GIFT OF 
 
 "A ' 
 
 'SOjg; 
 
THE INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 Noting the rise and forms of human government. The movement for 
 expunging the Constitution of the United States, with the cause and 
 processes of that movement. The passing of the American Common- 
 wealth and the evolution of the centralized State in its stead; with 
 observation of the several forces responsible therefor. Remarking 
 the various expedients for relief of the working classes, among 
 which, the California eight-hour labor initiatives, and sundry 
 others. The basic errors of such proposals, and the hope- 
 lessness of benefit to the working people through pursuit 
 of their direction. Together with consideration of the 
 true cause of prevailing wrong conditions within the 
 nation, and the disaster in which these must 
 culminate unless they be intelligently 
 and courageously corrected* 
 
 fe have reached a condition In this country where apathy and Indifference as to where 
 we are going amounts to national suicide. The trend of the times is toward Socialism, 
 if not actual anarchy, when many men of Influence and standing appear to have lost 
 their heads and are drifting with the tide in the idiotic belief that by sympathizing 
 with and encouraging hazardous doctrines and dangerous elements they can head off 
 their ultimate evil results. It is becoming more evident each day that a crisis is 
 approaching and that our form of representative government Is in danger; that 
 poisonous weeds have sprung up in political parties that promise the destruction of 
 Its basic principles. John Kirby, Jr., Ex-President National Association of Manu- 
 facturers. 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN E. BENNETT 
 
 OF THE SAN FRANCISCO BAR 
 
Our National Tendency and its Goal 
 
 Being a discussion of the Political and Industrial direction of the United States 
 under the influence of prevailing economic forces, and statement of the 
 causes thereof, and the means to avert the conclusion to which those forces 
 are proceeding. 
 
 Together with an Address before the Chinese 
 Students Association of America at its Con- 
 vention held in San Francisco in January, 1914, 
 upon 
 
 THE STUDENT IN ORIENTAL IMMIGRATION 
 
 Considering the effect upon *China and Japan of the Policy of the United States 
 in shutting off migration of the Orient with the West, the real cause that 
 moves Industrial migration, and the condition that confronts Oriental Stu- 
 dents seeking education in the United States, by reason of these influences. 
 
 32 pp. 
 
 JOHN E. BENNETT, of the San Francisco gar 
 
 "JAPAN'S MESSAGETO AMERICA" 
 
 (A REPLY) 
 
 Considering the impelling cause which moves the Japanese nation to 
 
 desire the good will of the American people; the necessity to Japan of 
 
 free intercourse with the civilization of the West, now shut off by 
 
 immigration exclusion; the calamity which inevitably must befall 
 
 that nation through a continuance of the isolation thrust upon her 
 
 by this policy. The doctrine of exclusion shown to rest upon a 
 
 mistaken belief regarding the effect of labor immigration 
 
 upon wages of intra-country workmen; the popular opinion 
 
 being that such immigration lowers wages, whereas, in 
 
 truth, it raises wages and increases general prosperity- 
 
 33 pp. 
 
 By JOHN E. BENNETT 
 
 OF THE 
 SAN FRANCISCO BAR 
 
 Copies of the above and the within pamphlet may be had by addressing the 
 author at 1310-11 Humboldt Bank Building, San Francisco, Cal. 
 
 The author retains no copyright on the within or on either of the above pamphlets, 
 and anyone is privileged to publish the same for sale or otherwise, provided only an entire 
 pamphlet is printed and not a part thereof. Newspapers and magazines may make 
 excerpts. 
 
THE INDUSTRIAL UNREST 
 
 Noting the rise and forms of human government. The movement for 
 expunging the Constitution of the United States, with the cause and 
 processes of that movement. The passing of the American Common- 
 wealth and the evolution of the centralized State in its stead; with 
 observation of the several forces responsible therefor. Remarking 
 the various expedients for relief of the working classes, among 
 which, the California eight-hour labor initiatives, and sundry 
 others. The basic errors of such proposals, and the hope- 
 lessness of benefit to the working people through pursuit 
 of their direction. Together with consideration of the 
 true cause of prevailing wrong conditions within the 
 nation, and the disaster in which these must 
 culminate unless they be intelligently 
 and courageously corrected* 
 
 We have reached a condition in this country where apathy and indifference as to where 
 we are going amounts to national suicide. The trend of the times is toward Socialism, 
 if not actual anarchy, when many men of influence and standing appear to have lost 
 their heads and are drifting with the tide in the idiotic belief that by sympathizing 
 with and encouraging hazardous doctrines and dangerous elements they can head off 
 their ultimate evil results. It is becoming more evident each day that a crisis is 
 approaching and that our form of representative government is in danger; that 
 poisonous weeds have sprung up in political parties that promise the destruction of 
 its basic principles. John Kirby, Jr., Ex-President National Association of Manu- 
 facturers. 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN E. BENNETT 
 
 OF THE SAN FRANCISCO BAR 
 
PRESS OF 
 
 SCHWABACHER-FREY STATIONERY CO. 
 SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 The United States Commission on Industrial Relations, after con- 
 ducting for nearly a year its inquiry into the cause of the industrial unrest 
 in the United States, has in the course of its journey ings reached San 
 Francisco, where it is proceeding with hearings, eliciting of all and sundry 
 facts and opinions in quest of light and information upon the great theme 
 which has called it to assemble. It is exceedingly interesting to note that 
 on the eve of the Commission's arrival in San Francisco, its head, Mr. Frank 
 P. Walsh, a lawyer of Kansas City, is credited with saying : 
 
 "The Chairman of this Commission has no desire to conceal his own 
 belief that labor's groping, through its demand to 'bargain collectively/ 
 toward more freedom and more life, is one of the inevitable processes of 
 democratization that cannot be permanently checked. He believes further 
 that much of labor's bitterness is a reaction from the instinctive resistance 
 and resentment of the surprised employer against this irresistible process."* 
 
 In other words, if the utterances of its Chairman reflect its views, the 
 Commission has concluded, after the hearings it has had, that the labor 
 union with its closed shop is a necessity in industry, and that whatever this 
 is destined to develop into, must follow. This latter is the Socialistic State. 
 The Chairman does not say as much, for he would perhaps fain not draw 
 the curtain to reveal that which is behind, if it happens that he has thought 
 in such direction. His view must be disheartening enough to every citizen 
 who reflects upon it; but assuredly the Commission cannot be blamed for 
 holding it. I shall venture the assertion that not one of the hundreds whom 
 the Commission has heard at its many sessions, has ever presented the line 
 of reasoning which shows that the true direction and the course of safety 
 for .the people and the nation is not towards the labor union and its con- 
 comitant socialism, but is in accord with human freedom and individual 
 liberty. To the task of so showing, this pamphlet is dedicated. Human 
 freedom is indeed on trial. Men love it, and linger in the hope that it can 
 be saved. Yet who comes forward to defend it! There is abroad a wide- 
 spread feeling that modern industry in its large development, its combina- 
 tions and the power its unifications present, is in some way incompatible 
 with the exercise of a full sphere of liberty by the individual. That 
 restrictive laws eliminating a large measure of what he has heretofore 
 conceived to be his rights, are necessary, and that he is destined to go 
 through life jacketed with limitations and rebuffed by denials on all sides, 
 imposed by the State, and assumed to be necessary in order that his fellow 
 might subsist. It is my endeavor herein to show that this is not a fact; and 
 
 |4M 
 
 "San Francisco Bulletin Aug. 8, 191 17 page 
 
while so far as 1 i-an f-;id, I soi-iu, in l;n\ue degree, to be traveling untrodden 
 ground, yet the reader will find in the thought nothing that is perplexing 
 or with which the rational understanding will not readily agree. There is 
 nothing occult about political economy. It may be stated as being the 
 science of familiar things. The instructor in it is less a teacher than a 
 guide, pointing out this and that fact, all well in the knowledge of his 
 hearer, the exposition of its truth consisting of the arrangement, the juxta- 
 positions in which the facts are placed and presented. Economics deal 
 with the matters and things with which people come into daily contact. 
 It is a body of thought capable readily of being popularized, the great 
 questions of public welfare which it holds being possible of simple and 
 easily grasped explanations. The "dismal science" with which Carlyle 
 dubbed the economics of his day, was that of the schools. The ' ' theory of 
 rent," the "law of diminishing returns," the "principle of population," 
 the "doctrine of marginal utility," together with such more recent phrases 
 as "economic monism" and "economic pluralism," these theorems do not 
 concern us. Certain of them are correct, others are not ; all are useful 
 chiefly to the academicians, and have little influence upon practical affairs. 
 Where they are carried into the domain of current thought, as instance in 
 the case of Prof. Farnam, pointed out in my last pamphlet,* which remarks 
 might be extended to many of the Professor's fellow collegians, there is often 
 error and confusion. Let us forego the schools in this brief journey through 
 the region of every day economics, which we shall make in this pamphlet, 
 and employ the common knowledge which every ordinarily educated mind 
 possesses, and be guided by our common sense. With these instruments we 
 shall not only understand the situation as it obtains through the industrial 
 and political forces moving within the country, but we shall see clearly the 
 direction in which those forces are tending and the ultimate condition which 
 they must inevitably devolve upon the country. This condition is the 
 highly centralized State, in which, under the guise of using the government 
 as an instrument for procuring to the wage earner a larger share in produc- 
 tion than he is now receiving, destroys practically all rights and liberties 
 of the individual, and converges the authority of the sovereign into . an 
 aristocratic or monarchical head, which inevitably soon assumes the depraved 
 order of such forms of government. This is the meaning of Chairman 
 Walsh's utterances; and it is the more to be lamented that Congress and 
 the President, striving, as they have recurrently done, through appointment 
 of commissions to find the wise and safe line upon which to legislate, are 
 having repeatedly turned in to them by these their creations, and under the 
 seal of patient inquiry and careful consideration, the very doctrines that 
 spell disaster to the nation, whose approval by such bodies but hasten the 
 day of the destruction of all that aggregate of natural and civil rights, the 
 recognition of which by government was the task and toil of centuries. 
 Why this should be is very perplexing. It can only be accounted for by 
 
 ""Japan's Message to America." 
 
such a remark as was lately made by James J. Hill, when asked why 
 railroad gross earnings all over the nation were falling behind ; he replied : 
 "The business is simply not in the country." And so say I of and for 
 this Commission and its erroneous views as expressed by its Chairman, 
 which have concreted into a conclusion after scores of hearings of business 
 men, politicians, statesmen, economic professors, labor unionists, socialists 
 and sundry others, ' ' the knowledge is simply not in the country. ' ' And in 
 so saying I would not underrate in the slightest degree the grand work 
 already done on behalf of the Constitution by such men as ex-President 
 Taft, Senator Elihu Root and others, whose utterances have been of 
 inestimable help to me. But though they have spoken bravely and well, 
 there has been no attempt to carry by any efficient means into the con- 
 sciences of the people the fact that there exists before the country a clear 
 cut issue of the Constitution on one side and Socialism on the other, and 
 that all of the movement of which this eight-hour labor initiative is an 
 instance and a part, the minimum wage, working men's insurance, the 
 legalizing by Congress of the unlawful acts of the labor union, and much 
 else, is a part of the general direction toward conversion of the nation into 
 the Socialistic State ; and men seem to see no light in the opposite direction 
 under which constitutional government can be preserved. This is an 
 exceedingly unhappy situation; and if the publication of this pamphlet 
 shall indicate to those of the country interested in preserving its liberties 
 the course to pursue in 'such behalf, I shall feel that I have rendered 
 a service. 
 
 This article was almost in manuscript before the outbreak of the 
 existing war in Europe, and I have not attempted to change it in any 
 particular owing to that catastrophe. The economic problems which will 
 be presented in those countries now the theatre of the war, after hostilities 
 are over as to what shaping effect these will have on the several govern- 
 ments, I have not attempted to go into. Such does not concern us in this 
 inquiry. The narrative of the rapid drawing toward the Socialistic State 
 of certain of these countries which was going on at the commencement of 
 the war, as herein shown, may be taken as a condition whose trend is to be 
 resumed with redoubled fury after the war is over, at which time the 
 conditions which have moved the labor element toward the mass strike, 
 will have become highly intensified. Indeed, it is already manifest that 
 when the war closes the world shall have been driven far along in the 
 Socialistic program. It is always the result of war to fasten upon the 
 nations experiencing it erroneous economic policies from which they suffer 
 for years after, the effects of their operations visiting more injury than 
 the war itself. Our protective tariff system was a heritage of our civil 
 war; and already we have reports of Socialistic schemes in France to care 
 for the 600,000 people whom the press dispatches tell us are out of work 
 in Paris alone. There are plans to start government work shops and labor 
 yards and "far reaching charitable work with vat soup kitchens run by 
 
 5 
 
the labor unions. ' ' While in the United States, by reason of a warped and 
 erroneous shipping policy, finding ourselves without bottoms under a flag 
 safe upon the seas in which to carry the commerce of the country, Congress 
 is arranging to appropriate $25,000,000 to buy merchant vessels and start 
 the nation into the commercial shipping business. Enormous sums are 
 appropriated for war materials whose diversion from the channels of 
 industry increase prices and so lessen the opportunities for labor, and 
 intensify the demand and the apparent necessity for the State moving into 
 industry to provide work for the people. Indeed, it may be said that the 
 call for the State to enter industry is due to the fact that the initiative of 
 the people of the nation has been dislocated by erroneous governmental 
 policies, so that it cannot provide jobs for the people itself. 
 
 As I have shown, Socialism in Germany, Russia, Austria and France 
 need cause those governments little concern. Monarchies more or less 
 absolute can swallow Socialism with an easy gulp. Prince Bismarck had 
 strong Socialistic leanings, notwithstanding the antagonism of his adminis- 
 tration to Socialistic propaganda, and he apprehended no inconvenience to 
 the government or to the reigning house, should it become ascendant. The 
 heads of prevailing industries would, under Socialism, continue heads of 
 such industries, wearing only the badge of government, and drawn thereby 
 into closer relation to the crown ; the nation itself developing into two 
 camps, an industrial camp and an armed camp, each equally subject to the 
 sovereign absolutism. It is only in those countries whose governments are 
 predicated upon individual freedom, particularly England and the United 
 States, that will be profoundly changed by Socialism, and the initiative 
 and industrial opportunities and activities of their individual citizens prac- 
 tically obliterated. There can be no question about the ultimate upshot of 
 these conditions, for the world does not know any other direction than that 
 to which it is now tending, the finger of the schools being definitely pointed 
 to the goal of Socialism. 
 
The Industrial Unrest 
 
 BY JOHN E. BENNETT 
 
 The Secretary of State of California, having certified to the electors 
 of the State the initiative proposals hereinafter set forth,* to be voted upon 
 at the election to be held in November, 1914, each of which would be enacted 
 into law by a majority of the voters balloting in their favor, a number of 
 leading citizens of San Francisco requested of Mr. Bennett his views upon 
 the measure, to which the latter replied with the following thesis : 
 
 Man belongs to that order of animals which by their nature are 
 gregarious ; that is, animals who by instinct assemble into communities and 
 exist in association with each other. The wild horses or the buffalo that 
 sometime roamed the prairies, the wild geese that fly in flocks, are instances 
 of this character of life. They differ in this quality of sociability from 
 those forms that are either solitary in habit, like the hyena or the blue heron, 
 or that are addicted to an equally isolated family life, like the lion or the fox. 
 
 Whatever may be the sense that causes sheep to browse in droves or 
 antelopes to move in herds, in man there are reasons of intellect as well as 
 of emotion, that cause him to abide with his fellows in tribes and- nations. 
 These reasons may be aggregated into a single phrase mutual helpfulness. 
 
 The movement of man in the line of progression, from his earliest type 
 to his highest modern creation, has been, from the standpoint of the human 
 race, extremely irregular. Some peoples, even within the realm of civilized 
 nations, are centuries ahead of others, while there yet abide naked and 
 savage tribes ; and farther into the jungles explorations of today have 
 discovered peoples in their primitive condition, so close indeed to the apes, 
 that they may almost be regarded as survivals of the Pithecanthropus 
 erectus. 
 
 In whatever stage of progress men may be, there is government 
 amongst them. Government may be defined as the existence and exercise 
 of a power vested in human hands, compelling the individual to do or 
 
 "The first initiative bill is as follows: 
 
 "Any employer who shall require or permit, or who shall suffer or permit any 
 overseer, superintendent, foreman, or other agent of such employer, to require or permit 
 any person to work more than forty-eight hours in a week of seven days, 
 eight hours in one week, except in case of extraordinary emergency caused by fire, flood 
 or danger to life or property, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon conviction 
 thereof shall be fined not less than $50 nor more than $500 or imprisoned in the county 
 jail not less than 10 nor more than 90 days, or both so fined and imprisoned." 
 
 The second measure is more in detail and punishes anyone who shall hire or require 
 any person to work more than forty-eight hours in a week of seven days. 
 
refrain from some act or conduct by reason of the common welfare. The 
 necessity for government arises with the human through his need of sub- 
 sistence and his need of defense. Men can better hunt game which yields 
 clothing as well as food, or oppose wild beasts, when they proceed in 
 companies. These circumstances naturally create government which finds 
 its earliest and simplest expression in mere leadership. Men are by nature 
 different, not only in their physical statures and capabilities but in their 
 several psychologies. They vary vastly in all faculties of the mind, in 
 intensity of will, in all those attributes which we commonly comprehend in 
 the phrase "force of character." So if you throw a dozen men, however 
 rude, abroad in a country, and set them or they set themselves to any effort, 
 there will presently develop amongst them some man whose adaptability 
 to the given task at once asserts itself, and finds instant acknowledgment 
 from the others. And while there may be several of these, the superior 
 perception and suggestion of one will cause the others to fall to his support, 
 and the entire company will move under a single direction. This quality 
 of leadership is inherent in human action ; it is the essential of all coordina- 
 tion amongst the units of human kind ; it obtains with equal force wherever 
 free performance exists, amongst the peoples of the highest civilization as 
 among those of the most elementary groups. The leader of the chase 
 becomes the ruler of the tribe, and rule imports government. 
 
 Looking at this initial stage of society it can be seen that the line 
 between the ruler and the people, as to which is in ascendance, is not clear; 
 and whichever hypothesis is accepted must be a conception merely ; whether 
 the people are of primary importance and the ruler is their servant, or 
 whether the ruler is uppermost and the people are his servants, is a 
 question which does not long endure before it is entirely manifest that 
 whatever may be the condition theoretically, in practical operation the 
 ruler is supreme and the people are inferior to him. It is the quality of 
 the ruler that he has the power to bring the force of the whole society 
 against any member, or of the majority against the minority. Such ability 
 would exalt him above any individual, and the concept that the aggregate 
 of individuals comprise a quality of primacy which separately they do not 
 contain, or if at all, only in fractional degree, is too much of an abstraction 
 to concern men in the savage or the barbarous state. 
 
 As men, however, attain to civilization there comes into their minds 
 the light which shows them the quality of government in relation to the 
 people and in relation to the ruler. And whatever may be the kind or form 
 of government existing in any country, there remains in connection with it 
 but two principles; one is the Man, and the other is the Ruler. The first 
 is where the citizen himself embodies all rights of every kind, just as though 
 he stood solitary in the midst of nature; and where out of those rights 
 which he possesses he cedes certain powers to an invisible entity called the 
 State, upon the condition and for the consideration that so endowing the 
 State the latter will protect him in the free exercise of the rights he 
 
reserves. Having created this establishment, he appoints a citizen to 
 administer it. Very obviously the real thing in that situation is not the 
 ruler, but the State; the latter endures and goes on; the former may be 
 swept aside at any instant, and the State is in no wise affected by such 
 removal ; there is merely a vacancy created, to be filled by another appointee. 
 
 Under this concept it is essential that the State be an institution 
 explicitly defined in writing. The document which expresses the powers 
 which the citizen cedes, we call a constitution; and under this constitution 
 there is formulated a body of laws, none of which may be in contravention 
 of the constitution but all thereof must be in accord with it, and aimed to 
 give effect to its provisions. 
 
 This government is what is called a Commonwealth, as the form 
 expressed in the Ruler is called a Monarchy; or if the government be a 
 group of individuals possessing equal powers, then it is called an Aris- 
 tocracy. The powers ceded by the citizen to form the Commonwealth, 
 however, have a very definite sphere. They are such as to preserve to him 
 on one hand the largest scope of free action, and on the other to secure him 
 and make him safe in its exercise; to, in other words, place the entire 
 community behind his use of his rights. Those rights, it must be seen, are 
 the rights which each separate person in the country possesses, and they 
 comprise in each individual the whole zone of human action up to the point 
 where their exercise comes into conflict with the exercise by another indi- 
 vidual of like rights. I have a right to possess property ; my neighbor has 
 a like right to possess property; but I may not possess myself of his 
 property against his will, for then I invade his right to possess property. 
 It is in this margin, or on this edge of rights of individuals where they lie 
 against rather than touch each other, that the function of government 
 exists, the quality of which is to hold a balanced hand between them. 
 
 So then we have man under a Commonwealth, holding all rights up 
 to where their use impairs the use of like rights by his neighbor, at this 
 point transferring certain powers to form the State which is installed to 
 secure him in the possession and use of his rights, the entire defined by a 
 written constitution, which is elaborated in written laws, whose meaning 
 is construed by a judiciary and enforced by an executive. 
 
