, 98-99. 
 
 Steward, Ira, 35. 
 
 Stocks, trade in, 276-277. 
 
 Stores, cooperative, in America, 2-3 
 (see Cooperatives) \ company, in 
 coal fields, 13, 313. 
 
 Stove manufactories, working of joint- 
 agreement in, 361. 
 
 Street railway franchises, private 
 ownership of, 116, 120. 
 
 "Street Railway Problem in Cleve- 
 land, The," 129. 
 
 Street railways, growth of opinion 
 among employees in favor of 
 public ownership of, 127-130; 
 and department stores, 268-269; 
 public control of, 270.
 
 INDEX 
 
 393 
 
 Strike, of Philadelphia cordwainers, 
 86; an early Roman, 89; of 
 lasters' union at Brockton, 192. 
 
 Strikes, in coal industry, 17 ; cost of, 
 paid by public, 22 ; from 1830 to 
 1838, 85; growing popular sym- 
 pathy in, 148-149 ; sympathetic, 
 condemned, 347, 359; as a rule 
 trade unions oppose, 356. 
 
 Sumner, Charles, 25. 
 
 Sweating, legal checks on, in Boston, 
 29. 
 
 Sweatshops, dangers in clothing from, 
 251-252. 
 
 Sweden, legislation on drink traffic 
 in, 278. 
 
 Switzerland, factory legislation in, 29, 
 30; government interference in 
 industrial affairs in, 52; legisla- 
 tion concerning industrial acci- 
 dents in, 213, 216. 
 
 Sympathy with strikers, growth of 
 popular, 148-149. 
 
 Telephones, public ownership of, 
 125 n., 221, 275-276. 
 
 Temperance, influence of railroads 
 on, 176; advocated by Belgian 
 socialists, 316-317. 
 
 Fh6odor, Leon, 324. 
 
 "Theology of Civilization," Dole's, 
 quoted, 100. 
 
 " Theory of the Four Movements," 
 Fourier's, 260. 
 
 Three rents, theory of the, 269-270. 
 
 Tolstoi, 223. 
 
 Tompkins, Colonel D. A., labor statis- 
 tics by, 253. 
 
 Tracy, Judge, 76. 
 
 Trade unionism, distinctive features 
 of American, 3-4. 
 
 Trade unions, limitation of appren- 
 tices by, 4-5 ; and new machinery, 
 5-6. 35-3. 190-199; and piece- 
 work, 6-7, 35-36 ; a retired capi- 
 talist quoted concerning, 15; in 
 the South, 28 ; folly of not recog- 
 nizing, 32-33; functions of, ac- 
 cording to employers, 37 ; social- 
 
 ist, in France, 53-55; capitalists' 
 attitude toward, 63-64; growth 
 among, of desire lor municipal 
 ownership of street railways, 127- 
 130; literature of, 145-147; best 
 men not leaders in, 151 ; unjust 
 judgments passed on, 151-153; 
 and socialists, 345-346; enemies 
 to revolutionary opinions, 357- 
 358. 
 
 Trainmen as illustrating benefits of 
 machinery, 175-176. 
 
 Trusts, a capitalist on dangers of, 
 ii ; effect of, on politics, 60-61; 
 responsibilities of, 62-63. 
 
 Tuberculosis, the distinctive disease 
 of tenement-house life, 251-252. 
 
 U 
 
 Unearned increment, the, 267. 
 
 Unions. See Trade unions. 
 
 " United States of America," Chan- 
 ning's, quoted, 80. 
 
 Unrest, social, early examples of, 
 72-85; in Germany, 98-100; de- 
 cay of authority in religion a 
 cause of, 101-102; politics as an 
 outlet for modern, 105-106. 
 
 Usury, modern cases of, 248 ; Belgian 
 socialists' methods of overcom- 
 ing, 340-341. 
 
 Utopias, uselessness of, recognized, 
 20, 257 ; socialism of the, 44, 246 ; 
 various social and literary, 228- 
 234, 236-237 ; French, 260-261. 
 
 Vanderwelde, 244, 339, 346. 
 Victoria, industrial regulations in, 
 
 41. 
 
 Vigo, 228. 
 Violence toward non-unionists, 10, 
 
 369-372. 
 
 Volkstaat, Die, quoted, 302. 
 Von Oettingen, 99. 
 Von Treitschke, 99. 
 Von Vollmar, 306-307, 377. 
 Vooruit system of insurance in 
 Ghent, 328.
 
 394 
 
 INDEX 
 
 W 
 
 Wage, the minimum, working out 
 of system of, in Belgium, 329-330. 
 
 Wages, effect of foreigners on, 20, 
 344; effect of the negro on, 28, 
 344 ; foreigners imported to keep 
 down, 48; in early hard-time 
 period, 83 ; effect of inventions 
 on, 182-184; f children in the 
 South, 254; necessity for, admit- 
 ted by Belgian socialist, 377-378. 
 
 Wagner, Richard, socialistic opinions 
 by, 157- 
 
 Waldeck-Rousseau, 53. 
 
 Walker, Francis, 91. 
 
 Walking-delegates, 34, 35; as sup- 
 posed cause of labor troubles, 
 151; disappearance of terrors of, 
 by use of joint-agreement, 368. 
 
 Wallace, Graham, 247 n. 
 
 Waring, Colonel, 247. 
 
 Waterworks, public ownership of, 
 
 112, 117-119. 
 
 Wealth, distribution of, in United 
 
 States, 163. 
 " Wealth of Nations," Adam Smith's, 
 
 263. 
 
 Webb, Sidney, 3, 107, 244. 
 "Western Civilization," Kidd's,56n. 
 
 White, Harry, 359. 
 
 Whitten, Dr., 121-123. 
 
 Windeyer, Sir William, quoted, 104. 
 
 Woltman, L., 304-305. 
 
 Woman question, the, 97-98. , 
 
 Women, strikes by, in Massachu- 
 setts (1834), 85; higher education 
 of, as a source of social unrest, 
 97-98 ; in Southern factories, 253. 
 
 Work, restriction of, by trade unions, 
 10. 
 
 " Workingmen's Insurance," Wil- 
 loughby's, quoted, 214-215. 
 
 Wright, Carroll D., on railroads and 
 temperance, 176 ; figures of suc- 
 cessful strikes, 347; statement 
 that trade unions oppose strikes, 
 356. 
 
 Y 
 
 " Yeast," Kingsley's, 51 n. 
 
 Youth of workmen in Western shops, 
 
 Zacher, Dr., quoted concerning in- 
 demnification for accidents, 216. 
 
 Zola, 171, 223. 
 
 "Zu Schutz und Trutz," Laebknecht's, 
 300.
 
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