 The Commonwealth is such, however, only so long as the rights and 
 powers between the State and the citizen are thus defined and balanced; 
 when there is encroachment upon the respective powers, by either one side 
 or the other, the citizen or the State, the government is no longer that of a 
 Commonwealth. If the citizen withdraws any of these powers from the 
 State, the balance is destroyed and the condition that supervenes is called 
 anarchy. This order of things is, however, theoretical only; anarchy can 
 never exist as a status of Society in any wide scope or permanence. Its 
 very existence will revive to suppress it the law which it has overcome. Its 
 assertion will drive the government quickly into the most centralized and 
 absolute form, the very opposite to that which the anarchist desires. For 
 
 9 
 
anarchy is chaos, where the will of each is supreme ; a condition always 
 attended with an uprush of the evil elements in the affected community, 
 for whose submission to order law is necessary. Even if there be imagined 
 a society in which there were none disposed to willful wrongdoing, law 
 would nevertheless be requisite as a mere guide to conduct by which all 
 might adjust themselves; for men with the best intentions will differ in 
 their opinions as to their several rights differences which would quickly 
 provoke disorder were there not some fitting measure by which rights might 
 be determined. It is, indeed, most ordinary that not only will men hold 
 contrary views of interests to which they are related as principals, but 
 they are equally prone to contradictions w^here, removed from participation 
 in the subject-matter, they are seeking to adjust the differences of others ; 
 with a rule before them to which to reconcile the admitted facts they will 
 frequently disagree; as witness the dissents to legal opinions of justices 
 of courts. 
 
 If, however, the Commonwealth encroaches upon the rights of the citi- 
 zen, then is it also no longer a Commonwealth, but falls into the reduced 
 sphere of a democracy; for the latter as a depraved form of the Common- 
 wealth answers to the degradation of Monarchy into tyranny and Aris- 
 tocracy into oligarchy. Aristotle was undoubtedly right when he said that 
 as between these perversions of good government, there was no choice, for 
 none was better than the other. 
 
 , We have, therefore, the Commonwealth comprising the State, formed 
 by the citizen of ceded powers for the purpose recited this is one of the 
 two principles or stati in government to which I have adverted ; the second 
 and only other is that in which the citizen has no rights whatever, but all 
 rights are vested in the State, and the citizen, there a subject, holds only 
 such privileges as the State may permit him to enjoy, and which may be 
 withdrawn at the will of the ruler. This last is absolutism, and it is opposed 
 to individualism, which is the condition of the man under the Common- 
 wealth. As between these two there is no middle ground in government. 
 Whatever order of things exists in any nation that is not one or the other, 
 presents not a status but a tendency an oscillation in one direction or the 
 other, which movement, however long a period of time the process may 
 require, will not stop until its goal is reached. 
 
 An absolutism may be either a democracy, an oligarchy or a tyranny ; 
 it is not necessarily a State under the domination of a single ruler ; although 
 its gravitation is in that direction, and if uninterrupted in its course, 
 ultimately develops into such autocracy. Absolutisms are extremely 
 common in every day affairs. Take the ordinary private or quasi-public 
 corporation, ruled by a board of directors, elected by the stockholders, and 
 who may, under a democracy, stand as the counterpart of the administrative 
 and legislative authority of a State installed by the voters. A single 
 individual will often dominate the board. Usually he expresses himself 
 through a group or majority of the members, who are committed to his rule, 
 
 10 
 
in whose acts the minority acquiesces, being conscious of the uselessness of 
 resistance. We have just had an exhibition of the operation of this influence 
 in the testimony of President Mellen of the New Haven Railroad Company, 
 who narrated how the directors of that board were controlled in its affairs 
 by Mr. J. P. Morgan, notwithstanding Mr. Mellen himself was the nominal 
 head of the corporation. Wherever MacGrogan sits, that's the head of 
 the table, " is a principle present or tending in all associations of men. The 
 strongest rule. Not only do they control in action, but their exertions are 
 equally directed to holding themselves in place ; it is only when the excesses 
 of MacGrogan produces revolt among the stockholders that he becomes 
 dislodged; for an indifferent stockholding proletariat, content to let things 
 alone so long as prosperity abides, will like all democracies, vote favorably 
 to the dominant rule upon the presentation to it, by such authority, of 
 favorable statements. 
 
 As to what time the absolutism shall supervene in government, depends 
 upon the rise of the strong man, who, when he arrives, quickly threads 
 together the ravelled edges of authority and concentrates all power in his 
 single self. The means by which this is done is often war, civil or foreign. 
 Though it may transpire by ordinary mutations and silent processes as is 
 now proceeding in this country. Rome was a democracy when Caesar died, 
 but it was nevertheless an absolutism, for the head of the army had come to 
 embody in his person all offices; and the term General, a mere designation 
 of military rank and office, in its Latinized form of Imperator, came to be 
 the title of the emperor. The same phenomenon occurred in England in 
 the time of Cromwell and in France during the period of Napoleon. In 
 both countries democracy existed but passed into imperial absolutism, after 
 having endured a brief season as a democratic absolutism. For while the 
 Lord Protector was never crowned, any more than Julius Caesar was ever 
 crowned, yet he was in all respects as complete an autocrat as was either 
 Caesar or Napoleon. 
 
 The nation founded by our fathers of the Constitution was a Common- 
 wealth. Today it stands depraved as a democracy, its tendency driving 
 hard and fast into imperialistic autocracy.* There may be an interval of 
 some decades before the coronation of an Emperor at Washington, and 
 while he may never w r ear any other title than President, his tenure being 
 hereditary or for life, yet the constant drawing to the State out of the 
 hands of the citizen such remaining powers as he possesses, which is now 
 going on everywhere in the country, is rapidly effacing all the individual- 
 istic qualities of the form and character of government which was estab- 
 lished by its founders. There is, indeed, no more explicit truth than that 
 contained in the maxim : Vigilance is the price of liberty. The Common- 
 wealth, the most just and perfect form of government that can be established 
 among men, under which the largest possible zone of liberty is vouchsafed 
 to the citizen, and which alone is consonant with the very highest develop- 
 
 *See my pamphlet "Our National Tendency and Its Goal." 
 
 11 
 
ment of civilization this order of government cannot long endure without 
 the eyes of the citizen being constantly and understandingly fixed upon it, 
 and his energies placed to guard and defend it in its every aspect. The 
 Commonwealth which the makers of the constitution ordained was by no 
 means perfect ; yet that constitution was sufficiently broad in its foundations 
 resting upon human freedom, to have sustained any structure of liberty 
 which might have been reared upon it; the principles of liberty of man 
 were there; they needed only to have been carried out, expressed in legisla- 
 tion, interpretation, and so administered, to have evolved on this continent, 
 in this day and time, the most perfect government, and the highest human 
 happiness, that can exist upon earth. 
 
 No longer a Commonwealth, the avenue which the existing democracy 
 is taking, in proceeding toward monarchy, is Socialism. This latter in its 
 purity is stated by its leading exponents to be : 
 
 "A movement primarily consisting of members of the wealth-producing 
 class, which seeks to control all the powers of the State, and to bring about 
 the collective ownership and control of the principal means of production 
 and exchange. ' ' : 
 
 Another author states its purpose as being "to transform the State 
 into an agency for the democratic administration of socialized industry." 
 In other words, it means State ownership and operation of nearly all 
 industry nearly everyone being in the employ of the State, which is the 
 creator and giver of practically all jobs. We are told by the writers on 
 Socialism that there would, under such regime, exist entirely free action 
 on part of the individual to compete with the State, and the authors from 
 whom I quote cite an illustration of this idea.t There is no doubt that if 
 free competition with the State were left to the individual the State would 
 soon be driven out of industry,! for industrial organization conducted by 
 
 *Spargo and Arner, "Elements of Socialism," page 5. 
 
 tLet us suppose, then, that the shoemaking industry has been socialized and is now 
 carried on in State-owned factories. The citizens as a whole are satisfied with the 
 results. The shoes are good; the workers are well paid; the consumers of shoes get 
 better value than would be possible under capitalist production. But A, who is a shoe- 
 maker, is a man of marked individuality. He hates his employment in the State factory, 
 where he is only a maker of parts of shoes. He wants to make shoes by hand in the old- 
 fashioned way, to put into each pair of shoes something of his own individuality. So long 
 as he can find no one who wants shoes made in that way, no one who is dissatisfied with 
 the factory product, he will be a dissatisfied man; his individuality will be repressed, not 
 by the State, as such, but by the general indifference of society to his point of view. In 
 this respect he will be no worse off than are all such workers in present society. But 
 suppose that B, who wears shoes but does not make them, dislikes the factory product, 
 and desires above all else to wear things made specially for him, things which express 
 the individuality of the makers and of himself. If under such circumstances A and B 
 can agree upon terms, there is no reason why A should not make shoes for B. There is 
 no exploitation. Such competition with the State on the part of private producers might 
 well be encouraged rather than discouraged. If the private production made headway 
 faster than the State production, despite the enormous advantages enjoyed by the State, 
 it would mean that its efficiency was greater. In that case, the State factory would have 
 to improve its methods or fail and be supplanted by the more successful private produc- 
 tion. Spargo and Arner, etc., p. 228. 
 
 Jin 1848 the French Provisional Government in fulfillment of its promise to provide 
 work for all who claimed it, established ateliers nationaux, or national workshops, which 
 was corning very close to the realization of the Socialistic dream. A great establishment 
 for the manufacture of clothing was set up in Paris. The Government provided the 
 buildings rent free, and furnished the working capital, charging no interest. It gave an 
 immediate order for 25,000 uniforms for the National Guard and promised further orders 
 so as to keep the plant in operation and agreed to pay the same price as private 
 contractors asked, eleven francs per uniform. Fifteen hundred men were put to work, 
 to whom the Government advanced two francs a day as "subsistence money" pending a 
 final division of the profits. When the accounts came to be squared it was found that 
 
 12 
 
the State can never compete on equal terms with that operated by private 
 enterprise; the rock upon which all State owned industries, attempted to 
 be run in antagonism to individual effort, fall to pieces is initiative and 
 efficiency. These elements the State concern does not and cannot possess 
 in as high degree as those privately run, for the reason that with the 
 former the continuance of the establishment does not depend upon the 
 production of a product that shall find a profitable market, and the spur 
 of competition in the market is removed. From the private plant, however, 
 competition is not removed but is constantly in energetic operation, driving 
 the firm to a higher and ever higher degree of economy and efficiency in 
 order to hold its place in the market. 
 
 There is no doubt, however, that if Socialism became the policy of the 
 nation very short shift would soon be made of concerns competing with the 
 government. The people of the nation, then committed to the idea of 
 Socialism, would quickly regard as public enemies, as common pirates, 
 those individual concerns which were underselling the State shops in the 
 market, and so causing the latter to default in their running expenses, 
 which the people would have to make up through increase of taxes, if the 
 entire structure of Socialism was not to go into the dust. We can well 
 imagine the argument which would be put forth in that day in such a case : 
 "What can be the difference between people paying more for their goods 
 to the people's factories than the sweatshops charge, and having to make 
 up out of their taxes the losses which by selling cheaper the latter bring 
 upon the national establishments ? " It would soon be found that in running 
 shoe factories and tailor shops the policy of the government would be the 
 
 instead of profits there was a loss and that the two francs a day paid to the workmen as 
 subsistence money worked out as the equivalent of sixteen francs for a uniform, instead 
 of eleven, the price by private contract; while the subsistence money, which was only 
 another term for wages, of two francs a day, was less than that which the journeyman 
 tailors earned in private employ. Summed up, this was the result of the experiment; the 
 Government paid five francs more for a uniform than if it had bought it in the open 
 market besides losing the amount invested in the plant and the interest on the money 
 advanced, while the working men received a lower wage than private employers paid. 
 A great many employers were ruined by the competition of the State and much distress 
 followed. 
 
 According to contemporary accounts the scheme failed because incentive was destroyed. 
 The scheme contemplated an equal division of the profits among the 1500 men employed, 
 but as each man was working not for himself, but for all the others, no man thought it 
 necessary to put forth his full energy, as the others would make up for his dishonesty, 
 and as every man conceived the same selfish idea, the daily output was reduced and the 
 cost of manufacturing necessarily increased. A. Maurice Low, North American Review, 
 February, 1913. 
 
 Contractors Best, Says Supervisor. When the proposed increase of the street repair 
 department's allowance for several months to come was under consideration by the Super- 
 visors' Street Committee yesterday, the increase being to enable the department to pave 
 certain streets before the exposition opens, Street Superintendent McCoy admitted that 
 he could not put down new asphalt pavement at the price for which contractors lately have 
 taken such work. Supervisor Thomas Jennings, who favored getting bids from contractors 
 for much of the work immediately required, instead of having it all done by McCoy's 
 department, said : "The city cannot do the work as economically as the contractors, 
 because it does not get as much service out of the men. They loaf and do as they please, 
 and when they are hauled up, the Board of Works and the Civil Service Commission give 
 them another chance. San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 4, 1914. 
 
 Commenting editorially on the above, the Chronicle says : That was a reckless remark 
 of Supervisor Jennings. Does he not remember that that was proved long ago by the 
 Chamber of Commerce, and that, as a result, the Chamber of Commerce was put on trial 
 and not the alleged loiterers? We see the political end of Supervisor Jennings. Another 
 reason for the extra cost is that the Board of Works, without any authority of law, makes 
 a present of $50,000 from the public treasury a year to the street employes by giving them 
 each week half a day's pay without asking any return. That is what Superintendent 
 McCoy says he does, and it must be so. Why the Board of Works authorizes this gift of 
 the people's money is evident enough. It is good politics. 
 
 13 
 
same as that it now employs in running the mails, viz. : It must arrest its 
 competitors and lock them up in jail. 
 
 We see, therefore, the ideal. This is offensive enough to millions of 
 our countrymen, nurtured at the breast of the constitution, imbibing there- 
 from its spirit of freedom and equal right. The notion of a government job 
 at doing something where they can fit in does not attract them. The idea 
 that they must exist upon the favor of some political boss, who holds his 
 particular job by standing securely in with the powers above him, does not 
 appeal to them. What they want is a condition where, if the job does not 
 suit them, they can quit and take another somewhere else, more favorably 
 circumstanced, and they want to see jobs in plenty, and wages good. That 
 is the natural condition, the state of things as they ought to be, and as they 
 will be when the errors of governmental policy, with the harmful laws 
 which I am pointing out in these pamphlets, are removed. 
 
 The restful elysium which the Socialists conceive of everyone having 
 a government job for life with easy work and short hours on good pay, with 
 pensions and perquisites at the end, is very different from the manner in 
 which such job would materialize under the government which they seek 
 to install. For while they talk of "democratic administration," meaning, 
 without doubt, the administration of a Commonwealth, yet this idea is in 
 human experience completely at variance with the quality of an autocracy. 
 No highly centralized State, which the Socialists' edifice essentially is, 
 could long exist, or exist at all, without forming of itself a monarchy, 
 whether the monarch were crowned or not. Indeed, the very process of 
 drawing to a head in the evolution of the Socialist structure, with the 
 constitution overcome and law subverted to the will of a ruler, would create 
 and is now tending to create, a monarchical establishment. We do not 
 have to try to imagine what this condition would be, we have only to look 
 into the past and see what it actually was, when it existed. Our Socialist 
 authors properly quote de Lamennais as saying : "If we separate it from 
 the past, the present is silent as to the future." The most Socialistic 
 nation which has ever appeared on earth is today, and always has been, 
 Russia, albeit the Marxian Socialist propaganda has been consistently 
 opposed there by the government. The fact nevertheless is that the Russian 
 autocrat has only to expand his wings to embrace the ownership and 
 operation of all industrial property and all that is ideal in Socialism would 
 be o'btained. The Czar, as rapidly as he can, is now doing this very thing.* 
 
 *A St. Petersburg press letter states that the Czar of all the Russians and his advisers 
 feel that there is danger to autocratic power in the prosperity of an independent producing 
 and trading class, and that the only safe course is to use the power already possessed to 
 get possession of everything else in the empire. 
 
 The Russian Government already controls all the means of communication, most of 
 the ready money in the country, dominates the banking system, has a monopoly of the 
 liquor trade, owns about one-sixth of the land area of the empire and virtually controls 
 the larger private industries as the greatly preponderating purchaser. This, however, is 
 not enough. The autocracy is alarmed at the financial independence of the political 
 subdivisions and feels that it is essential to its safety that control of local finances be 
 centralized, and that the entire land area pass into the possession of the State. Russia 
 is the richest "state" in Europe and its people the poorest. A Russian economist estimates 
 that the average annual income of the peasantry, who constitute four-fifths of the 
 population, is not over $156 per annum. As a result of the suppression of private enter- 
 
 14 
 
Industrialism has come to be the leading influence of the nation. Autocracy 
 has always laid hands upon and assimilated whatever was the most cogent 
 force, besides itself, within the realm. From the beginning it has assembled 
 and directed, through militarism, the spirit of combat ; for years its chiefest 
 ally was religion; today it is industrialism. Nothing is plainer than that 
 such autocracies as Germany, Austria, even France, with its nominal repub- 
 licanism, are rapidly becoming monarchical socialisms. In Germany the 
 government, in addition to owning the public utilities, is acquiring the 
 stock control of every large corporation in the country.* It is indeed now 
 largely Socialistic, yet in no sense is the condition of the laboring man 
 better in that country than it is elsewhere in Europe, and for reasons which 
 I shall herein later discuss. Up until 1853 Russia's laboring people were 
 the direct charges of the State, which was burdened with their maintenance, 
 whose duty it was to find them jobs and who had to support them when 
 they were out of employment. There was an absolute power at the top, 
 and there was a numberless multitude at the bottom who had no care for 
 the morrow, because the State would supply their needs. I can remember 
 when I was a boy my father telling me of taking his ship into a port in the 
 Baltic, and of the vessel unloading there. ' ' Our stevedores, ' ' he said, ' ' were 
 furnished by the government. They worked during daylight ; that is, from 
 sunrise to dark. They received no wages, but the government supported 
 them. At noon an officer would come around and give each man a large 
 piece of black bread; this he would eat, with a little grease taken from 
 our cook's slush barrel, or anything else he could find." 
 
 The movement toward Socialism has rapidly increased in the United 
 States during the last two decades. In 1892 the Socialist party vote was 
 21,164; in 1896, 36,274; in 1900, 127,553; in 1904, 433,542; in 1908, 
 434,618 ; in 1910, 607,674. It was estimated that the election of 1912 would 
 show the Socialist vote 2,000,000 out of the approximate total vote 
 15,000,000, f but the vote was in fact 927,367. Mr. Debs, the Socialist 
 candidate, declared that much of his vote was included in the returns of 
 Mr. Roosevelt, aggregating 4,123,206; and there are many reasons for 
 believing this statement to be true. 
 
 prise, land and other values are the lowest in Europe and the national income per capita 
 the smallest. 
 
 Russia is nearer to socialism than any other country in the world. The fact that it is 
 an autocracy should rather favor whatever increase of prosperity is possible under a 
 Socialistic system, for it is much more to the interest of an hereditary autocrat that his 
 people be prosperous than to a more or less changeable bureaucracy. 
 
 It is, of course, true that the Russian people do not like economic slavery and that 
 such of them as have education desire to escape from it through political action, which 
 results in sternly repressive and cruel action directed against the educated classes. 
 Those, however, constitute but a small minority of the people. The masses are unedu- 
 cated, superstitious beyond measure, accustomed to submission, and would be content if 
 they enjoyed reasonable prosperity. This, we may be sure, the autocrat desires for them 
 and endeavors to secure according to his lights. (San Francisco Chronicle, April 12, 1914.) 
 *Germany's Monarchical Socialism, by Elmer Roberts. 
 
 Dusseldorf, a city of 400,000, located on the Rhine, runs an amusement hall that 
 makes a handsome profit on the sale of wine. It owns and operates the slaughter-house 
 and a big public market. It does its own banking and loans money at low interest rates 
 to citizens to build homes for their own occupancy. It makes and sells gas and electricity. 
 It owns and operates all the street railway lines in the city, and also has a controlling 
 share in the stock of the interurban lines of the district. Boston Globe. 
 
 tThe actual figures were 15,033,885. See "Our Conflict with Socialism," American 
 Liberty and Property Association, New York. 
 
 15 
 
It would be a great mistake to conclude that the entire Socialist 
 strength of the country was represented in the Socialist vote for Mr. Debs. 
 The Socialist movement of the United States comprises those persons who 
 think Socialism or any of its doctrines. Any one who favors a proposal to 
 take powers from the individual and place them in the hands of the State, 
 Js a Socialist, and is contributing of his strength to bring into existence the 
 Socialistic State. Our seats of learning, the universities, particularly the 
 chairs of political economy of the universities, reek with Socialists and 
 Socialism.* Many of the occupants of these chairs frankly admit their 
 adherence to this polity ; others, however, would deny, if accused, that they 
 are Socialists, though few would not admit sympathy with Socialism. When 
 they are asked, as Dr. Scott Nearing, professor of economics in the Univer- 
 sity of Pennsylvania, was asked the other day by the Chairman of the 
 United States Commission on Industrial Eelations, "What, in your mind, 
 is the real cause of the industrial unrest?" there is given a Socialist reply. 
 Dr. Nearing answered : 
 
 "The fundamental cause is our lack of adjustment in our property 
 relations. Now if we were all in a community and all have work and no one 
 of us was getting more than 50 cents a day, there would be no particular 
 unrest. But if we all are in a community and all have work and all get 
 50 cents a day except one man and he is getting $5.00, the rest of us are 
 going to wonder why and ask about it. The most important thing and I 
 start my economics on this proposition is that every man is entitled to 
 what he earns and no more and no less. The corollary following upon that 
 fundamental principle is that no man is entitled to anything which he does 
 not earn. I define earn, as rendering a service. I earn that for which I 
 render a personal service. I earn if I do anything for which society is 
 willing to pay; for a service rendered in any form which society will accept. 
 If society wants to go to the movies, the actor earns that which he renders. 
 If I am a poet and society will not accept my poems, I do not earn it. That 
 is the fundamental principle of economics, the relation between earnings, of 
 what the man gives, what he gets and the effort that he expends. All other 
 forms of income for which one does not render personal service, namely, 
 rent, interest and profits, are inethical and anti-social." 
 
 There would be no difficulty in anyone declaring that these doctrines 
 square with Socialism in every aspect. The Professor's views respecting 
 service, the alleged inequitableness of receiving returns for use of property, 
 his ideas about "rent, interest and profits" the special antipathies of the 
 Socialists, the abolition of which is utterly necessary to their scheme of the 
 centralized State all stamp Dr. Nearing as being a full type Socialist. 
 And when he is asked by Chairman Harris Weinstock: 
 
 "If this situation goes on as it is now going, what forecast would you 
 make for the condition of the worker 30 or 40 years hence ? ' '- 
 to that question he has no better answer to make than : 
 
 ' ' You mean, if he stands for it ? " 
 
 Revolution, chaos, industrial reign of terror, culminating in a reor- 
 
 *Note the discussion as to the socialism of Prof. Farnam of the Chair of Political 
 Economy at Yale University in my pamphlet "Japan's Message to America, a Reply," 
 also p. 28 herein. 
 
 16 
 
ganized government "bought at the price of peace" in which the man has 
 next to no rights, but the State is all, this is the fate which in the minds 
 of these savants overhangs the country. So feeling, so believing, they can 
 look with complacency on the scenes that transpired in Colorado last month, 
 and which have been going on almost continuously over the country for 
 years, in which the issue between the coal mine owners and the union was 
 the closed shop, with the grim consciousness that these things are inevitable ; 
 that there is no way to prevent them; that their political economy supplies 
 no remedy, since they mark the processes by which the normal evolution of 
 industry, as civilization rises, proceeds to draw the nation into a different 
 organization from what it now is, being one in which, by some means they 
 think may be possible, but which they do not understand, the worker may 
 be given a much larger share of the product than he now receives.* There- 
 fore, our economic professors would advise the property owners and 
 operators and those laborers who refuse to work under the yoke of the 
 union (in the Colorado instance comprising ninety per cent of the total 
 number) that they should yield to the demand of ten per cent of the 
 unionists, and accept the administration which they seek to impose. It is 
 not surprising, therefore, that we find the head of the Department of Polit- 
 ical Economy in Columbia University, Professor Edwin R. A. Seligman,f 
 opposing those who own and operate the mines, the free workmen and the 
 regularly constituted authorities of the State of Colorado,x and advocating 
 acquiescence in the demands of the union. Professor Seligman, we are 
 told, ft "insists that Mr. Rockefeller misunderstands the issue. Recognition 
 of the union means merely the right of 'collective bargaining' on part of 
 the miners as well as mine owners recognition, J that is, of the right of the 
 men to treat with their employers through their chosen officials. 'Why,' he 
 asks, 'should the Colorado operators find it impossible to achieve what has 
 actually been accomplished by their colleagues in nearly every other State 
 in the Union ? And why should so much emphasis be put on the sacredness 
 of a 'principle' which has been abandoned almost everywhere else in the 
 ooal fields of England and of the United States, and the disappearance of 
 which is leading toward industrial peace and social progress ? ' ' 
 
 It is interesting information that the principle of free contract for 
 services has been "abandoned almost everywhere else in the coal fields of 
 
 *See the address of Prof. J. H. Gray, head of the Economics Department of the 
 University of Minnesota, and President of the Economic Association of the United States, 
 delivered before the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco, July 25th, 1914, in which he 
 said: "There can be no freedom of contract between persons of high inequality." He 
 predicted that "labor" would not be satisfied until it had a share in the direction of 
 industry, and some financial stake in industrial undertakings over and above that of a 
 stated wage. See San Francisco newspaper reports of July 26th, 1914. 
 
 tNote page 29 herein. 
 
 xSee an interesting and manifestly truthful article upon this difficulty by Elias M. 
 Ammons, Governor of Colorado, in North American Review, July, 1914. 
 
 ttCurrent Opinion, June, 1914, p. 414. 
 
 JThere is some question as to the meaning of the demand of the Union, an attempt 
 being made to create a distinction between "recognition" and the closed shop. "Recogni- 
 tion," however, would concede the right of the union to assert the conditions under which 
 the union men would work, and it is the principle of the union that its men do not work 
 with non-union men. Hence "recognition" of the union would inevitably culminate in 
 demand that the non-unionists be supplanted by union workmen, whether. such demand 
 were specifically embodied in the demand for "recognition" or not. 
 
 17 
 
the United States and England," but it is more interesting when we are 
 told that this sort of thing is "leading toward industrial peace and social 
 progress. ' ' The vast nation-wide coal miners and traffic strikes of England 
 which brought business in that country to a standstill during the past 
 eighteen months, caused suffering untold to the poor, and vast losses to the 
 well-to-do and to the nation, are too recent to call for any recital here ; but 
 it is important that we may get some notion of what the doctrine that 
 Prof. Seligman advocates may be shaping for the future in England, in 
 order that we may comprehend the kind of "industrial peace and social 
 progress" which the Professor tells us it is "leading toward." We find a 
 quite stimulating forecast of it in an article dated London, December 20th, 
 1913, and printed in the issue of the following day of the San Francisco 
 Chronicle. It reads: 
 
 The Standard says that the biggest trade unions in the country are 
 concentrating their forces for a great fight with capital. The movement is 
 regarded as the reply to the employers' $250,000,000 fund and is declared 
 by H. Gosling to be the inevitable answer thereto. Railway men have a 
 programme for an eight-hour day and a minimum wage, the dockers are 
 formulating a set of demands, and the miners are preparing new proposals. 
 The district agreements of the miners expire in 1915, and that year is 
 regarded as the time of the threatened labor Armageddon. Meanwhile the 
 great forces on both sides are being steadily marshalled. 
 
 This new and ominous move is inaugurated by the decision of the 
 Miners' Federation to approach the other big trade unions "with the view 
 to co-operate action in support of each other's demands." "The latest 
 development," said a member of the United Kingdom Employers' Defense 
 Union, "brings the labor movement to the borderland of syndicalism. 
 Indeed, one of the speakers at the Scarborough conference of the Miners ' 
 Federation said he would stand for 'syndicalism, anarchism, even nihilism' 
 in connection with the Dublin lockout. The proposed amalgamation for the 
 purposes of a national strike in 1915 must be closely watched by employers 
 if their interests and industries are to be preserved. The Employers' 
 Defense Union will have formulated their plans in a few days for guarding 
 against the unjustifiable attacks on the various industrial concerns through- 
 out the country. 
 
 ' ' It has been justly appreciated that the new combination of labor will 
 eventually represent over 5,000,000 trade unionists. The Miners' Federa- 
 tion itself is the most powerful branch at present, with a total of about 
 750,000 members. Railway men total more than 600,000 and the latest 
 reports are that non-unionists join the union at the rate of 3000 per week. 
 The day of unorganized employers is past. Organization of the leaders of 
 industry throughout the kingdom mines, railways, shipping, engineering, 
 cotton, etc. are at last taking place. 
 
 "There has been the best proof already given that eventually the sum 
 of $250,000,000 will be subscribed as a working fund by the guarantors. 
 It is a matter of life or death to manufacturers competing with foreign 
 countries. In many cases higher wages cannot be given if the businesses 
 are to be run on a profitable basis, or even run at all. Run at a loss, they 
 do not run long, and when the works are closed the ranks of the unemployed 
 are increased, and it is hopeless for trade unions to contribute out-of-work 
 wages long. 
 
 18 
 
"No action will be taken by the Defense Union on behalf of an 
 employer unless the executive is satisfied that he is treating his men fairly 
 and paying them the ordinary rate of wages. Employes would go direct to 
 the employers when they considered they had grievances. There would 
 thus be eliminated the baneful results of the work of paid agitators who 
 organize strikes for their own pockets. All this is, of course, against the 
 Socialist and syndicalist agitator, who makes it his business to create 
 industrial discord. 
 
 "The justification of the employers in forming the Defense Union is 
 that they are bound to unite to protect themselves against the ever- 
 recurring menaces of syndicalism,* in connection with which the announce- 
 ment of the miners' decision is the latest development. There is no use in 
 denying any longer that there is a strong syndicalist movement in this 
 country which must be checked at all costs. Revelations in connection with 
 the coal, the traffic and other big strikes, the inciting of soldiers to mutiny, 
 and other phases of advanced syndicalism can no longer be disregarded. 
 
 ' ' Syndicalism is anarchy pure and simple the holding up of the whole 
 community for what can be got out of it. As Sir Arthur Clay, one of the 
 promoters of the present employers' movement, aptly puts it, 'syndicalism 
 means the total destruction of the existing industrial organizations and the 
 transfer of all means of production from their present possessors, the wage 
 payers, to the wage receivers.' Imbued with this revolutionary purpose, 
 the power of the 5,000,000 trade union workers would be absolutely invinc- 
 ible were no deterrent force brought to bear against it. ' ' 
 
 Frank Hodges of South Wales, who proposed co-operation of trade 
 unions at the Miners' Federation in Scarborough, said it would largely 
 modify the future action of trade unionism and prepare the machinery for 
 dealing with capitalist organization on a more complete and scientific scale. 
 Railway men had their plans for a 30 shillings minimum and eight hours 
 day ; the dockers were formulating their programme, and in 1915 the miners' 
 district minimum agreements terminated. He suggested unified and simul- 
 taneous action one national strike instead of three, if demands could not 
 be won without it. If the transport workers had formed part of such 
 organization they would have been able to deal with the Dublin trouble in 
 a more effective way than by sending $5000 a week. Only scientific organi- 
 zation would beat the employers with their own weapons. 
 
 There is no nation in which labor unionism is in proportion to popu- 
 lation more highly developed than it is in England, in which it wields more 
 political power, where its doctrines are in more widespread practice or 
 where the effects of its operations are more abundantly and distinctly 
 manifest. Its Labor Party in 1910 polled 506,000 votes, with the radical 
 groups polling 123,000 more, making a total of 629,000 labor votes, and 
 holding forty seats in Parliament. t And from a survey of the industrial 
 field of England it is apparent that in the development of labor unionism, 
 
 "The syndicalist movement owes its origin to the entrance into and domination of the 
 French unions, or syndicate, by the anarchists. Syndicalism and anarchism both aim to 
 re-establish society through social revolution and the general strike, on the basis of free 
 groups of workmen controlling the production of the world. Both aim to destroy patriot- 
 ism in favor of international solidarity of workers to substitute the spirit of class for 
 the spirit of nationality. Through the fomentation of multiplied strikes, the increasing 
 of the number and size of strikes, and the sympathetic strike, is created the idea of the 
 social general strike, which will obtain for the working people all their demands without 
 the aid of political leaders. The American Year Book, 1912, p. 398. 
 
 tThe recent elections in France are reported to have returned 101 Socialist deputies, 
 representing 10,100,000 constituents. 
 
 19 
 
Socialism, labor unionism and anarchism coalesce, and take the form of 
 Syndicalism. This result is most natural. The tendency of laborism is to 
 unify, solidify, to enmass and become mobile; and in this shape it will 
 enforce its demands with the universal strike. As various unions have at 
 the same time demands against their employers, hence causes for strikes, 
 what is more natural than that they should link together their demands and 
 unite their strikes into one general endeavor. Socialism has divided society 
 into two classes, the labor class and the capitalist class, between which, by 
 the nature of their relative occupations, it asserts there is irreconcilable 
 conflict. The employment of the former by the latter is denned as * ' exploita- 
 tion" of the laborer by the capitalist. The war upon the capitalist is for 
 his extermination and nothing short of this will meet the Socialist program. 
 As all of these terms and tenets have been adopted by the labor unions in 
 Europe, there is a merging of all into a common Soicalistic mass, which 
 coincides with that of an army, and the simultaneous strike is analogous to 
 a general charge on the field of battle. It is plain to see our destiny in the 
 United States with our industrial movement proceeding upon these false 
 doctrines. The real and ultimate power in laborism is the latest which has 
 appeared, the Independent Workers of the World, the American name for 
 the Syndicalists. 
 
 Syndicalism first appeared in the United States in the "mass" organi- 
 zation of the Knights of Labor, and expressed itself in action in the Amer- 
 ican Railway Union, headed by Eugene V. Debs. This concern brought 
 about the Pullman strike at Chicago in 1894. The Western Federation of 
 Miners has been the most explicit exponent of its shade of the Socialist 
 doctrine, as expressed in its various mining strikes, commencing in the 
 Colorado strike in 1904, also that of recent date and others; likewise the 
 Idaho strike in which Orchard killed Governor Steunenberg of that State. 
 These strikes have always been attended with destructive violence, such as 
 the dynamiting of mills as well as armed warfare, and as such they have 
 differentiated from other strikes of the Industrial Workers, notably the 
 lumber and traffic strikes in the Northwest, in which the policy was strictly 
 non-combative.* 
 
 The laborites are at present divided into two wings, those who favor 
 trade autonomy as represented by the labor unions, and those who stand 
 for industrial union, the motive of the I. W. W. 's. At the head of the 
 Industrial Union group are William D. Haywood and John Mitchell ; the 
 leader of the trade autonomy group is Sampel Gompers. At the 1912 
 meeting of the American Federation of Labor, of which Mr. Gompers is 
 president, a representative vote of 5,929 stood in favor of adoption of 
 Industrial Unionism by the Federation, with 10,983 against. The same 
 principle manifested itself in the Socialist convention of that year and 
 polled one-third of the strength of that body, the influence of the doctrine 
 
 *See "Revolution Yawns," article by Agnes C. Laut, Technical World Magazine, 
 October, 1912. 
 
 20 
 
in the two conventions being about the same proportion to the total con- 
 stituency. That the plan of Industrial Union will attain the uppermost 
 hand, there is no doubt. The gap between 33 1/3 per cent and 51 per cent 
 is not large, and it will speedily close, with the syndicalists in ascendance. 
 The doctrinal differences between the several groups is negligible. The 
 influence which holds the elements apart is the conservatism of those who 
 are content with the present status of their union affairs, believing that 
 their unions can get for them whatever they want; these are chiefly con- 
 tained within the orders of the steam railway unions. Aside from this the 
 influence which keeps the several components of the labor world apart is 
 mere jealousy of leaderships. Even in the case of the railway unions, the 
 prevailing condition will not long obtain. The pressure of ever rising cost 
 of living behind the unions will continue to force periodic demands for 
 higher wages, and will either drive the railroads out of the hands of their 
 owners and into those of the government, thereby accomplishing thus much 
 of the Socialistic State program, or there will be strikes which will consoli- 
 date the other divisions of the industrial army, and we shall have in the 
 United States the same expression of the mass strike which is moving in 
 England. 
 
 It is a notion of the Socialist agitator that not only will the country 
 be converted into a Socialist State but that he will be landed high in the 
 councils of the made over nation. In this he is mistaken. There are few 
 men in the Socialist movement who would go far toward the zenith in that 
 firmament of politics in which they had to vie with all and sundry of the 
 most excellent of the country. The great geniuses in American life of this 
 day are not in politics. They are in invention and finance those fields in 
 which, until very recently, the largest rewards requited their efforts. When 
 the State was the most remunerative factor they were found in office; in 
 the days when religion was the dominating influence, they were in the 
 Church, and Eichelieu, Mazarin and the rest presented instances of the 
 most potential minds of the day, working in the region of greatest power. 
 Under Socialism, however, there would be present in the State the condition 
 which would draw to its exercise the highest talent that exists. Private 
 business being no longer profitable, they will turn to that locality where 
 profit and power abides, and they will enter upon the functions of the 
 State. This is coming now to be the case in those countries of Europe 
 where Socialism is strong. In Germany men of large finance and business 
 have taken hold of it and become its leaders, eclipsing and extinguishing 
 those minor entities who having borne the heat of the day expect rewards 
 with success, only to find to their chagrin themselves supplanted by 
 talented and distinguished strangers, who, having done nothing to help 
 build up the movement, take the exercise of the power from the hands of 
 its progenitors and long time servitors. In Belgium Ernest Solvey, a 
 wealthy manufacturer, has recently given a million dollars to the Socialist 
 cause, and the plaudits with which his donation was greeted by the Socialist 
 
 21 
 
press at once exonerated him from all odium which otherwise besmirched 
 him as a member of the hated capitalist class. 
 
 The same phenomenon is noted in the United States. Hitherto the 
 minor, or so-called mushroom parties, like the Greenback or the Farmers' 
 Alliance parties, after a period of rise and more or less nourishing growth, 
 have subsided and disappeared through the absorption by one or both of 
 the larger parties of the leading and practicable planks of their platforms. 
 When this has not been the case, as in the Prohibition party, such party 
 has persisted. It was to be expected, therefore, that notwithstanding the 
 adoption by both the Eepublican and Democratic party platforms of various 
 of the demands of the Socialist party, as limiting the labor of women, 
 workmen's compensation and others, there would arise yet another party 
 which would go even farther in the direction of Socialism than either the 
 Democratic or Eepublican party, and would seek to place itself in the way 
 of overcoming the Socialist party. This has occurred in the rise of the Pro- 
 gressive party. 
 
 It may be observed that while the Democratic and Republican party 
 both incorporated in their platforms certain planks of the Socialist struc- 
 ture, such accretions were merely additions to the respective edifices ; they 
 did not disturb the foundations of either party. After these specific adop- 
 tions, both the party of Jefferson and that of Lincoln remained parties of 
 the Constitution. But with the installation of the Progressive party there 
 came ino existence a new organization, planned like the Socialist party, to 
 overcome and eliminate the Constitution and substitute another rule, the 
 only other rule possible, viz., the more or less uncurbed will of the 
 sovereign.* 
 
 The distinctive character of the Progressive party was admirably eluci- 
 dated by Mr. Winston Churchill in a speech delivered in San Francisco on 
 April 12th, 1913, at a banquet at which were present practically all the large 
 figures of the Progressive movement in California, the twin State with 
 New York in its installation. Brief speeches were made by the party 
 leaders, but the address of the evening was by Mr. Churchill, whose name 
 was coupled with that of Governor Johnson as the latter 's running mate in 
 a future Progressive race for the Presidency. This speech of Mr. Churchill 
 is extremely important, as it shows explicitly the nature of the Progressive 
 sodality, from which w r e are able definitely to catalogue it as a Socialist, 
 and not a Constitutionalist party. And in this behalf it is apropos that we 
 regard the demands of the Socialist party as presented in its most recent 
 national platform. Aside from collective ownership, and "democratic 
 management," of all means of transportation, storage, and distributing 
 
 *The form of a deliberative body is usually preserved in a democracy when absolutism 
 supervenes, whether such absolutism be crowned or uncrowned. The Roman senate and 
 assembly were both preserved under the absolutisms of both Julius and Augustus Caesar. 
 "His obedient senate" was a figment, but nevertheless a component of the despotism of 
 Napoleon. The Congress of Diaz in Mexico and the legislatures of Governor Johnson in 
 California, are instances of democratic forms lingering in the presence of imperialistic 
 absorption and domination of the law-making power, a pehnomenon now widely manifest 
 in the United States, in which the case of California is by no means isolated. 
 
 99 
 
agencies, of all mineral deposits and forests; the "collective ownership of 
 land where practicable, where impracticable the appropriation and collec- 
 tion of all rentals held for speculation or exploitation," etc., it embodies 
 the initiative, referendum and recall; abolition of the Senate and of the 
 veto power of the President; abolition of "the power usurped from the 
 people by the Supreme Court of the United States to pass upon the consti- 
 tutionality of legislation enacted by Congress"; national laws to be repealed 
 only by act of Congress or referendum of the people, an amending process 
 of Congressional laws by a majority of voters in a majority of the States ; 
 an immediate reduction of the power of the Courts ; the abolition of all 
 Federal District and Circuit Courts; the election of all Judges for short 
 terms; a convention for revision of the Constitution of the United States. 
 
 The government is to be radically changed. The Senate must be abol- 
 ished. We are to go back to the unicameral system of the Republics of the 
 Italian middle ages. This single chamber is not to be held in check by 
 either the President with the veto, or the Supreme Court with the constitu- 
 tion. What this chamber does can only be reviewed by "the people,"* by 
 referendum or "a majority of the voters in a majority of the States." 
 The constitution in such case is a floating kidney; it may be anywhere, or 
 not at all; in either case it is practically nugatory, and the "revision" of 
 it, for which the Socialists' program calls, is really to get it out of the way. 
 Such a convention, however, would not be really necessary in order to 
 destroy the constitution. It would be effectively wiped out by eliminating 
 the power of the Supreme Court to determine the constitutionality of acts 
 of Congress. If there be no authority vested anywhere to determine whether 
 the laws infringe the constitution, then the constitution is effectually dead. 
 It is no longer a paramount instrument, for none may say it is paramount, 
 and it is no longer any restraint upon the law making power. The latter 
 becomes hence supreme, and Congress may proceed to make laws in contra- 
 vention of it without regard for its existence. The idea of a government 
 of limited powers at once disappears, for the powers of Congress are 
 unlimited, and it may legislate against the life, the liberties or the property 
 of the citizen, against the existence of the States or any of that scope of 
 powers vouchsafed to them, and there is none to say it nay. For if it shall 
 be asserted that there exists the referendum to the people which shall 
 supply the place of the discarded checks, let me answer that in a few years, 
 whatever fragment or resemblance of such procedure would remain after 
 having experienced the abuses, deceptions and subversions to which it 
 would be immediately subjected, would be repealed and abolished by this 
 same Congress, and who would stop its doing so ? 
 
 Bearing the foregoing in mind, we have before this aggregate of 
 California Progressivism the distinguished speaker of the evening, Mr. 
 Churchill, who upon being introduced by Governor Johnson, and deferring 
 
 *See page 50 herein. 
 
 23 
 
with fitting genuflections to the altar of the Chicago platform which he 
 avowed was the "second Declaration of Independence," said: 
 
 ' ' Of what was the declaration of 1776 an expression ? We immediately 
 answer, of the rights of man, and this is the kind of vague answer with 
 which we have hitherto been content. That declaration, and a little later 
 the French revolution, marked the culmination of the long struggle of the 
 common people of the oppressive governments of gone-by centuries against 
 the irresponsible tyranny of nobilities. But what is of vital importance 
 for us to realize is that the Declaration of Independence was the embodi- 
 ment of what at that time was a new philosophy in government, and of one 
 which was hated and feared by the ruling classes. It was the philosophy 
 worked out by Rousseau and the 'social agitators' of that day, and which 
 was so ardently taken up by our patriots, such as Benjamin Franklin and 
 Thomas Jefferson. It was called the theory of the natural rights of man. 
 
 "Now, since this philosophy was the salvation of a liberty-loving people 
 in the eighteenth century, and since it has, curiously enough, become the 
 stumbling block of a liberty-loving people in the twentieth century, it is 
 of vital moment for us to understand it; and particularly because it is at 
 the root of our common law and of the constitutional system under which 
 we are still living. 
 
 "Its idea is, briefly, that the welfare of the State is secondary to that 
 of the individual citizen. And it was evolved in this way: Under aristo- 
 cratic governments, the common man had no legal rights whatever that 
 the ruling classes would recognize, and when the struggle for these rights 
 began it was necessary for the philosophers to rest them on some ground 
 which the aristocrats could not deny. So they rested them in nature itself. 
 They declared that the very act of being born into the world gave every 
 man certain inalienable rights which no aristocratic government could take 
 away such as life, liberty, the right to hold property and to make con- 
 tracts, and another r,ight which was somewhat guardedly designated as 
 'the pursuit of happiness.' These were the rights which, by reason of his 
 birthright, a man could not cede to his government. 
 
 "The trouble with that philosophy, we perceive now, lay in a miscon- 
 ception of the State, and was natural enough in a period when modern 
 science was still in its infancy. The individual, because he believed that 
 he was born beyond the jurisdiction of society, as it were, kindly consented 
 on certain well-defined terms to become a part of society. The individual 
 is therefore the primary unit, the State the secondary. The State is a 
 necessary evil, and there should be as little government as possible. It was 
 as much as to say that a man might live, if he wishes, entirely outside of 
 society. And he clung to his 'inalienable rights,' no matter how much this 
 clinging might interfere with the welfare of society in general. That 
 society should gradually reach a condition in which these 'rights' of the 
 individual would tend to make life unbearable for the majority, was, of 
 course, in that day not foreseen. This alone could reveal the flaws in such 
 a philosophy. 
 
 "It was not until the nineteenth century that Darwin came forward 
 with the scientific theory of evolution one which has had the profoundest 
 effects upon philosophy. Not only the prevailing philosophy of today but 
 the common sense of our age is beginning to see that society itself has 
 grown by a process of evolution, and that the individual develops through 
 society. That whatever we are, whatever value we have in the world, that 
 value is actually created by society. And after all can we help living 
 together, even if we desire not to do so ? We are at length discovering for 
 
 24 
 
ourselves the great Christian truth, which the naturalistic philosophy of 
 the eighteenth century denied, that we grow, paradoxically, through service 
 to our fellow men. 
 
 "Thus, according to our present-day enlightenment, society and not 
 man is the primary unit. And our constructive political efforts today are 
 all on that principle. And what happens when we try to make laws which 
 will tend to incorporate that principle into government? We come up 
 against our constitution, against our common law itself, as against stone 
 walls, for the simple reason that that constitution and that common law 
 are the hardened expressions of a philosophy which has served its usefulness 
 in the world, and has now become an obstruction. For a century lawyers 
 of this school have ruled the United States, and these have absorbed this 
 philosophy as a child absorbs its mother's milk." 
 
 Here we have the doctrine in a nutshell ; the principle of individual 
 liberty is all wrong. The State is not subservient to the citizen, it is his 
 master. It is not an instrument which he has formed to use the collective 
 force of his fellows in the preservation of his rights, for he has no rights, 
 he has only privileges ; his rights are foregone into the body of society, and 
 he will do what the State permits him to do, and that only. Hence, a 
 written constitution is completely out of the question, and it must be 
 swept aside. No instrument that purports to define human rights has any 
 place in a statesmanship which denies the existence of any human rights 
 at all, which holds that man is not a citizen but a subject. So long as such 
 constitution exists it is "a stone wall" against the application of such 
 philosophy, notwithstanding the fact that its principles are being eaten 
 into, and its masonry carted off by judges and legislators who, infused 
 with the doctrines of Mr. Churchill, have, as opportunity offered, been 
 devoting their energies to shoveling it away. Mr. Churchill continues : 
 
 "The fact that the courts have not always been consistent in their 
 decisions, that the bias of individual judges or the force of public sentiment 
 has resulted in opinions at variance with the eighteenth century spirit of 
 the Constitution, are evidences of that conflict which is raging in the soul of 
 our civilization. And the further fact that there has been evinced on the 
 part of our courts a tendency to use the power of the State to protect minors 
 and women from exploitation does not help matters greatly so long as the 
 old philosophy remains entrenched. A nation, like a man, may be at war 
 with itself, and that is precisely our condition today. 
 
 ' ' What phenomenon has occurred in the world to convert the philosophy 
 of the natural rights of man from a blessing to a menace and even a curse to 
 society? The question may best be answered, I think, by a figure. Our 
 ancestors built up a fortress of liberty, and faced its walls in a certain 
 direction in the direction in short of those hostile forces which threatened 
 it at that time, the serried ranks of a political aristocrary of privilege. Mark 
 the word political. For the danger was from those, mind you, who used the 
 power of government to oppress. And behold, scarcely have the walls been 
 standing a hundred years, and the power against which they were erected 
 has faded into a phantom. We hear occasionally from patriotic capitalists 
 the cry of "Dictator!" but no sensible person is really alarmed on that 
 score. Little by little government and politics have grown more and more 
 democratic, until we were lulled into a fancied security ; we flattered our- 
 selves that all the enemies of liberty were dead. And all the while stealthily 
 
 25 
 
and wholly unperceived, another and new army has been gathering against 
 liberty and in a direction from which we never dreamed any danger would 
 arise. Behind the very bulwarks which our ancestors built up. And, as it 
 has gained force, this new army has pressed in on us, and pressed in until 
 the very bulwarks have become the walls of our prison, hemming us in on 
 the only side where now liberty is possible, 
 
 ' ' This new army is the army of industrial and economic privilege. And 
 the question is today what bulwark shall we have to erect against them ? 
 Nay, we shall have first to tear the old one down, for they are actually 
 using this against us to their own advantage. That which was a bulwark of 
 liberty has suddenly and amazingly become the very fortress of privilege 
 itself, and of a new kind of privilege ! 
 
 ' ' Of what philosophy shall we make the bricks of our new ramparts ? 
 
 "At the time when our constitution was_ written, we see, the political 
 order was an aristocratic one, and the economic order the humble and 
 democratic one. And it was a thing never dreamed of in the philosophy of 
 that day that modest shopkeepers and manufacturers would ever rise to 
 form an arrogant and menacing class. What had liberty to fear from 
 them? All they asked of the political aristocrats was to be 'let alone' to 
 pursue their livelihood in peace. To be let alone. That cry ironically 
 enough, has become the watchword of the modern industrial oligarchy 
 today. The eighteenth century was indeed the day of democracy in trade, 
 of an easy transition from employe to employer, of opportunities relatively 
 equal and of a widely distributed wealth. But today, how different. The 
 small producer is being ruthlessly crushed by the sheer economic power of 
 the trusts, society is settling into economic layers, the opportunity to the 
 poor man is growing less and less, and enormous wealth is concentrated 
 into a few hands. 
 
 "Is it any wonder then that we hear today these gentlemen of the 
 corporations and their lawyers appealing to the "sacredness of the con- 
 stitution'? Is it any wonder that the legal lights in the Republican party 
 stick to the outworn philosophy in the common law? Let me quote from 
 Professor Overstreet : l Today for the first time the common law finds 
 itself arrayed against the people ... It exhibits too great a respect 
 for the individual and for the intrenched position in which our legal and 
 political history has put him, and too little respect for the needs of society 
 when they come in conflict with the individual, to be in touch with the 
 present age.' 
 
 "I need, in such an audience as this, only to refer to the numerous 
 cases we all know about of laws for the social welfare, health and safety 
 demanded by the people, passed at length by reluctant Legislatures against 
 the will of corporations, and reversed cheerfully by members of the bench 
 because they are in opposition to the dead philosophy in our common law 
 and constitution. Our age presents no greater mockery than this. A 
 law may be passed, for example restricting the hours of labor for women 
 who are to become mothers of the race. It is nullified by a court on the 
 ground that it is interfering with the right of private contract, and that 
 a woman's labor is her property to do as she chooses with, even if she be 
 killed in the performance. To whose benefit does such a decision as that 
 redound? To the benefit of the woman? Or to the benefit of the manu- 
 facturer who turns on the economic pressure? The highest court in New 
 York reverses, because it is taking away property without due process of 
 law, an employer's liability and workman's compensation act which is 
 clearly in the interests of humanity. And the same thing happens to a 
 
 '26 
 
law prohibiting the manufacture of cigars in the home, although the home 
 may be reeking with filthy diseases. 
 
 "So long as that philosophy is in our Constitution and common law, 
 we must expect such decisions. It is the State, we see now, and the State 
 against which the constitutional suspicions are still directed, which is the 
 friend of the oppressed." 
 
 "L'etat, C'est Moi!" said the French king, slapping his chest with 
 a hearty blow, as we may well imagine The State ? I AM THE STATE! 
 and here is the fosse into which the whole battalion of these doughty 
 Quixotes with their poised lances of ancient philosophy* is plunged and 
 submerged, in their assault upon the "wall" of the Constitution of which 
 Mr. Churchill complains they do not discriminate between the State and 
 the Rulers of the State! 
 
 It is characteristic of the use of power over the wills of others to 
 differentiate those who administer the power from those who are subject 
 to it. Only in relations that are reciprocal and interdependent, does the 
 exercise of authority coordinate with feelings of fraternity and mutual 
 desire for benefit. There is no station or province in life that so quickly 
 segregates men into classes as the authority of political rule. China is not 
 the only State in which the ruling class, now as of old, were and are so 
 far lifted from the body of the people, that they even speak another 
 tongue the mandarin dialect. The person of the governmental head 
 becomes sacred. He takes his powers not from the people, but from God, 
 to Whom only he is accountable, and he traces his ancestry into the lares 
 and penates of divinity. Few are admitted to behold him, and these 
 ordinarily may not look upon his face, but must prostrate themselves at 
 his feet. His name must be treated with reverence; men may violate the 
 fourth commandment, and scoff at Heaven, but if they speak lightly of 
 the Czar they are jailed for lese-majeste. It is true that in this modern 
 period not all absolute governments hedge their kings with such seclusion. 
 In this day of ferment amongst the masses, the ruling entity is no longer 
 swathed in mystery, but he is haloed with the spectacular. The names 
 which used to be spoken in whispers with bared and bowed heads, now 
 flaunt in the newspapers under pictures of His Majesty laced with tinsel 
 and capped in fur, seated in an open barouche in line of a great procession. 
 The imagination of the multitude is reached and affected in the opposite 
 way to what it once was, and, as said Napoleon, "imagination rules the 
 world!" 
 
 There is no more profound wisdom expressed anywhere in the scheme 
 of the Commonwealth, than that of its provisions aimed at preventing the 
 individuals who are called upon to rule, concreting into a class. The 
 
 *The republics of Greece and Rome had no conception of individual liberty. All polit- 
 ical ideas necessarily concern man as a social animal, as a member of society a member 
 of the State. The ancient republics put the State first and regarded the individual only 
 as a member of the State. They had in view the public rights of the State in which all 
 its members shared, and the rights of the members as parts of the whole; but they did 
 not think of individuals as having rights independent of the State, or against the State. 
 Elihu Root: Experiments in Government and Essentials of the Constitution, N. A. 
 Review, August, 1913. 
 
 27 
 
tendency to crystallize is constantly broken by expiration of the terms of 
 elective office. The rulers are drawn from the body of the people, invested 
 with powers, and they are at definite, predetermined periods returned 
 to the body of the people, stripped of their powers, and made to feel that 
 they are again of the sea of the commonality. Only by written consti- 
 tutions can this be effected ; and when we strike down government founded 
 on a written document, and wipe out written law, be it code or common, 
 we have no longer government by law, but we have government by men, 
 and if there be any lesson in the school of history which we are taught, 
 if we be longer open to its teaching, it is that governments are oppressive 
 and outrageous toward their peoples, just in degree as they are ruled by 
 men and not by law. 
 
 Mr. Churchill acknowledges his indebtedness for the views he espouses 
 to Professor Harry Overstreet, erstwhile of the Chair of Philosophy in 
 the University of California. Again the baleful influence of the College 
 professor. It will, I think, be information to the country that Socialism 
 has penetrated the heart of our educational system, and when the defender 
 of the Constitution looks around him for his foes, he finds the most 
 formidable of their barricades built of the furniture of our Universities. 
 Professor Patten* tells us that: 
 
 "It would be nearer right to say that in 1912 all thinkers are Socialistic. 
 Either as a matter of principle, or by some type of dualism, they admit 
 it as an element in their thought or as a mode of expressing their feelings. 
 The important book in bringing about this change is Professor Seligman's 
 'Economic Interpretation of History.' Without. exaggeration it can be said 
 that this is the bible of American Socialism. Instead of going to the 
 writings of Marx, Socialists refer to it as an authority of fundamental 
 topics. This of itself would be a matter of importance, but its real influ- 
 ence lies in the fact that it enabled a large group of American thinkers to 
 accept Socialism, and to express their ideas in its terms, "t 
 
 There is no doubt that Professor Patten is correct, and in proof 
 thereof we may turn almost anywhere amongst the latest books that are 
 appearing upon politics and sociology, written by men who hold reputa- 
 tions for learning, wisdom and ability. Take, for instance the recent book 
 by Brooks Adams a noted lawyer and publicist of the east, and remark 
 his disparagement and apparent despair of the Constitution: 
 
 ' ' In the United States we have carried bills of right and Constitutional 
 limitations to an extreme, and yet I suppose that few care to maintain that 
 during the nineteenth century life and property were safer in America or 
 crime better dealt with than in England, France or Germany. The con- 
 trary, indeed, I take to be the truth, and I think one chief cause of this 
 imperfection in the administration of justice will be found to have been 
 the operation of the written Constitution. . . . Although our written 
 Constitution was successful in its primary purpose of facilitating the con- 
 
 "Simon N. Patten, Professor of Political Economy, University of Pennsylvania. 
 
 f'The Reconstruction of Economic Theory," American Academy of Political and 
 Social Science, 1912. 
 
 28 
 
solidation of the Confederation, it has not otherwise inspired confidence 
 as a practical administrative device."! 
 
 Notwithstanding the influence of Prof. Overstreet however, there was 
 nothing uttered by Mr. Churchill in the approving presence of Governor 
 Johnson, that was at all at variance with the definition of the doctrines of 
 the Progressive Party, as expounded by Col. Roosevelt throughout the 
 country in the Roosevelt and Johnson presidential campaign. In the 
 Colonel's mouthpiece and party organ, of which he himself at the time 
 was an editor, The Outlook* we find the same expressions declaring in 
 favor of the Socialistic State as against the Commonwealth. The Outlook's 
 article is entitled "The New Freedom," and seeks to distinguish between 
 the brand of freedom dispensed by the Progressives, and the quality of the 
 same declared by President Wilson, which was Constitutional government 
 proceeding in its proper sphere in dealing with new questions which have 
 arisen in the course of the industrial development of the nation. This 
 however, the Outlook regards as the "old freedom," and the "new" is 
 that Socialist variety which we have been discussing. The Outlook says: 
 The Old Freedom is individual, the New Freedom is social. The Old 
 Freedom demands a government of narrowly limited powers, the New 
 Freedom desires a government of expanding powers. The Old Freedom 
 believes that the individual can care for his own interests ; the New Freedom 
 believes that individuals can combine in caring for their common interests. 
 The Old Freedom is afraid of power steam boilers sometimes explode; 
 the New Freedom welcomes power for it believes that steam engines 
 can be so regulated that they will not explode. The Old Freedom 
 says every man for himself and sometimes adds, under breath, the rest 
 of the proverb ; the New Freedom says : Let each man care for all, and 
 society care for the hindmost. The Old Freedom is afraid of great indus- 
 trial organizations, and wishes to dissolve them ; the New Freedom believes 
 in great industrial organizations, whether of labor or capital, and wishes 
 to control, direct and employ them. 
 
 I do not think that Mr. Churchill's pronunciamentcs could have had a 
 more suiting summing up than is found in these utterances of Col. 
 Roosevelt or his associate. They check off explicitly with corresponding 
 declarations of Mr. Debs or Mr. Haywood. In fact it is well recognized in 
 the Socialist world that all the proposals for which the "Roosevelt Pro- 
 gressives" stand, are Socialistic, and are known to Socialists as "reforms."' 
 These so called "reforms" are enumerated in the Outlook's "New 
 Freedom" article as, among others, 
 
 \T~he Theory of Social Evolution, by Brooks Adams. 
 
 Note also the following from the San Francisco Chronicle Sept. 4, 1914 : "No such 
 thing 1 as the natural inalienable rights of man exists," declared Professor Ira B. Cross of 
 the department of economics of the University of California yesterday before the United 
 States Commission on Industrial Relations. "The only rights are the rights of society. 
 Industrial unrest and warfare between employer and labor will continue until the employ- 
 ing class is made to see that the right it claims of conducting its business in its own way 
 must go down before the rights of society." Dr. Cross assigned as the greatest present 
 cause of industrial unrest the feeling of the workingman that he cannot get justice in the 
 courts. He asserted that the unions have done only the things that have been forced upon 
 them by the employers. Another cause mentioned by Dr. Cross is the general rise in 
 prices. He proposed as a solution of this difficulty Government ownership of all gold 
 mines and a standardized dollar. 
 
 "July llth, 1914, p. 584. 
 
 29 
 
"The short ballot; the direct primary; the initiative, referendum and 
 recall; preventing child labor, limiting woman's labor; preventing over- 
 time and under pay for all labor; and putting the perils of moderr 
 industry upon the community." 
 
 The latter of these namely "preventing overtime," may be interpreted as 
 the eight hour law with which we have entitled this essay; the "under 
 pay" is the minimum wage, and "putting the perils of modern industry 
 upon the community," is workmen's insurance or compensation. To these 
 Mr. Churchill adds limitation of production in his statement : * ' unregulated 
 production causes distress by periods of stagnation and oversupply." 
 This limitation of production is one of the familiar "regulations" of labor 
 unionism, which fixes the number of brick a man may lay, the number of 
 cigars a journeyman may make, the number of bottles a blower may blow, 
 the number of barrels of lime a plasterer may mix, etc., as a day's work, 
 a system and a principle that runs throughout unionism, the scale fixed 
 on the basis of the moderate performance of the most inefficient man; it 
 being assumed that if this output were exceeded, not only would there be 
 manifest a dissatisfying disparity in the performances of the laborers, 
 tending to a weeding out, or reducing the wages of the less efficient, but by 
 reason of the excess production in the market, there would be thus much 
 less to be done by idle laborers, who otherwise might be employed.* 
 
 To the exercise of the recall upon officials the Roosevelt Socialism adds 
 the recall of judicial decisions. This also is a method of getting the 
 constitution out of the way. Senator Root points out this would not be 
 as it is commonly supposed it would, a popular reversal of the decisions 
 of the Court, it would not be judicial, it would be legislation by the 
 populace. The Senator states: 
 
 "The action would not be a decision that the court was wrong in 
 finding a law unconstitutional, but it would make a law valid which was 
 invalid before because unconstitutional. In such an election the majority 
 of voters would make a law where no law had existed before, and they 
 would make that law in violation of the rules of conduct by which tUe 
 people themselves had solemnly declared they ought to be bound. If it 
 
 *Certain labor unionists, notably John Mitchell, are opposed to limiting of production 
 by the unionists. The reasoning Mr. Mitchell employs in defense of his position is correct. 
 See "The Case Against the Labor Union," by Dr. Washington Gladden, Outlook, March, 1911. 
 But the labor world has never followed in practice the views of Mr. Mitchell, notwith- 
 standing they stoutly deny that the union does limit output, a fact that is within the 
 knowledge of anyone employing unionists in work susceptible of measurement. See "The 
 Battle Line of Labor," by Sampel P. Orth, World's Work, January, 1913. "Foundries and 
 machine shops were specific in their complaints on this line. In one Eastern shop I was 
 told that in their foundry they were making large cast-iron pulley wheels. The men were 
 making two a day. A test was made and it wa^ found that four could easily be made. 
 But the man who made the test came to his foreman after a few days and said he would 
 have to quit working so fast. The union had fined him $50. Some unions have defined a 
 day's work. The lathers at Chicago at one time called twenty-five bundles the limit of a 
 day's toil, and the Chicago carpenters resolved that 'any member guilty of excessive work 
 or rushing on any job shall be reported and be subject to a fine of $5.' The bricklayers 
 of Boston forbade practices that would 'jeopardize the interests of a fellow member,' like 
 'putting the lime on more than one course at a time.' Plumbers must not ride bicycles to 
 or from work." 
 
 The concept upon which limiting output rests, and which therefore accounts for the 
 universality of the practice amongst the unions, is that the more work that is done, the 
 less remains to be done. That the market must not be overproduced, but that scarcity of 
 product and scarcity of laborers must be maintained. Both of these postulates are exactly 
 opposite to truth. Opportunity to labor rests upon abundance of product and plentitude of 
 laborers, as I have shown in my prior pamphlets. Mr. Churchill in his proposals to 
 "regulate production," meaning limitation of production, is uttering one of the basic and 
 most fatal fallacies of labor unionism. 
 
 30 
 
can be exercised at all it can be exercised by a majority whenever they 
 wish to exercise it. If it can be employed to make a Workmen's Compen- 
 sation Act in such terms as to violate the Constitution, it can be employed 
 to prohibit the worship of an unpopular religious sect, or to take away 
 the property of an unpopular rich man without compensation, or to 
 prohibit freedom of speech and of the press in opposition to prevailing 
 popular opinion, or to deprive one accused of crime of fair trial when he 
 has already been condemned by the newspapers. The exercise of such a 
 power would strike at the very foundation of our system of government." 
 And I have not the slightest doubt that if extinguishment of the consti- 
 tution is close at hand it will disappear by the routes which Mr. Roosevelt 
 shall have adopted and suggested. The Eecall of Judges and the Recall 
 of Judicial decisions will do it. Men may hesitate in deliberately assem- 
 bling a convention to obliterate the constitution, but if it can be by piece 
 meal gotten out of the way, by repealing by popular vote upon a popular 
 question this or that of its provisions through reversing decisions or 
 recalling judges, that is the avenue through which it will readily disappear. 
 
 The Socialist does not care that these numerous "reforms" are 
 adopted by various legislatures. He regards their adoption as ' * clarifying 
 class lines," and drawing nearer to the goal of the Socialistic State. In 
 this he is undoubtedly correct. Spargo and Arner say: 
 
 "No new order can spring full grown from sudden revolution. The 
 transition is already in progress. Every move in the direction of the 
 Socialization of the State, while not itself necessarily Socialistic, is a part of 
 the adjustment of transition. Long before any nation consciously and 
 voluntarily adopts the Socialist ideal, it will have already tried many 
 of its features. Social evolution has always been a constantly accelerating 
 process, and it seems probable that the social revolution now in progress 
 will reach its culmination, Socialism, in a shorter length of time than any 
 of the great social changes of the past." 
 
 The Socialist like the Progressive, "believes in great industrial organ- 
 izations;" the Progressive thinks he can regulate such through the State; 
 the Socialist sees in them the shaping up of industry preparatory to its 
 being taken over and operated by the State. The Constitutionalist, (the 
 individualist) however, the Outlook says, is "afraid of great industrial 
 organizations." The Outlook is in part mistaken; the Constitutionalist is 
 not afraid of such organizations because they are great, but he is afraid 
 of the monopoly upon which they are so often based, by virtue of which 
 they so often exist, and which neither the Progressive or the Socialist care 
 a rap about, but rather regard as a quality common and necessary to 
 industry, which in one instance must be "regulated" by government 
 while remaining nominally in individualistic hands, and in the other must 
 be taken entirely out of individualistic hands and conducted altogether 
 by government. 
 
 The Industrial Unionist, however, declares "a plague on both your 
 houses." He is against all "reforms." His method is mass strikes. He 
 would attain the Socialist State as a development out of the Socialist 
 movement. When the Progressive, having taken from the Socialist prac- 
 
 31 
 
tically all of his several and many panaceas or "reforms" has, in coopera- 
 tion with the Socialist brought the country to a pro-Socialist mind, the 
 multitude seeing no avenue of escape from intolerable conditions save the 
 great industrial monopoly which the Socialist designs as the State at 
 that time the Industrial Unionist will come forward with his mass strike, 
 his final Waterloo charge, which will rout the constitution and clear the 
 whole field of individualistic citizenship ; whereupon the socialized state 
 will arise, organized and doing business, at a stroke.* 
 
 Seeing now the cleavage in the politico-industrial realm of the country 
 to exist with the Socialists, Progressives, Labor Unionists and Industrial 
 Unionists on one hand, and the Constitutionalists on the other, the latter 
 comprising the Republican and Democratic parties, except in so far as 
 the platforms of these parties give adherence to divers of the Socialist 
 "reforms/' it becomes needful to examine these several "reforms." to 
 consider their nature and operation. Broadly they all draw the State 
 from its function of governing into the region of procuring to the citizen 
 that which, under free conditions he could readily attain to himself, and 
 are therefor based upon the hypothesis that individual freedom is incom- 
 patible with civilization. For as civilization rests upon applied science, 
 and expands and rises just as such science becomes more developed and 
 refined, so are the great units of industry expressions of the civilization 
 which the sciences create. To find it necessary therefor, that the State 
 should come forth, with its laws and force in order that under such civiliza- 
 tion a man might get a living while defended from being crushed or 
 starved in the process, is to condemn civilization in its free action as a 
 harm to man. It has indeed so seemed to many who bear great reputations 
 as thinkers in various avenues of thought. Only a few years ago Professor 
 Huxley wrote: 
 
 "Even the best of modern civilization appears to me to exhibit a 
 condition of mankind which neither embodies any worthy ideal nor even 
 
 *The chief doctrinaire of the industrial union in the United States was Daniel De Leon, 
 an erstwhile lecturer on international law in Columbia University, who recently died. 
 De Leon set forth the principles and purposes of the Industrial Union (I. W. W.) move- 
 ment as follows : 
 
 1. Industrial Unionism, organized in harmony with the mechanism of concentrated 
 capitalist production, is the condition sine qua non of the revolutionary movement. Mere 
 industrial unionism, however, is insufficient ; it must be revolutionary industrial unionism. 
 
 2. By means of the industrial organization, the workers can secure all the immediate 
 betterements they require immediate reforms which, gained by means of the power of the 
 workers through mass strikes, constitute steps toward the final goal, develop the integrity 
 and self-reliance of the proletariat, and prepare it for its historic mission. 
 
 3 The movement should not deal in political reform. Reforms of this character 
 benefit the Middle Class and the Aristocracy of Labor almost exclusively, and will be 
 yielded by the ruling class itself a theory now being proven by capitalist Progressivism. 
 Political reform is a menace to the integrity of the revolutionary movement. 
 
 4. The Socialist political movement is purely agitational ; its mission is not "con- 
 structive politics," but to lash onward the bourgeois parties by an aggressive policy, warm 
 into life the revolutionary spirit of the workers, and courageously develop the necessary 
 sentiment for revolutionary Industrial Unionism. Only upon this basis is political action 
 justifiable. 
 
 5. The goal of the revolutionary movement is the overthrow of political government, 
 which means the overthrow of all class rule the substitution of industrial representation 
 for territorial representation, industrial administration for political government. Industrial 
 Unionism not only organizes for the immediate, every-day struggles of the proletariat, but 
 prepares the structure of the future society, organizes the Socialist State within the 
 Capitalist State, ready to assume control of society ; in other words, the revolutionary act 
 will be performed by the industrially organized proletariat ; and Industrial Unionism will 
 not only be the most powerful force in overthrowing Capitalist society but will constitute 
 the basis of the Socialist society of the future. The New Review, July, 1914. 
 
 32 
 
possesses the merit of stability. I do not hesitate to express the opinion 
 that if there is no hope of a larger improvement of the condition of the 
 greater part of the human family; if it is true that the increase of knowl- 
 edge, the winning of a greater domain over nature which is its consequence, 
 and the wealth which follows upon that domain are to make no difference 
 in the extent and the intensity of want with its concomitant moral and 
 physical degredation among the masses of the people, I should hail the 
 advent of some kindly comet which would sweep the whole affair away, 
 as a desirable consummation."* 
 
 The Socialist group to which I have referred, therefor, would avert such 
 calamity, preliminarily to the assumption by the State of all powers and 
 properties, by the schedule which the Outlook and Mr. Churchill set forth, 
 and which we will consider: 
 
 And in this behalf it should be remarked that there are certain of 
 these demands with which the Constitutionalist has no quarrel, for they 
 rest upon individualistic principles. Take for instance the planks against 
 child labor. It is assumed there should be legislation preventing a child 
 from entering gainful industry prior to its sixteenth year. Whatever the 
 year may be, there is no doubt that the principle which underlies this 
 order of restrictive legislation is correct. The reason is that prior to some 
 age in the region of adolescence, the child cannot be said to be moved into 
 industry through his own will, but is so placed by his parents. These 
 latter owe a duty to the child of his care, sustenance and education. 
 Every one is entitled to a period of childhood, a season of play, of growth, 
 of fitting oneself through schooling, until he is matured and equipped to 
 turn to the walks of industry, and there perform his tasks under condi- 
 tions as far normal as his unimpaired natural capacities will allow. By 
 permitting the immature to be turned to earning a livelihood, the parent 
 evades his responsibilities to the injury of the child, and against what 
 must be assumed as the child's will. At this juncture the State steps 
 forth with its function of securing each in possession and exercise of his 
 rights, of holding an equal hand between man and man, and turns the 
 child from the factory back into the home. A normally minded parent 
 surrounded by normal industrial conditions, would refuse to deprive his 
 offspring of the pleasures of childhood, and scorn the paltry sums which 
 its little hands would wring from industry. The State under the 
 Constitution, predicated upon the operation of the normal, asserts on 
 behalf of the child that which, against the normal parent, would require 
 no assertion. It is the State preventing a wrong, which is always an 
 indivisible function of sovereignty. And if it should occur that the 
 parent could not support the child, or it be turned adrift upon the high- 
 ways, the State as the ultimate factor in all affairs of its citizens for their 
 protection and safety, is duty bound to come forward to its succor; and 
 it has never refused to assume such obligation. Only, however, in such 
 extreme cases is the State justified in thus asserting itself actively into the 
 
 """Government ; Anarchy or Regimentative," Nineteenth Century, May, 1890. 
 
 33 
 
domestic matters of the citizen; when he is lielpless through infancy, or 
 through illness and requires relief and care, and there be no willing hand 
 held forth to aid him, the State is in loco parentis, the ultimate parent and 
 friend, just as it is the ultimate legatee of his estate if there be no person 
 otherwise entitled, or the owner of property which has no lawful claimant. 
 These are all proper and necessary functions of the State, but they are 
 widely different from those aspects of State interference and responsibility 
 in the affairs of the people, in which the Socialist seeks to place it. 
 
 When for instance, the State tells a woman that she cannot work in 
 
 industry to exceed eight hours in twenty-four, here we have in the highest 
 
 degree an invasion by the State of the rights of the citizen. If the State 
 
 may prohibit more than eight hours it may prohibit more than four, and 
 
 if it has power to designate the number of hours one may work, it has 
 
 powder to forbid working at all; or if it permits one to work, it may 
 
 prescribe the condition under which the right may be exercised. It can 
 
 be seen that here at a swoop, practically the entire of human rights is 
 
 swept out of the hands of the citizen into the body of the State; for if 
 
 one is no longer free to work as he will, he is no longer free at all. Thence 
 
 forward the sovereign is not a protector of his rights, but is his master, 
 
 and he exists not by right, but by grace. Nor can the inhibition of the 
 
 woman working beyond a prescribed period be confused with that order 
 
 of enactments designed to protect the health, or to secure the comfort or 
 
 safety of the workers, all of which statutes, where genuinely based upon 
 
 such grounds, are proper and defensible, in that the government stands 
 
 to protect one man from another. A man has a right to health, to comfort 
 
 and to safety, and if he works for another, it is the duty of that other to 
 
 surround him with conditions which conserve such; the State in interfering 
 
 merely enforces a duty of one toward another; in other words, it prevents 
 
 a wrong being done one through the failure of another to perform his 
 
 obligations. This is the true office of the State. But when the State 
 
 prescribes limitation of hours during which one may work for another, 
 
 there is present none of these principles. There is nothing either unsafe, 
 
 unhealthy, or uncomfortable in a woman working more than eight hours, 
 
 and if there were there is no duty in the premises which could possibly 
 
 be violated or neglected in either an employer suffering one to work 
 
 longer than given hours or in the employee doing so; there is no wrong 
 
 present calling the State forward to intervene between the parties, to 
 
 secure one in a right which the other is traversing. Eight hours may be 
 
 the proper time for some women to work; others may find the hours 
 
 entirely too long, and may wish to work only four or five; while other 
 
 women may be content to work ten or even twelve, and be not the slightest 
 
 the worse in health, and much the better in pocket, for having done so. 
 
 For the State, ostensibly "guarding the race," upon the assumption that 
 
 it has a property in the woman from her standpoint as a bearer of children, 
 
 and cannot trust her to care for her own person, to reach forth and take 
 
 34 
 
from her one of her most precious rights, that of control of her own 
 actions in the realm of industry, this I say is merely a specious reassertion 
 of tyranny, which always begins its destruction of the liberties of the 
 citizen by taking away rights upon more or less plausible .pretences of 
 public welfare. 
 
 This order of legislation is very old the prescribing by the State of 
 the conditions under which one may work, the primary condition being 
 the purchase of the right itself from the State through the payment of a 
 fee, it being laid down that the citizen possesses no such right, a doctrine 
 completely conformable to the position of Mr. Churchill and his fellow 
 Progressives, that the State and not the man is the primary unit, that man 
 has no rights save those which are granted him by the State. Herbert 
 Spencer, in an article printed shortly before his death,* says: 
 
 "Marvelous are the conclusions men reach when once they desert the 
 simple principle that each man should be allowed to pursue the objects 
 of life, restrained only by the limits which the similar pursuits of their 
 objects by others impose. A generation ago we heard loud assertion of 
 ''the right to labor' that is, the right to have labor provided; and there 
 are still those who think the community bound to find work for each 
 person. Compare this with the doctrine current in France at the time 
 when the monarchical power culminated namely that 'the right to work 
 is a royal right, which the Prince can sell and the subjects must buy.' 
 This contrast is startling enough; but a contrast still more startling is 
 being provided for us. We now see a resuscitation of the despotic doctrine. 
 Differing only by the substitution of trades unions for Kings. For now 
 that trades unions are becoming universal, and each citizen has to pay 
 proscribed moneys to one or another of them, with the alternative of 
 being a non-unionist to whom work is denied by force, it has come to this, 
 that the right to labor is a trades union right, which the trades union 
 can sell, and the individual worker must buy." 
 
 The passage from the State denying to women the right to work exceed- 
 ing eight hours,! or denying to men and others employed underground or 
 in reduction of ores the right to work more than eight hours,! to a law 
 prohibiting all persons from working in excess of eight hours, which is 
 contained in the bills now pending before the electors upon initiative, is 
 a transition extremely easy to be made. What twenty years ago would 
 have shocked the public sense, and been by the individual citizen considered 
 outrageous even as a proposal, now finds thousands of enthusiastic adher- 
 ents in every quarter of the country. So widespread has been the inversion 
 of thought upon what are the rights of the citizen and where the State in 
 approaching those rights must stop, that we find a multitude of advocates 
 and defenders of this further encroachment by the sovereign, making 
 known their views in speech and press. These auxilleries are generally 
 labor unionists, invaribaly Socialists, and the arguments they employ in 
 its behalf are uniformly Socialistic. The grounds asserted in furtherance 
 
 *"From Freedom to Bondage," Popular Science Monthly, April, 1891. 
 t Statutes of California, 1911, Ch. 258. 
 
 ^Statutes of California, 1909, Ch. 181. 
 
 35 
 
of the two prior statutes, in one case the race in the other health* are not 
 pretended in advancement of the adoption of these initiative bills. We 
 are told however, that not only would this limitation of the period of work 
 beneficially effect those laborers whom they would reach, by allowing a 
 greater spell of leisure than they now enjoy, thereby tending to a higher 
 type of citizenship, a claim that may be dismissed with its statement, but 
 that a large number would work for from one to four hours less than at 
 present, and this would create a call upon the services of many idle persons 
 to do the work left undone by those who now perform it; and such idle 
 ones, it is said, are always in the State in large proportion to the number 
 actually employed. There is no doubt that the belief that by lessening the 
 number of hours in a day's work the volume of work that is to be done 
 may be made to "go around" amongst a greater number of laborers, 
 whereby employment may be given to many otherwise idle that this 
 concept is the real influence behind all calls for eight hour days. Nor is 
 eight hours to be considered the lowest limit of time which the Socialist- 
 labor union program proposes. In a recent manifesto of the San Francisco 
 labor unions it is stated : 
 
 "Labor's practical demands, made to individual employers, are for higher 
 wages, shorter hours and better working conditions. Upon these three 
 fundamental demands is built the whole philosophy of the labor movement. ' ' 
 These demands are increasing ; they are never gratified. ' ' Samuel Gompers 
 told me," says Samuel P. Orthf 
 
 "When I suggested that employers complained because the labor unions 
 were constantly asking for more, were never satisfied: 'Labor has never 
 received its full rewards for the vast benefits it renders to society.' Or 
 in other words, they will get all they can. From this premise it is futile 
 to seek a solution of the labor problem '. ' ' J 
 
 It is well known that where a statutory eight hours has been attained, as 
 in the antipodes, that the labor union agitation is rampant for a six hour 
 and a five hour day. I recently heard a Socialist orator haranguing a 
 crowd on the corner of Market and Stockton Streets in San Francisco, 
 declare that two or two and a half hours "was the destined period of the 
 Socialist work-day;" that "the great Austrian scientist ," some name 
 he mentioned, had figured it out that if every workable-aged person in the 
 world worked twenty-five minutes a day, with the use of modern machinery 
 and methods, there would be ample of all things we desire to supply 
 everyone. Indeed, Spargo and Arner, after pointing out that the Socialists 
 parties of Europe demand the enactment of legislation establishing eight 
 hours as the maximum work-day, state that "American Socialists make 
 
 *"A proper exercise of the police power for the preservation of public health." Holden 
 v. Hardy, 169 U. S. 366. Re Martin; Supreme Court of California, Dec. 23, 1909. 
 
 "Editorial in San Francisco Bulletin special edition in charge of labor unions, 
 Aug. 8, 1914. 
 
 f'The Battle Line of Labor," The World's Work, November, 1912. 
 
 tGreat Britain had 1462 labor disputes in 1912, being more than double the average 
 of the preceding twenty years. 
 
 36 
 
their demand for the reduction of hours of labor more general, and demand 
 shortening of the work-day in keeping with the increased productiveness 
 of machinery. ' ' It may be readily perceived that the reason for limiting the 
 demands of the European Socialists for eight hours, is that eight hours 
 seems to them from the standpoint of their existing ten or more hours, a 
 very much shortened work-day; when this has been reduced to the period 
 which they desire, and the eight hour day becomes as common in the 
 unionized industries with them as it already is in the United States, the 
 demand will go up to shorten the eight-hour period as is now the case in 
 New Zealand, and Australia, and as we may shortly expect to arise in the 
 United States with the same fervor, and insistence as was placed by the 
 Unions behind their demands for the eight-hour day. 
 
 The present initiative bill affects chiefly the unorganized laborers, 
 particularly the agricultural and domestic interests, the former comprising 
 the leading industry in California. In certain states and countries the 
 Socialist eight-hour program excludes agriculture. Spargo and Arner say : 
 "It is not easy to see how a measure like the eight hour law is to be applied 
 to agriculture labor so long as agriculture retains its present form. The 
 Socialists in Belgium frankly face this difficulty and limit the application 
 of the eight-hour work-day, and other similar reforms, to the "industrial 
 workers." The French Socialists, on the other hand, in 1902, specifically 
 applied the measures for the regulation of the hours of labor to "labor in 
 industry, commerce and agriculture" without making a definite statement 
 upon the point. American Socialists have largely followed the example of 
 the Belgians, and by implication at least, regarded agriculture labor as 
 outside the scope of some of the laws proposed for the regulation of the 
 hours of labor. ' '* 
 
 We see therefor, that even according to the program of the American 
 Socialists, their proposals in California in the pending initiative are 
 different and in excess of those made generally in the United States. It 
 may be noted however, that the initiative bill as drafted, denounces not the 
 laborer but the employer and deals only with the employer where he acts 
 upon "any overseer, superintendent, foreman or other agent of such 
 employer," and does not make, it an offense for the employer himself 
 without the intervention of any agent, to suffer one to work longer than 
 the prescribed period. This would indicate that the provision is aimed 
 solely at those concerns in agriculture or other industry sufficiently large 
 to employ help who work under some order of minister, and is not intended 
 to thrust itself between the farmer and his "hired man."f The lunge is to 
 disable the large concern, to strike a blow, in other words at ' ' capital. ' ' 
 
 The idea that by doing less work there remains more work to be done, 
 that by shortening the labor-day more men will be employed, and that the 
 
 *Elements of Socialism, p. 343. 
 
 tThe second initiative, however, reaches the employer without regard to the agent, 
 and makes it a jail offence "to hire or require" any employee to work more than forty-eight 
 hours in one week, except in the cases limited by the bill. In neither instance can the 
 laborer himself do any wrong; he is not reached by the act, except as his hiring in the 
 proscribed manner is forbidden. 
 
 37 
 
laborer is thereby benefitted, is a belief that pervades both labor unionism 
 and Socialism, and is a twin doctrine to that to which I previously 
 advertedt, viz: that limitation of output is to the advantage of the laborer, 
 for if men produce more than a given modicum, the interests of fellow 
 workers are thereby jeopardized. To the same category belongs the doctrine 
 that work can be "made," which expresses itself in the practice of loading 
 upon an industry superfluous laborers, the creating of jobs where none 
 economically exist, merely for the sake of giving employment to labor. 
 This is expressed in the "full crew" statutes such as obtain in California* 
 and was lately proposed by the shipping bill in Congress. The Calumet 
 strike in upper Michigan of the Western Federation of Miners, which raged 
 during 1913, grew out of a demand by the laborers that two men be 
 employed on the one-man power drills, an improved piece of machinery 
 which displaced the two man drill.J The "making of work" for the extra 
 man on the drill is consonant with the "making of work" for the unem- 
 ployed by the shortening of the work-day to eight hours. These principles 
 are commonly believed to be correct. They are taught by our collegiates, 
 accepted by "business men," and acted upon by legislatures, yet they are 
 completely erroneous. For as the less work that is done, the less produce 
 is created, and as the less the produce the less the demand for labor, it is 
 manifest that by slacking off on either time of work, or quantity of product, 
 the laborer is but denying to others the opportunity to get jobs, while 
 through holding down production he is creating scarcity and raising the 
 prices which he must pay when he converts his coin wages into his real 
 wages, namely the things he buys. So that while the laborer, through short- 
 ening his time of labor, and half working during the period that he does 
 work, is making things easier for himself, he is paying for that ease by 
 reducing his own wages through increasing prices in the market, and 
 while he may be creating jobs for a few of the out-of-work laborers, he is 
 starving the others in their idleness, through pushing up prices of food 
 beyond their ability to buy, and he is moreover setting in motion the forces 
 which restrict such industry as exists to narrower limits, thereby again 
 reacting to push out of employment a number perhaps equal to the new 
 ones which the change engaged. The calling in of more men to do the work 
 now done, which may be conceded as a result of the proposed new 
 universal eight-hour schedule, would primarily reduce wages. If a man 
 now received $2.50 per day for ten hours, he would then receive $2 
 per day for eight hours, for the change would mean that 20% more 
 men would have to be put on to do the given complement of work. But 
 it is the purpose of the Socialist that the rate of wages shall not be 
 decreased; indeed, there was by the Socialists presented to the Secretary 
 of State another initiative proposal to have been submitted to the electors in 
 
 tPage 30, note. 
 
 * Statutes of 1911, Ch. 49, requiring two brakemen, besides conductor and baggage men, 
 on all trains of four passenger coaches or on any freight or work train. 
 
 JSee "An Economist on the Copper Strike," Review of Reviews^ April, 1914. 
 
 38 
 
the same manner, and at the same time as the eight-hour projects, fixing 
 a universal minimum wage at $2.50 per day, but through some defect 
 contained in the petition, it was not certified. It may however, be expected 
 to be cured and brought forward at the succeeding State election. The 
 two laws, the eight hour set, and a $2.50 minimum wage, would, it was 
 doubtless believed, go admirably together the minimum w r age would 
 prevent the employer from reducing the rate of wages when the eight hour 
 laws took effect. 
 
 In default of a law, the implement by which the rate of wages would 
 be protected from reduction would be the strike, and as the matter was of 
 general concern among unorganized laborers, we should expect an I. W. W. 
 mass strike, in which once and assumedly for all, the question would be 
 fought out, in the presence of rotting crops and all other forms of waste 
 incident to such conflict, for which the Socialist cares nothing whatever. 
 Let it be allowed, however, that wages are permanently held at $2.50 for 
 eight hours; here is a 20% increase in wages. The question arises, who 
 will pay it? The Socialist thinks it will be paid by the employer; but the 
 employer knows it will be paid by the consumer, from whom it, and all 
 added incidental costs, will be collected through a raise in prices. When 
 ' * workingmen 's compensation" went into effect in New York, for instance, 
 fixing upon the employer the burden of paying to employees injured while 
 in their service given sums of money, the employers placed the risk with 
 insurance companies, and charged the premiums up against their customers 
 by adding one cent per bundle to the otherwise free delivery of laundry, 
 the customer having called to his attention that the penny was for the 
 payment of workmen's insurance. It would be idle to quote instances of 
 the universal practice of shifting these charges from the employer, the 
 producer, to the consumer. All taxes and burdens, save the tax upon the 
 value of land, are and must be so shifted, else industry could not exist. 
 Whatever increases the cost of production, must necessarily increase the 
 cost of the product to the purchaser. 
 
 Since the purchasers are for the greater part the laborers who receive 
 the increased wages, and as all records show that the percentage of rise in 
 the cost of living is always greater than the percentage of rise in wages, 
 it is apparent that escape from the effects of "the wage system" for the 
 laborer is impossible. He does not and cannot increase his wages by 
 driving up the price of wages. "I receive $100 per month," said a bar- 
 keeper in San Francisco to me recently. "I have been twenty years at 
 this business, and our wages; have never been increased." "Then, " I 
 replied, "they have been reduced." "No," he answered, "they are just 
 the same." "Yes," I said, "but when you go to buy things with your 
 wages, you find prices have increased nearly 100% to what they were 
 twenty years ago, do you not"? "Oh," he returned, "if you look at it 
 that way, of course my wages have been reduced." 
 
 And here is the whole trouble, the whole cause of the ' ' industrial 
 
 39 
 
unrest," which Chairman Weinstock so earnestly inquired of Doctor 
 Nearing the cause of, and to which the latter was unable to give a reply, 
 viz: It is caused by the desire of laborers to procure for their services 
 higher than economic wages. They can never get it. As soon as higher 
 than economic wages is paid to them, the excess is added to the cost and 
 they pay it back again in higher prices.* The ultimate effect of this process 
 is to promote scarcity and to narrow the zone of labor, constantly holding 
 opportunity to labor away from a vast multitude known as "the unem- 
 ployed, ' ' for whom the Socialists pretend to exercise such care. 
 
 When the halibut fishermen of Seattle demanded of the boat owners 
 "a larger percentage of the catch" for their wages, the latter had no 
 difficulty in deciding that question. The catch was 100% ; so much of this 
 had to go to repair and depreciation of the boats, so much for parapher- 
 nalia, so much to pay interest on hired or invested capital and so much for 
 overhead charges, wharfage, insurance, etc. As these charges were fixed, 
 the issue was between wages and profits. The latter was an amount which 
 the employer considered necessary to make the business sufficiently attract- 
 ive to hold him into it. If he were obliged to give up this, or encroach 
 upon it to the extent of being dissatisfied with it, he would leave the enter- 
 prise. Very assuredly he would not continue business through the 
 eleemosynary impulse of finding employment for laborers. When there- 
 fore, these fishermen not content with their allotted proportion, struck, the 
 answer of the skippers, in the coarse vernacular of the sea was, "Quit and 
 be damned, we'll go out of the business;" and had the laborers not yielded, 
 there would have been one less industry in existence, and a salty regiment 
 added to the ' ' army of the unemployed. ' ' 
 
 Had, however, the fishermen been working on wages of so much per 
 month, the employers might have granted their demand for increase, which 
 they must at once have turned upon the price of the fish and collected from 
 the purchaser. Halibut would have been higher in the market ; many 
 who had been eating halibut would now prefer to eat another fish, better 
 and of equal price, and there would be need for less halibut than there- 
 tofore. A concern that ran many boats, in other words, a "capitalist," 
 would run a lesser number of boats, and some crews would be laid off. 
 
 *See Associated Press reports dated Washington, June 21, 1913, as follows: Except 
 sugar, every principal article of food of the fifteen staples, representing about two-thirds 
 of the expenditure for food by the average workingman's family, showed a decided increase 
 in retail price on February 15, 1913, compared with the average price for the ten-year 
 period, 1890-1899, according to the latest investigation of the statisticians of the Bureau 
 of Labor. The prices were collected in thirty-nine important industrial cities in which 
 live one-fifth of the total population of the continental United States. Sirloin steak, 60.8 
 per cent; round steak, 48.5 ; rib roast, 46.7 ; pork chops, 89.4 ; smoked hams, 69.1 ; smoked 
 bacon, 111.6 ; pure lard, 62.3 ; hens, 66.6 ; wheat flour, 27.4 : corn-meal, 56.1 ; strictly fresh 
 eggs, 56.0 ; creamery butter, 63.5 : potatoes, 23.6 ; fresh milk, 40.1. There was an advance 
 of 3.2 per cent over February 15, 1912, in the relative prices weighted according to the 
 average consumption of the various articles of food in working-men's families. 
 
 The same phenomenon is observed in England, and exists in all countries which in 
 recent years have been the theatres of increasing demands of laborers for higher wages 
 with their attendant shortening of labor hours and strikes. U. S. Consul Albert Halstead 
 at Birmingham, England, points out that the purchasing power of the English sovereign or 
 pound ($4.8665 in American money) has decreased as compared with the American dollar, 
 in 1895, to $3.95 in 1912, the equivalent of 63 cents American money. These figures were 
 determined upon the power of the money to purchase 23 articles of food included in the 
 P'MtiFh Beard of Trade's index numbers for retail prices. U. S. Consular Report, March 
 27, 1913. 
 
 40 
 
Individual boats would not be able to sell all their fish at the high prices 
 demanded, and quantities to be sold at all would have to be disposed of at a 
 lower price; this would break the market, and bring upon them war by 
 the larger concerns, with whom they would presently consolidate; prices 
 would then be fixed at a uniform figure, and we would have a "halibut 
 trust." The result of this operation would be to hold down the catch to 
 the limit of what the market at the arbitrary price fixed would consume, 
 and lay off all superfluous labor; at the same time to fight out of existence 
 by whatever order of squeeze or force might be employed, any "independ- 
 ents" who might try to get into the business. Had higher wages, however, 
 not been demanded, and the market price of the fish not thereby affected, 
 business would have gone on as before, the several boat concerns competing 
 with one another, their competition holding a reasonable price upon the 
 market, a reasonable profit and a reasonable wage. The new comer who 
 should come in could not permanently effect this condition; he might 
 disorganize business for a while by selling his fish cheaper than the others, 
 but he would do so at a sacrifice of reasonable profits, and that would not 
 long continue, when either he or the weakest in the field would find it more 
 profitable to go off into some more attractive order of business. If, how- 
 ever, he was able to continue selling at lower prices, it would indicate that 
 his methods were superior to those of the others; he had better tackle, or 
 better bait, or he managed his men and business more efficiently, and this 
 circumstance would force the others to mend their ways, and we would 
 have the influence of competition driving an industry to a higher plane of 
 performance and service, which is the essential and natural quality of 
 competition. 
 
 It can also be seen that minimum wages can be of no real benefit to 
 the laborer. Minimum wages is an endeavor to increase to a given figure 
 wages of those who get less than the minimum. The answer of the employer 
 is to lay off those whom he deems earns less than the minimum, or if he 
 is forced to pay it, thus much more is added to the cost of running the 
 business and to the price of the product.* 
 
 But let us consider that the product of the industry is not a commodity, 
 but a service, and a public service at that. Take for instance a railroad. 
 We have the spectacle of sort of by common consent the railroads of the 
 nation passed over to an Interstate Commission possessed of practically 
 plenary powers over them, and in the event that any crevice be left in the 
 zone of their activities, through which they may escape the espionage 
 imposed upon them by Congress, there is created in the several States local 
 boards of public utilities charged with the duty of playing the field against 
 
 *The legislative minimum wage as applied to private employment necessarily restricts 
 the liberty of contract, creates an arbitrary discrimination bptween one class and another, 
 not only of employers, but also of employees, and compels the employer to contribute, out 
 of his investment and out of his earnings, for the benefit of his employees and for their 
 sustenance, as well as for the general public benefit. Such statute, therefore, controvenes 
 the express terms of the Federal constitution, prohibiting any State from enforcing any 
 law which deprives a citizen of liberty or of property without due process of law, or 
 which denies to any citizen the equal protection of the laws. The Minimum Wage. By 
 Rome G. Brown, Minneapolis, Minn. 
 
 41 
 
them. A certain order of State or Federal interference in such businesses 
 is desirable and proper. We have seen by the New Haven railroad incident 
 to which I have referred, and by many kindred instances of even recent 
 occurrence, such as the Frisco railroad matter, that it is highly needful in 
 the case of a great corporation receiving the funds with which to install or 
 carry on its enterprise from stock and bond holders who buy their securities 
 often on the public market, that these should be protected against the acts 
 of an inside group who comprise the board of directors and who often owe 
 their positions, not to their own moneys invested in the properties, but to 
 funds of others under their control. Experience has shown that bank 
 commissions, insurance commissions and such like boards are the necessary 
 intervention of government to protect one set of men against another. 
 That men given a free hand to use their discretions, aside from the per- 
 formance of ministerial duties which are circumscribed by written regula- 
 tions, cannot be altogether trusted. Concepts of their own advantage will 
 conflict with their sense of duty to advantage others, while mere errors in 
 judgment often occasion losses that another order of deliberation would 
 have prevented. This is not exceptional in practice, for it often occurs; 
 wherefore the presence of the State in its function of preventing wrong, 
 of securing to each his rights, is wise and necessary. The bank commission 
 regards the relation of the bank management to its depositors; the insur- 
 ance commission notes the ability of the company to pay its policy holders. 
 These aspects deal only with the ability of the corporation to pay its 
 obligees. In the case of the railroads and other public utilities, however, 
 the State supervision takes a wholly different turn. Instead of standing 
 between the management and its investors it stands between the company 
 and its customers not those to whom the company owes anything, but to 
 those to whom it renders service. The company is not permitted to deter- 
 mine the price of its product but this is fixed for it by the Board, through 
 the process of rate making, which rates are determined not by the value of 
 the service rendered, but by the amount of money invested in active, as 
 distinguished from inactive property of the company, and this arranged 
 to permit the investors a return of seven per cent upon the amount of such 
 sums.* The State in such case is the agent of the customer, seizing the 
 property of the company, and compelling it to render service at such price 
 as the customer feels it to his interest to pay. It is inconceivable that any 
 scheme could be more oppressive or unjust. This operation is highly 
 Socialistic. It is an explicit expression of the Roosevelt order of Socialism, 
 which absorbs to the State the property of the citizen while permitting 
 the nominal operation of it to remain in his hands. The State, while not 
 assuming active possession, at once enters into control of the property, and 
 asserts over it the power of a proprietor, converting the owners into its 
 
 *In the Kansas City Southern case, the Supreme Court. of the United States held that 
 portions of a railroad, abandoned in process of grade revision work, cannot be regarded as 
 a part of capital investment for rate making purposes, notwithstanding such had entailed 
 cost upon the owners of the road. 
 
 42':- 
 
agents, issuing to them orders moved by its will, and compelling obedience 
 thereto by its armed or civil force. This exappropriation of public utilities 
 by the State is distinctly recognized; the several commissions proceed defi- 
 nitely upon the lines that the owners of these industries have no longer any 
 rights to their properties, where such rights come into conflict with their 
 wills. "As Railroad Commissioner Eshleman truthfully says, investors in 
 public utilities are absolutely at the mercy of the public which they 
 serve."* The result of this incursion has been to "knock the bottom out 
 of public utility securities." There has followed a general decline of 
 market values of all such issues. One authority, whose statements find 
 common acceptance and quotation among business men, asserts that since 
 the Interstate Commerce Commission commenced its operations, the rail- 
 roads of the country have lost three billions of dollars in market slough of 
 their securities. Hundreds of thousands of people, who had invested their 
 savings in these evidences of indebtedness, have watched the stockboard 
 reports day by day and found their investments crumbling f until ultimately, 
 in many cases, they were swept completely out of their hands by reorganiza- 
 tions of the corporations and "scalings down" of outstanding securities. 
 The result has been a tremendous falling -off in sales of these debentures. 
 Public confidence in them has been, if not foregone, at least badly shaken. 
 The public observes the spectacle of continuously rising operating expenses, 
 through constantly increasing cost of materials and ever repeated demands 
 for higher wages, made upon the several concerns by the unions en masse, 
 to refuse which is to subject the properties and businesses to the destructive 
 war of strikes; with the volume of traffic fluctuating between slight rises 
 and severe declines, the recent movements being sharply downward; for 
 the effect of the high prices which the unions create is, as I have explained 
 in prior pamphlets, to narrow the zone of distribution from the point of 
 production with increases in business attended with decreased gross earn- 
 ings; and the power of charging for their service taken wholly out of the 
 companies' hands; the office of fixing rates being transferred to the several 
 commissions, who refuse to permit raises in rates when the companies appeal 
 therefor; but who treat themselves as standing between the railroad and 
 the customer, in fact as representing the customer, intent on allowing the 
 owners only sufficient of rates to continue them in business. Seeing this, 
 the proposed purchaser regards the future of the utilities as doubtful, as 
 tending to fall in value, and he withholds investment. The result is that 
 the utility cannot get necessary moneys to move forward with needed 
 constructions in the extension or increase of their systems in the rendition 
 of further service ; while such a thing as the advent of new capital into the 
 field to put in a railroad or else here and there where opportunity offers, is 
 
 *San Francisco Chronicle, July 13, 1914. 
 
 fA client said to me recently : "Twelve years ago I invested a large fortune in stocks 
 and bonds, all of public utilities, railroad and other. They were carefully selected, and 
 all gilt edged. Today they represent a decline in value of from forty to sixty per cent of 
 the market prices at- which I purchased them." 
 
 43 
 
practically out of the question. There ensues a static and deadening state 
 of things, with cries going up in many quarters for the government to take 
 over the railroads and operate them, a chorus increased in volume by the 
 utilities themselves, and which, without any doubt, must ultimately be 
 acceded to. 
 
 The effect of this process is the effect of all Socialistic operations; it is 
 to destroy initiative. The life, the sap, is taken out of business, and there 
 is left an inert, unprogressive, horizontalized mass, in which the active and 
 pushing spirits are held down to the common level. Seven per cent, while 
 it would satisfy bonds, will not sell stock; and bonds will not find pur- 
 chasers unless stock be sold.* The man who buys stock buys with a risk. 
 He pins his faith upon the character of the road, its territory and its 
 management. He stands to take profits or suffer loss according to the 
 mutations of the business fairly administered, and unhampered by the 
 vitiating interference of the State. Where the State comes forward and 
 deliberately operates to destroy his property, upon the hypothesis that a 
 somewhat larger group of citizens, namely the customers, may be made to 
 profit by such destruction, and when this to the general public mind seems 
 a proper and reasonable exercise of the State 's functions, we are indeed far 
 along toward that goal to which the doctrines of Mr. Debs, Mr. Roosevelt 
 and Prof. Seligman have been carrying us. 
 
 The pretext upon which the State assumes to interfere in rates of 
 public utilities is that they are essentially monopolies, and the State has a 
 right to protect the citizen against monopoly; further that they exist by 
 right of public franchises, whose use carries with it the right of the State 
 to interpose conditions under which they shall be exercised. But a railroad 
 is no more the user of a franchise than is a store on the corner ; for while 
 the railroad may cross thoroughfares or run along a public street, the store 
 conducts its business by admitting its customers from the front street and 
 receiving and discharging its goods on the side street ; and the circumstance 
 that a public utility may compel one along its right of way to sell sufficient 
 of his property, at the sum a jury may fix, to satisfy the uses of the road, 
 is a flimsy basis for permitting that property owner and others of the 
 public to seize the road and make it do his business at prices they are 
 willing to pay. 
 
 Nor is the argument of monopoly any more satisfying than the above. 
 It is not a fact that public utilities are in their nature monopolies; or if 
 so they are such only to a slight degree, wholly un justifying the practical 
 confiscation of the properties which has supervened, even assuming that 
 the fact that their being monopolies could justify such sequestration. It 
 has been the experience of the nation in all its parts, that wherever business 
 served by a monopoletic public utility increased in size to sustain two 
 concerns, another like utility would seek to come into the field, and arriving 
 
 *See "The Wage That Attracts Capital," article by Ray Morris, Atlantic Monthly, June, 
 1914, in which the author remarks: "The curious economic handicap which seeks to limit 
 capital's maximum return to a low percentage, without any compensating guarantee of a 
 minimum return." 
 
 44 
 
there would compete with the established enterprise. This fact is notorious. 
 It is manifest by the examination of any railroad map of the United States 
 or of any State. It is true that the tendency of one utility in the field is 
 to try to keep another out, or to absorb it after it has succeeded in getting 
 in; and under conditions that have prevailed it is the proper function of 
 the State, and the proper sphere of the commissions, to prevent the accom- 
 plishment of this sort of thing. One man has as much right to serve the 
 public, through the medium of a public utility, as another; and if I seek 
 to serve water to a city the existing concern has no right to go into fthe 
 territory of my watersheds and buy strategic pieces of land for the purpose 
 of preventing my accumulating and delivering water, or to go into the 
 financial field and slander me to my bankers, or go along my proposed 
 right of way and stir up trouble for me among the owners whose lands I 
 must acquire, and so on. Here is where the heavy hand of the commission 
 should properly come in. But it has no right to say, as it does say, that I 
 must keep out of a given field in order that the concern already there might 
 endure without competition, leaving it to the Board to determine the rates 
 which competition would adjust could I get into the territory. Such an 
 operation is to further the monopoly which the scheme of commissions is 
 claimed to be created to prevent. We have lately had a singular illustration 
 of this confusion of principles in the tearing apart by the Federal power 
 of the Union and Southern Pacific Railroads on the ground that they are 
 parallel lines, hence competing concerns. How the government can recon- 
 cile its position in interfering with the properties of the owners of these 
 roads on the ground that they do not compete, while maintaining an estab- 
 lishment which fixes a schedule of rates under which they could not compete, 
 I am unable to understand. 
 
 Nor can it be said that the fact that the railroads watered their stock, 
 and issued bonds disproportionate to the amount invested in the properties, 
 upon which they looked to pay dividends and interest out of rates, justifies 
 in any way the State to come forward and seize the properties and direct 
 their management. That such things were done is a matter solely between 
 the stockholders, the bondholders and the boards of directors. That this 
 field is a proper one in large concerns for exercise by the State in the 
 interest of fairness between man and man, I have already observed, but 
 in so far as the customer goes, the State has no business to regard either 
 stock, bonds or investments. The question as to the customer is what is 
 the service worth compared with other modes of transportation or travel; 
 and it would be an extreme case indeed, in which any bill could be framed 
 in a court of equity by a customer which would sustain him in refusing 
 to pay a rate upon the ground that the corporation held the only channel 
 of communication, and had cut him from its use by extortionate charges. 
 Indeed there are at present competitive forces with railroads which of them- 
 selves tend strongly to regulate rates of the latter. The traction truck, the 
 automobile, the electric railway have all made heavy inroads upon the 
 
 45 
 
business of steam traffic, and would naturally force a line of healthy 
 competition in rates by the latter in order that business should go forward. 
 If the steam roads should go down in this conflict, it would mean that the 
 public was being served by superior methods ; if they did not, there would 
 be a demonstration that through the free course of operation of the natural 
 forces in business, traffic had been built up to support the maintenance of 
 several modes of transportation. 
 
 The corollary of it all is that men in business should be left to conduct 
 their business. They should be permitted, without interference by the 
 State, to make all the money they fairly can. To concede that the State 
 possesses a right to fix the prices of public utility service, is to allow that 
 it has a similar right to fix the price of every service and of every commodity 
 exchanged amongst the people. The line where the State and citizen meet 
 becoming blurred, there is no guide; our drift moves toward Socialism. 
 Indeed under such conditions the owners of the public utility themselves 
 cry out for Socialism and beseech the State to take over the complete 
 ownership and operation of their properties, and restore them whatever 
 residue of their invested funds the State may be pleased to give them, 
 permit them to take their money and go elsewhere. We have seen the 
 instance of the State fixing the prices of wages in the minimum wage; 
 fixing the price of service in deciding rates ; it does not therefor surprise 
 us to find able men advocating the State fixing the prices of products. No 
 less personages than Attorney General Wickersham and Judge Gary, head 
 of the Steel Corporation, proposed in 1911 that the government, "in order 
 to control great aggregations of wealth, would find it to its advantage, and 
 might find it absolutely necessary to exercise over industrial organizations 
 the same power of regulation that it now exercises over interstate railroads. ' ' 
 That "since Congress had provided means for preventing discrimination 
 and unreasonableness in the prices charged for interstate transportation, it 
 might establish a similar legislative rule with respect of prices which are 
 the subject of interstate commerce." The fiction here brought forward to 
 serve the idea of investing the State with grounds of interference with 
 the rights of the citizen is "interstate commerce," the crossing by a product 
 of the boundary line of a State. One is reminded of the moral to the old 
 school reader story of the wolf and the lamb: "He who is determined to 
 do a wrong action is seldom at loss for a pretext." We can readily see 
 how quickly, with such a Federal law in existence, the States would adopt 
 laws applying the principle to all commodities not of an interstate char- 
 acter. The trouble is that men, under the influence of Socialistic dogma, 
 have lost their grasp upon the place where the right of the citizen ends, 
 and the function of the State begins. 
 
 If these gentlemen will look to it they will find that the ' i great aggre- 
 gations of wealth" which they assume it is for some reason desirable that 
 the government should control, rest, in whatever pernicious aspect they 
 may present to the public welfare, upon some type of monopoly, which if 
 
 46 
 
removed, there would be found nothing objectionable in the further exist- 
 ence of such aggregations, even supposing they would thereafter continue 
 to aggregate. They would find that what makes any of them menacing 
 is the fact that they stand to the industry of which they are a part in some 
 position superior to those who are trying to be their competitors. And 
 that this is due to their having in their exclusive control some kind of special 
 privilege resting in law; they own extensive areas of iron ore deposits, for 
 instance, only the slightest fraction of which they use, -or ever can use, : the 
 remaining they merely own to keep out of use, thereby preventing any 
 other steel maker from taking hold of and turning steel on the market 
 in competition with them ; the system which permits one man to seize upon 
 such area of the solid planet as he cannot use, and stand others off from 
 its use, is called land monopoly, and is tolerated by those legislatures whp 
 are adopting the divers Socialistic expedients to correct a condition which 
 they are thereby making worse. These gentlemen may also find that much 
 of this special privilege rested upon patents exclusive rights to the use of 
 inventions, sanctioned by the government, and which may have the quality 
 of converging entire industries into given hands. It was the wish of 
 our fathers of the Constitution, in order to encourage invention, to 
 reward inventors with monopolies of their inventions for limited periods. 
 But the desire was to recompense the inventor for an invention, not to pass 
 over into his hands an industry, as sometimes occurs where there is 
 improved a machine or process in production, the result of which is to 
 make obsolete former means, and transfer the industry to the concern of 
 the inventor. While this sort of thing may last but during the life of the 
 patent, yet it presents a severe aggravation to the disturbed conditions 
 growing out of the existence of monopolies, and it is by no means necessary 
 to encourage and promote invention. The patent laws should be changed 
 to afford the inventor a royalty upon his machines, with differentials 
 perhaps to those who first adopt it, in order to draw customers, but having 
 done this the government should become his agent. Anyone who wishes 
 to use an invention should have the privilege of doing so to whatever 
 extent he desires, by purchasing from the patent office, acting on behalf of 
 the inventor, the privilege of so doing. Here in a sweep we would have 
 the inventor rewarded, invention encouraged, the element of monopoly 
 removed, and the public would receive the benefit of the invention on terms 
 of fair competition. 
 
 With these and like special privileges removed, also rate discrim- 
 ination or rebates from common carriers, which the Interstate Commerce 
 Commission have properly extinguished as inequitable, there would dis- 
 appear all those elements that give one concern in industry an unequal 
 advantage over another, such advantage resting in some feature or incident 
 of law. Outside of law, such advantages as a producer may acquire from 
 superior methods, management, lawful combinations, or any other such 
 means, he is entitled to. It is proper and healthy that one man in business 
 
 47 
 
should try to advantage himself against another where the processes of 
 such advantage rest in his efforts along lawful lines. Rivalry is necessary 
 if progress is to be made, and if there be those in the industry who succumb 
 to rivalry they should be permitted to pass out, and with no regrets. But 
 rivalry should be based upon equal law, and upon equal opportunities to 
 the resources of nature, which are the common property of mankind, for 
 without these there can be no fairness, and we shall have overgrown and 
 menacing industries in one direction and stifled, struggling and underfed 
 attempts at industry in another, with the world between howling like mad 
 over the stress and strains of getting a living. 
 
 From the foregoing it is manifest that only in those cases where the 
 rights of one conflict with the rights of another is it proper that the State 
 should interfere, and then it should interpose to the holding of an equal 
 hand. The railroads owe the public nothing but service, and they should 
 be left to charge for it what they will, the rates determined by competition 
 which would inevitably attend conditions where competition was justified, 
 and where it was not, the ordinary business sense of increasing and building 
 up business would cause, and has generally caused, the utilities to hold their 
 rates at figures reasonable and just. The instances in which neither the 
 existence of competition nor business sense has relieved from a purblind 
 policy of extortionate rates are rare; and such methods do not in practice 
 long endure. These exceptional cases are no excuse for this wholesale 
 onslaught by Congress and the States upon the properties of the citizen, 
 the enormous losses to the investing and to the saving public, the disorgani- 
 zation of business, the destruction on a tremendous scale of the quality of 
 initiative and the driving of the nation headlong, through absorption of 
 the chiefest property we have, into the maelstrom of Socialism. 
 
 When we consider the arguments now being used in California by 
 those who oppose the eight-hour initiatives, we find certain of them no less 
 remarkable than the proposals themselves. Reprehensible as the business 
 may be, there are always those who will seek to deflect from themselves 
 an inconvenience or an injury by injuring others. We are told, for instance, 
 by the San Francisco Chronicle, voicing numerous speeches and pamphlets 
 which have been moved upon the matter, that : 
 
 "The opinion is freely expressed that the enactment of the proposed 
 eight-hour law would transfer our fruit industries to Orientals. It probably 
 would to the extent that Orientals are available. The simplest way to 
 e)vade the provisions of the proposed act would be to sell or lease the 
 orchards and vineyards to co-operative companies, in which each partner, 
 being an owner, could work as many hours as he pleased. The Orientals 
 are accustomed to co-operation of that kind and readily fall into it. White 
 men might gradually grow into it, but we have not the genius for co-opera- 
 tion that Orientals possess, and nothing is more certain than that farmers 
 who should find themselves thus driven from their occupation would make 
 leases to Orientals as rapidly as possible,"* etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, 
 
 'Chronicle, July 13th, 1914. 
 
 48 
 
all of which is most insufferable twaddle, and of the usual and characteristic 
 kind that is ladled out to the citizens of San Francisco whenever any 
 question affecting the welfare of the people arises. In a quarter of a century 
 of residence on this Coast, I have never known a public question to arise 
 in which the old Oriental bugaboo was not brought out of the garret, the 
 muslin and bladders of which it is composed touched up with red paint, 
 the thing stuffed with straw, and paraded up and down the open thorough- 
 fare for people to get frightened at. It was just one of these exhibitions 
 injected into a contest between two groups of capitalists over the field of a 
 public utility in San Francisco that produced the exclusion laws of Con- 
 gress against the Japanese, an incident which I have not space to enter 
 upon in this pamphlet. It is manifest from a reading of the Chronicle 
 editorial that the writer of it is not sincere. He does not believe what he 
 writes. Nor does anyone else of ordinary understanding believe it. It was, 
 indeed, not written to be believed; but was written to fan and keep alive 
 the race hatred of which the Chronicle is chiefly the author, against the 
 Oriental people on this Coast. Whenever an occasion arises that the Oriental 
 can be struck at from behind any barn door of public question, the 
 snickersnee is drawn from its sheath, and a scrawny editorial arm reaches 
 forth for a vicious swat. In this way the Oriental is kept dancing to 
 stinging blows, and the public stand around and look on. The adoption 
 of the eight-hour bills would cause inconvenience, annoyance and expense 
 to the farmers, and would have a tendency to discourage others from 
 entering the business of conducting farms and the several occupations in 
 which common labor is largely employed, with a tendency to narrow 
 production; but it would not drive anyone out of business.* It would be 
 found in practice that men would be employed and paid largely by the 
 hour, and work would go on just the same as theretofore ; a greater number 
 of men would have to be held on the ranch or at the lumber yards to do 
 the work than is now the case, but work would begin and quit at the same 
 hours then as now, and other than depriving the laborers severally from 
 earning as much as they do at present, or increasing the price of products 
 to the consumer, and possibly of both, the eight-hour laws would have no 
 effect. Legislation may hamper industry, but it cannot stop it. Where the 
 statutes are unreasonable and preventive of industrial operations if fully 
 
 *We own a small ranch in a neighborhood of small ranches. We formerly kept one 
 hired man for choring and keeping up the place, taking care of poultry, etc., throughout 
 the year. In the haying season, of course, we hired about five extra men. Now, with the 
 employers' liability law we are afraid to keep hired help, for should some accident befall 
 the men, for which we were absolutely not responsible, we would be held liable. Conse- 
 quently, one laborer has lost a good steady .job and good home, and if the proposed 
 eight-hour law goes through instead of hiring the extra men for haying, we shall exchange 
 work with our neighbors who formerly hired help and thus among five or six farme s 
 do all our own work as best we can, and what we can't do we shall leave undone, which 
 will mean the loss of a few jobs to the laborer. If the co-operative plan is not practical, 
 instead of hay, grain, and fruit we will raise hogs or stock that requires little help to 
 manage. Such a measure would be absolutely ruinous to the orchardist or vineyardist 
 who is dependent on help. Formerly when we kept a steady man, we kept the lawn cut 
 and orchard plowed and ditches cleaned and many things my husband has to neglect now, 
 but we feel we must do the best we can and take no chance of some employee getting 
 injured and paying him damages which we are not able to afford. Neither can we afford 
 to carry extra insurance for some other man. My husband carries several thousand to 
 protect his own family, but why should a small land owner who has accumulated a little 
 
 49 
 
enforced, they will not be enforced. Justices, judges and juries will refuse 
 to find facts in any case to constitute a violation of the law. 
 
 The Socialist program is replete with the idea of "the people rule." 
 We have as a part of their scheme of things the initiative, referendum and 
 recall, a referendum to repeal national laws; the latter to be amended by 
 "a majority of voters in a majority of States," etc. The nature of these 
 proposals, the first group of which are now a part of the law of California 
 as of many other States, is to change the government from a representative 
 organization, which is the character of the Commonwealth, to a democracy 
 into which we have, as I remarked, largely by reason of these provisions, 
 been degraded. 
 
 We have seen that by the Socialist's plan "the people," by "direct 
 action," are made the real determinators of the legislation that exists or 
 which may be brought into existence. This is through the initiative and 
 referendum. Another order of plebiscite is upon all officials. While elected 
 for definite terms, they are subject at any time to a new elective contest 
 before the voters to determine whether or not they shall remain in office, 
 not until the completion of their respective terms, but until some enemy 
 circulates another petition amongst his partisans and procures the necessary 
 signatures to subject him to a further contest upon the same question. 
 These provisions have been adopted in many States, among which is Cali- 
 fornia, and we have a specimen instance of the operation of the initiative 
 in the proposed eight-hour measures which we are here discussing. Had 
 the initiative not existed in this State^ these proposals would not have been 
 before us. They never would have been presented to us in their character 
 of bills. Some Socialist legislature might have enacted them into law, but 
 Socialism has not yet developed, even in this State with its Progressive 
 administration, to the length of legislative adoption of such offerings as 
 these, and before that day should have arrived it might be hoped that the 
 avenues of discussion of the properness of such policy would be wider open 
 on the side of the individualists than they are today. All of these devices 
 are predicated upon the hypothesis of mistrust by the people of the persons 
 whom, they elect to office. It is assumed that legislaturemen and Judges 
 and others may be tied to monetary interests in conflict with the welfare 
 of the commonality; and these provisions are not only to place in the latter 's 
 hands a power to summarily eject them from office, but also to efface their 
 
 home by working long hours and saving his money be obliged to carry insurance to protect 
 some man who has had the same chance in life but has spent his money perhaps for 
 whiskey. If the laborer wants insurance protection let him take out his own insurance 
 and pay for it like a decent member of society and not like a public charge. There has 
 been enough imposition in past legislation on the decent citizen who has tried to accumu- 
 late without enacting this ruinous eight-hour law. They can argue all they want to that 
 we should hire more men for the same work. We cannot afford to do it and we will not 
 do it. I am speaking from personal knowledge. Since the liability law passed, among 
 our own acquaintances, I know eight farmers who formerly kept a steady man who do 
 not keep one at all now. If a canvass were taken of the whole State, I think you would 
 find thousands who have managed to get along without help rather than take the extra 
 risk. With an eight-hour law there will be tens of thousands. Why should a woman 
 have to cook for three or four men instead of two to do work that two men ought to do? 
 The farmer's wife will have to work harder than any of the hired help. If the farm 
 laborer thinks he is being benefited by such legislation he should wake up. A Woman 
 Reader in Pacific Rural Press, Aug. 9, 1914. 
 
 50 
 
official acts and to effect, by a different means from any action of theirs, 
 achievements which they might not be willing to perform. The theory 
 assumes supreme wisdom on part of "the people," at least to the extent 
 of what is, and what is not, for their own benefit. It is the experience of 
 ages, however, that no assumption is more erroneous than this. It has been 
 tried again and again in the history of government, has always produced 
 its disappointments and its tyrannies, and has come down to us in this 
 period bearing the stamp of its true character, demagoguery. Mr. A. F. 
 Morrison, of the San Francisco bar, in an interesting brochure* issued by 
 him a year ago, quite the same as I am putting out these pamphlets, refers 
 us to Aristotle's work on Politics, in which this greatest of the Grecian 
 thinkers comments upon these references of government to the multitude, 
 and shows their working out, just as we are experiencing them wherever in 
 the United States they exist. Aristotle says : 
 
 "Another kind of democracy is where, other things being the same, 
 the multiude, and not the law, bears away. This comes to pass when, 
 instead of the law, the mere resolves of! the popular assembly are sovereign ; 
 and this is the work of the demagogues ; for popular governments, in which 
 the constitution and laws are supreme, afford no place for demagogues, but 
 the best citizens are there in authority. Where, however, the laws are not 
 sovereign, demagogues spring up. In such a government the people are 
 a sort of many-headed monarch; for the many rule not as each, but as all. 
 Whether Homer had in mind this kind of government, when he censures 
 a plurality of rulers, or whether he meant that in which many individuals 
 bear sway, is not clear. Now, such a people being in truth a monarch, will, 
 of course, play the kind ; and inasmuch as it is controlled by no law readily 
 becomes despotic. A democracy of this description bears tlie same analogy 
 to a popular government, based upon the supremacy of law, that a tyranny 
 bears to the legitimate forms of monarchy. In both the animus, or moral 
 character, is the same; both exercise despotism over the better class of 
 citizens ; and the resolves of mass meetings are, in the one, what edicts and 
 decrees are in the other. The demagogue too, and the flatterer of the tyrant, 
 bear the closest analogy; they are, indeed, at heart, the same; and these 
 have the principal power; each in their respective forms of government, 
 court favorites with the absolute monarch and demagogues w T ith a people 
 such as I have described. The demagogues are, in fact, the guilty authors 
 of this degeneracy of popular government, by referring everything to the 
 mere pleasure of the people, without respect to law or right. Thus they 
 aggrandize themselves, and become mighty ; by ruling the popular opinion, 
 they rule the State; for the multitude obeys them! If they wish to over- 
 throw an upright magistrate, they accuse him not before the law, but before 
 the people, which, they say, ought to be his judge ; the people, well pleased, 
 entertain the wrongful proposal, and thus all just authority is dissolved! 
 He who should blame us for calling such a democracy a State, would, 
 certainly, not censure without good reason; for where laws do not govern 
 there is no state." 
 
 It is through the instrumentality of these speciosities, that the govern- 
 ment of the country has largely passed from the character of the Common- 
 wealth into the region of the democracy, and is now on the high road to 
 
 ""The Recall of Judges." 
 
 51 
 
that absolutism which demagoguery always evolves. By the processes which 
 these injections of the mass into the affairs of the State, other than by the 
 selection of representatives, always induce, we find here in California that 
 government has already gotten beyond the grasp of the proletariat who is 
 assumed to control it. We have the spectacle of "direct action" in primary 
 elections converting multitudes of people into politicians, besieging citizens 
 for signatures to petitions to get upon the official tickets, these tickets 
 sometimes so vast that they comprise scores of names, this machinery 
 planned upon the principle that the group of public offices comprise a sort 
 of a pap barrel, into which every hungry scrofa might struggle to get his 
 snout. This order of politics may seem to us a mere scramble for offices; 
 but to the student of the rise and fall of nations in the world's history it is 
 a well recognized and significant phenomenon; it is a symptom of political 
 disorganization and national decline, and was presented at the close of the 
 Roman Republic, when, as Mommsen says, demagoguery so flourished that 
 ' ' it became quite a trade. " " The Roman commonwealth, ' ' he says, ' ' exhib- 
 ited political disorganization, with an unenviable clearness." 
 
 Another phase of direct action is that in which the voter is told that 
 it has become his duty to the State to read, meditate and decide upon the 
 advisability of adopting a considerable tome of legislative proposals which 
 the elected statesmen, erstwhile charged with the duty of determining the 
 wisdom of such measures, have passed on to him for his selection. Obviously 
 the citizen is not qualified to do this work. The few who have the learning 
 to pass upon the desirability of the several bills as laws, rarely have the 
 time to devote to the work, and the most scrutinizing refrain from passing 
 judgment on measures upon which they have heard no adequate debate. 
 The vast multitude do not read the provisions. They vote yes or no 
 according to the confidence they hold in the ruling power, the head of the 
 administration of the State. That which he programs and advises will be 
 carried into effect; presently their votes will not be necessary save in the 
 most nominal way, wholly ineffective to stay any cause against the ruler's 
 will. Such transpires by what may seem to be perfectly natural processes.* 
 We see it now working in the Socialist calls for the "short ballot." This 
 is not other than the vesting in the hands of the head of the State the 
 power of appointment of officials who under the representative system were 
 elective, were chosen by the people. The demand grows out of the multi- 
 tudinous mass of names which go upon the official tickets under a system 
 presumed to be based upon equality of opportunity and letting the people, 
 as distinguished from a nominating convention under the Commonwealth, 
 choose the candidates for office. The plan is to curtail the elective offices 
 on whose candidates the people must pass, thereby shorten the ballot ; the 
 
 ""Caesar's acts were unconstitutional ! Yes ; but Constitutions were made for men, rot 
 men for Constitutions, and Cicero had long seen that the Constitution was at an end. 
 Froude's Caesar, p. 376. This is precisely the talk we now hear going on all over the 
 United States concerning the American Constitution. 
 
 52 
 
result, the head of the government acquires a new power to fill the offices 
 with his partisans and place the groundwork for a new political aristocracy. 
 
 Indeed one could not conceive of a more effectively arranged scheme 
 for installing a national absolutism than that devised by the Socialist 
 platform. About everybody working for the government in a salaried job, 
 the government centered in a single chamber which holds all powers, these 
 exercised by a ruling faction, topped by the presiding officer of this assem- 
 bly, the only check on the operations of this monarch being "the people" 
 whom he employs! Let any subject under such a regime dare vote against 
 his proposals, and very short shrift would be made of him when the govern- 
 ment detectives should have spied him out. 
 
 We may observe how these influences are working out in the direction 
 in which they have thus far found practical expression, namely the Pro- 
 gressive party. This movement has been taken from the Socialists, and in 
 certain States, California among them, has installed the initiative, refer- 
 endum and recall, which is an overcoming of the system of representative 
 government. What has been the results of this innovation? It manifests 
 itself as a strong centralizing movement, converging the power of the State 
 into single hands, as note its effects in Oregon, where it has made a State 
 boss of Mr. W. S. U'Ren, in California's experiences with Governor John- 
 son, and Wisconsin's with Governor La Follette. Charles M. Hollings- 
 worth, after a careful tracing and analysis of this movement, correctly 
 concludes as follows : 
 
 ' i What the ' progressive ' reform movement really does is to provide ways 
 and means by which a majority of the electorate may commission one man, 
 who promises them betterment of their condition, with plenary, unrestricted 
 powers to undertake to carry out the promise, generally by voting him into 
 a leading executive position ; and this with the implied understanding that 
 he is personally to direct and control the legislative, and at need the judicial 
 functions, as well as exercise the executive functions of government in 
 achieving the desired end. The movement is a first step towards personal 
 absolutism. It is to be considered as a first step only because the commis- 
 sion given the individual is only for a limited period of time. The second 
 and fully-consummating step will be taken when the commission is made 
 perpetual. " : 
 
 It may be safely predicted that the Progressive party will not overcome 
 the Socialist party nor stop its growth. If either of the two is to pass 
 away the disappearing one will be the Progressive and not the Socialist 
 party. The real quality and character of the Progressive party, and for 
 which it stands, is the absorption by the State of the values and heart of 
 business, while permitting the shell to remain in the hands of its owners. 
 In other words to "govern," "regulate" and control it through commis- 
 sions, while its operation is proceeded with by its proprietors, who are 
 permitted to earn through such operations just sufficient, in salaries and 
 interest on invested capital, with profits carefully eliminated, to hold them 
 
 *The So-called Progressive Movement; Annals of the Americna Academy of Political 
 and Social Science, September, 1912. 
 
 53 
 
to the work they are performing. As between this method and that of the 
 Socialists who take outright the business from its owners, paying them for 
 that which the State condemns, the latter is by far the more honest and 
 commendable, and it is that condition into which the other will inevitably 
 tend ; for neither the public nor the businesses will be satisfied with matters 
 being run on the Progressive lines. At that time, if not before, the 
 Socialists and Progressives will get together, and this union will be as the 
 junction of Wellington and Blucher in the Waterloo of the Constitution. 
 
 But after we have said all this against the Socialists and their move- 
 ment, does it not remain a fact that the laboring people do not participate 
 to the extent that it is fair and just that they should in the comforts and 
 benefits which civilization has brought forth? Is it not true that the few 
 acquire wealth, while many are denied necessities? And is there not 
 some arrangement possible under civilization whereby men who wish 
 dmployment can always get it, and at wages which would maintain them 
 and their families upon a plane in which they could partake in a 
 moderate degree of these benefits? I reply, assuredly there is, and of 
 one fact we may be certain, that is : there is need in the commuity for the 
 services of every human being that exists, and of all appliances, attributes 
 and potentialities which he can now bring, or ever bring, to bear in his 
 task of serving his fellow. The wants of man are never gratified and can 
 never be gratified. Appease them today, tomorrow imagination has already 
 created new fields of fantasy and need. And all men wish after some 
 fashion or order of taste or adaptability, to serve their fellows. What then 
 is this clog interposed between men who w r ant service and those who wish 
 to serve, that impairs and in large measure prevents this mutual rendition ? 
 Into this we shall in some degree inquire. For the present let me remark 
 that it must not be taken that all this great labor movement, with its many 
 proposals for changes in laws and systems, with a large number of those 
 changes already having been effected that this is altogether unworthy and 
 harmful, and the entire should be denounced. It was but natural that with 
 the rise of the light of civilization over the world, the great mass of the 
 laboring people should be awakened also, and should reach out their hands 
 in the direction of that light and try to partake of it ; and that they would 
 proceed to the getting of it in what seemed to them the most direct and 
 immediate way they could reach it. The cry which has gone up from them 
 is a wail of complaint, of protest ; a struggle to move forward ; a lifting up 
 of their wounds and oppressions and showing them to the world, and 
 bringing forward their massed power to halt the world to notice them. 
 They have, indeed, achieved great results. Industry is now run under 
 conditions more sanitary, more free from discomfort and injury than here- 
 tofore; factory conditions are described in many quarters as "ideal"; we 
 hear employers saying that their employees "must be treated like men," 
 and there is a more scrupulous regard for justice existing now than in the 
 
 54 
 
past between those who in the law are known as masters, and those who 
 are known as servants. 
 
 * 
 
 But upon the whole the labor movement has been economically wrong, 
 and it can never attain to its real benefit by pursuing the lines upon which 
 it has been and is now proceeding. A few members comprising the heart 
 of the labor unions, who by reason of the power of the unions receive high, 
 even exorbitant wages, feel that they benefit by the condition, but in truth 
 they do not; while a vast aggregate suffers through intermittent work, or 
 no work at all, and the constricting processes proceeding in industry ever 
 tend to lessen the number of the employed and to increase the million of 
 the unemployed. 
 
 And the reason is that labor, in trying to work its way out of its 
 difficulties, has been going in the wrong direction, albeit that direction has 
 seemed to be the one promising the most immediate returns. Economics, 
 indeed, possess that peculiarity. As in the realm of ethics, its true effects 
 are not the immediate ones. It shall seem to prosper me if I take for my 
 use my neighbor 's coin ; but in truth I have not helped myself, though with 
 it I have bought, and have eaten, the good things I desired; for I have 
 deprived him of his ability to accept and pay for my services which he 
 needs; and I have filled him with hatred towards me, which makes it 
 impossible that he shall be of further assistance to me. So in ;this field of 
 labor we see that higher than economic wages drive up the price of the 
 commodity which the laborer must buy with his wages, and which com- 
 modity he receives, therefore, comprises his real wages. Economic wages 
 may be defined as that share of the product which goes to the labor put 
 upon it. It is the "forty per cent of the catch" in the halibut fisheries of 
 which we have spoken. The price of the product, hence the nominal share 
 of the laborer, is determined by competition in the commodity market, 
 which prevents an excess of profits, as I explained in my Japan pamphlet. 
 The laborer can, as I have said, never get more than the share of labor, 
 and this will be paid him freely, provided the door of opportunity to 
 labor be kept open. And singularly enough, in this incident, the laborer 
 himself has been one of the strongest influences in closing this door, his act 
 being, of course, of the purblind order. 
 
 The "door of opportunity" comprises several components. I have 
 noted them all in my Japan pamphlet, to which the reader is referred. It 
 consists first of initiative, second of immigration, and third of land. Initia- 
 tive or incentive may be said to be that quality in the human which moves 
 him to progress; which stirs him to new enterprise; which prompts him to 
 take industrial risks; to venture forth. It is a psychological quality and 
 may be readily discouraged and suppressed by restrictive laws and condi- 
 tions that limit opportunity. It is a fact that the whole course of the 
 Socialist labor movement has been antagonistic to initiative. It has been 
 directed to taking profit out of industry, reducing returns at that end of 
 
 55 
 
enterprise which works with capital to mere interest upon investment and 
 wages for personal services. Accumulated capital has been further assailed 
 by various forms of taxes; by death dues, and super income taxes which 
 have no other justification for existing than to punish men for accumulating 
 wealth. Profit is the fund which is the basis of initiative. Essentially it is 
 a fund which may be lost or won in business. An enterprise may have no 
 profits, not even salary for those who initiate it, and often capital itself 
 is lost. Profits in one business, therefore, become capital in another; and 
 where the State operates to repress profits it wars on business, and destroys 
 incentive. Men should be left to make all the profit in business that they 
 can ; it is the lure that spurs them on to higher and better endeavors. It is 
 assumed that when a man is a millionaire he has taken a million away from 
 some number of people, and that it is withdrawn in some fashion from the 
 common stock of the country; that people are injured by his having it. 
 This is not a fact, for, as I pointed out in my "National Tendency" 
 pamphlet, all the millionaire can get out of his possessions is what he 
 and his family eat, wear and use; and these uses are susceptible of only a 
 very limited application of wealth. The volume of his fortune is in 
 industry, operating under directive control, and creating in thousands of 
 channels opportunity to labor. This quality of initiative, by removing the 
 spur of profit, of individual accumulation, Socialism would practically 
 extinguish within the nation, and thereupon would be delivered a fatal 
 blow to civilization, for it is upon incentive that civilization is built. 
 Socialists answer this criticism of their program by asserting that there is 
 nothing in Socialism incompatible with the offering of any special reward 
 for special social service. We need go no further. The incentive which 
 moves a nation cannot be built upon government offering rewards. Incen- 
 tive must abound on every hand ; men must be free to create opportunities 
 out of the very atmosphere of conditions. The fullest liberty, the most com- 
 plete individualism, is necessary for its healthy existence. Aside from 
 this statement we are told that the incentives remaining under Socialism 
 will be "joy of work;" "satisfaction of having w r on where others failed;" 
 "the instinct and passion for creation, discovery and self expression;" 
 * ' symbols of honor ; ' ' and notes that ' ' our great manufacturing plants have 
 their own departments of inventors," as though inventive genius were a 
 matter of clerk hire. The reply to all of this is that invention is not the 
 only field of initiative ; initiative must abound, and must have all the prizes 
 that freedom may give to bring it forward in its full force and effect. 
 
 It is to the interest of labor further to keep open the door of immigra- 
 tion of all laboring peoples, a matter which I have also discussed in my 
 "Japan" pamphlet, and which I have repeatedly emphasized with reference 
 to our intercourse on this Coast with the peoples of the Orient. The 
 foreign laborer by joining in industry creates products which call for 
 other labor and thus provides and promotes opportunity. The laborers 
 
 56 
 
can do nothing more harmful to their own interests than by pursuing their 
 policy of opposing immigration upon the theory that a laborer coming into 
 the country takes the job away from a workman here. He does nothing 
 of the kind. The immigrant furnishes jobs, which but for his labor would 
 not exist. He raises wages and dees not lower them; he does not derogate 
 or repress the native laborer, but he drives him to a higher status and 
 makes life easier and more abundant to him. 
 
 The third feature is land ; and this is a matter of extreme importance. 
 Where, indeed, the Socialist demands present any aspect of a real wrong 
 as their basis, it is our duty to recognize it and show it forth. We cannot 
 overcome Socialism by ignoring or defending the errors in our polity and 
 systems which have brought it about; and none can deny that in our field 
 of production and distribution, hence in our civilization, there is "some- 
 thing wrong" which has given Socialism and labor unionism a real status 
 as a criticism. We have noted that the Socialist platform calls for 
 "collective ownership of land where practicable, where impracticable the 
 appropriation and collection of all rentals held for speculation and exploita- 
 tion. " This proposal is impracticable and unjust, though perhaps just as 
 reasonable as many of the others which the Socialist designs. There is no 
 question that the existing land system is one of the large reasons for the 
 untoward industrial conditions which prevail today, in that the owner of 
 land at present absorbs a value for which he gives no service, which is 
 deposited upon the land by society, and which is appropriated from labor. 
 Let me illustrate : The Colorado Eiver runs through a vast tract of desert 
 and unoccupied land. It is a muddy reddish stream, carrying at all 
 seasons large quantities of water, winding its way through low banks and 
 an open country of gently sloping plains. The only vegetation this land 
 will grow is the cacti, a few weeds of the gummy and sticky sort, here and 
 there a spear of some tough grass, and sage brush. It may be said to be a 
 raw product oi- nature, a bare area of the surface of the planet, fitting 
 complement to the arid sky which bends above it. When I rode over those 
 mesas twenty years ago I was told that this land could be bought for five 
 dollars per acre, but that anyone who would pay five dollars for it would, 
 in the common estimate of the country, be "a fool," for it would graze 
 neither cattle nor sheep. A few years later some genius came along and 
 conceived the idea that if he should go up stream, put a pipe in the river, 
 crook the end of the pipe and lift it over the top of the bank on to the 
 mesa, carry the free end down along the plain for a mile or two until the 
 latter became lower than the end in the river, water could be made to flow 
 and it would keep on flowing through the pipe; in other words, he con- 
 structed a siphon ; and the application of this contrivance put the lands of 
 the desert under irrigation. It was found that when the lands were vitalized 
 by the waters they would yield prodigious crops, and as soon as this was 
 discovered, people to cultivate the land began to pour into the country. 
 
 57 
 
Much of the land was owned in Yuma and Needles, and the proprietors 
 who possessed these acreages suddenly found themselves possessed of large 
 wealth, for the lands had risen in value from $5 per acre to $75 per acre, 
 to $100 and even $150 per acre ; and a client who called upon me recently 
 stated that there was no more opportunity in that country, that the land 
 owners down there were charging $30 per acre per year rent, besides cost 
 of water, to grow cotton upon the land, and people were now moving out. 
 Here then there was accreted upon the land a large value the income 
 of which the land owner was collecting. The amount he was receiving was 
 not set by himself, it grew upon competition of the laborers applying to 
 him for access to the land. The more they would yield the higher he would 
 raise the price, the condition being not unlike that of the bid and ask on 
 the stock exchange. Occasional sales or rentals would occur, but for the 
 most part the land owner could not be satisfied and the land in wide areas 
 was held idle. The bidders would give to him as much of the product of 
 the land or its value as would allow them to retain from it a living and 
 a little more; and where land was sold outright this yield was in some 
 rough way capitalized as the price per acre. The status of this owner in 
 the business is an interesting inquiry. He did not make the land nor did 
 he succeed to the right of any maker. He did not make the water; it was 
 flowing idly along its bed to the Gulf of California. He did not even own 
 the pipe, conceive the idea of its utility, or dig any of the ditches that 
 carried the waters over the lands. What did he do? He held a paper 
 under the authority of the State, that said he had a right to forbid the 
 use of this space of the earth by labor; this gave him the right to admit 
 labor to it upon his terms, and he took the most that the applicant could 
 be moved to give. Obviously here is a factor who is out of place. All 
 men have an equal and natural right to the use of the earth. Such is one 
 of those inherent and inalienable rights which the Constitution asserts. He 
 can never barter it away. When he entered the world he acquired a right 
 to live ; no one could rightfully kill him. His living imported the free use 
 of three things, viz. : the use of sufficient of the air to breathe ; no man has 
 a right to bottle up his atmosphere and sell it to him at so much per cubic 
 foot for breathing purposes. He had a right to sufficient of sunshine to 
 afford ,him light and warmth; none has a right to surround him with 
 effects which shut him from the sun, and sell him sunlight by the kilowatt 
 hour. He had a right to sufficient of the earth from which to draw his 
 sustenance, and no one has a right to deny him the use of ample of this 
 element from which to sustain his life, or to interpose between the man 
 and the soil and say he shall exist upon it only by sufferance and 
 the payment of a charge. These elements are fundamental to his 
 very existence and to ignore either of them is to strike at the 
 very root of his liberties. A society which does not regard them will as a 
 consequence display multifarious phenomena of social disturbance. 
 
 58 
 
The fund which the land lord receives is the fund which is apportioned 
 to land, and which the laborer upon the land is willing to pay; otherwise 
 the latter would not occupy the land, but would leave it. The net injury 
 to the occupant in the operation is that after having paid up to the limit 
 to the land owner, a much higher rent than he should rightfully pay, the 
 tax collector heaves in sight and collects from him for support of 
 the State, levying his charges upon the products of his labor. And 
 the fund so withdrawn is no trifling matter, it is a large, a vast 
 amount. Consider the enormous sums which are yearly paid the State upon 
 improvements, personal property, licenses, income tax, tariff and internal 
 revenue, taxes upon estates of decedents, taxes upon immigrants, every 
 vestige of which, save where they bear upon the value of land, are erroneous, 
 unjustifiable, in the teeth of the principles of the Constitution, and should 
 be swept away. Aside from the oppression of a double taxation, the excess 
 of which must be added to the cost of the product, hence increases its price, 
 the laborer for every man who works with his hands or with his mind is 
 a laborer is injured by the holding by the land owner of land out of use, 
 whereby labor fails of employment, initiative is impaired, and production 
 is held down; while as I remark, rent is driven up greatly higher than it 
 should be, an excess which really does the land owner no good, for if this 
 condition were cured he would get less rent, but with the money he received 
 he could buy vastly more than at present, for prices then would be low 
 instead of high, as is the case under the existing system. A system, there- 
 fore, which places in the hands of one man a swor<J wherewith to drive back 
 labor from vacant areas of the common earth, is not such as can find any 
 support under a rational interpretation of the Constitution of the United 
 States. It is true that under the Constitution the assertion of this right 
 has been neglected; it was not indeed recognized in this age until it was 
 pointed out by Henry George and is not commonly conceded now; but we 
 have seen the vast and rapid progress Socialism has made, the menacing 
 proportions it presents at the present day, and we realize that its excuse 
 for being is that men are denied livings and that in justice they should have 
 a larger scope of opportunity than they now possess, and here we find 
 ensconced at the roots of monopoly the land owner possessed of a power 
 given him by the law, to keep men off of the natural earth, and to prevent 
 the great basic storehouse of nature from receiving the embrace of 
 labor in the bringing forth of wealth for the service of man. Very 
 clearly the value which accreted to those Colorado lands belonged 
 to the people who created it. It did not belong to the man in 
 Yuma. Land value is essentially a social creation. It cannot arise nor 
 exist except through society. It belongs absolutely to the State and, from 
 the standpoint of ownership, the Socialists are completely right when they 
 demand that the State shall take every vestige of it, a demand, however, 
 that is impossible of being effective. There are in fact two forms of value ; 
 social value and individualistic value. Social value is land value, while 
 
 59 
 
individualistic value is all other values that exist. As between these t\>o 
 the social is immensely greater than all other values. Take San Francisco 
 for instance. The assessed value of land in the city and county of San 
 Francisco is $304,579,974. That of improvements, $165,394,837. Personal 
 property, $71,816,672. Improvements and personal property together, 
 $237,211,509; and these values may be taken as an index of such values 
 throughout the country, and relatively so in other countries. In Vancouver, 
 for instance, land value (real estate) is $150,456,660. Improvements are 
 $76,199,743. Much of that which is assessed as personal property is not 
 value at all, but tokens, mere representatives of value existing elsewhere, 
 as stocks, bonds, bills, notes, solvent credits, non-metallic money, etc. Value 
 abides only in things, not in evidences of things, or in promises, beliefs, 
 hopes and aspirations; and land values are things, intangible though they 
 be, and the buildings upon them and their contents or those objects which 
 are otherwise upon, or that which is within the land, is and are all things. 
 The trouble with our economic scholasticists which causes them to embrace 
 Socialism, is that they do not give thought to this enormous fund of land 
 value, to analyze it, to consider its existence and to regard its relation to 
 government and to the economic life of society. Painfully enough, this 
 school has been generally antagonistic to considering it at all, have denied 
 that it should be utilized by society, that society has any right to its 
 possession, or that if treated as a social fund, and labor and its effects were 
 thereby relieved from taxation, the change would make any particular 
 difference. Nevertheless land value is the natural fund provided by the 
 operations of God for the support of society in its public aspects; and like 
 all of God's gifts to man it is abundant, it is bounteous. It rises in extent 
 just as civilization rises, just as the public social necessities of man through 
 the presence of civilization increase and multiply. Today it is with us, in a 
 rough way, about $1000 per head of population ; one hundred years ago, it 
 was far less than this ; a century hence it may be $2000 per head of popula- 
 tion. The site of San Francisco today has a value of $304,579,974 and this 
 is its taxable value, the true or selling value is far greater than this, perhaps 
 half again as great. But let us stampede the inhabitants of San Francisco 
 like a lot of wild horses and they gallop off, or we flush them as a flock of 
 birds and they fly away, and all the buildings and else, by some magic of 
 apports dissolve into fluidic atoms and go with them ; and in their place we 
 bring in 400,000 naked and savage Hottentots with their huts on poles, 
 thatched with grass or turf. Can you tell me what the value of the site of 
 San Francisco would be with such a population? For what hat full of 
 beads, package of tobacco, or two-bit Waterbury alarm clock with its buzzing 
 bell, could we then buy the site of the Crocker National Bank! Very 
 obviously whatever value the land of San Francisco would then have would 
 not be due to the population upon it, but to the presence of the civilization 
 of today upon adjacent areas, and to the prospects of routing the Hotten- : 
 tots, and restoring the land to the people who had left it. 
 
 60 
 
The perfecting of an arrangement whereby these values upon the lands 
 of the Colorado could go to the occupants of the lands, that is, to the State 
 as their agent, at the same time the unused lands be kept open for settlement 
 at their original values, is a mere scheme of taxation into which I will not 
 go in this paper ; suffice it to say that had such a method been in vogue on 
 the banks of the river, people would not have ceased moving into the 
 country until every acre of the land was occupied; there would have been 
 no one coming out and proceeding elsewhere because "there is no oppor- 
 tunity in that country any more, rents have gone up too high."* This 
 system running through the entire industrial world, being everywhere and 
 at all times present, comprising one class who are levying an impost upon 
 industry up to the full limit it will bear, and rendering no service for that 
 which they receive, this accounts for much of the distortion which we find 
 in the industrial realm and in society generally today. I shall not go into 
 it further here, for it is fully discussed in the writings of Mr. George and 
 extensively comprised in the propaganda of the Single Taxers. 
 
 *The author would like it understood that he is not a single taxer. If there be any 
 group in the field of economic or administrative thought by which he would designate his 
 factional adherence, it would be that of the defenders of the Constitution ; wherefore he 
 would call himself a Constitutionalist. And in so saying he does not wish to in any wise 
 disparage the magnificent work which has been and is being done by the single taxers, 
 nor to forego in any degree his profound admiration for the character and teachings of 
 Henry George. But the single tax doctrine, while in the main correct, embodies certain 
 principles with which the author must remain ever at variance. Primarily, I am opposed 
 to the doctrine of the State absorbing the entire of economic rent, upon the theory that 
 this rent belongs to society which has created it, and not to the land owner who is 
 receiving it. The State is entitled to draw from society as taxes only that sum necessTry 
 for its economical administration. While it is proper that this should be drawn wholly 
 and solely from the rent of land, yet the quantity which the State should takp should be 
 limited by its needs, and not by the quantity that exists in the hands of the land owner. 
 As relief of all other forms of property from taxation would stimulate the growth of the 
 latter, thereby greatly increase land value, and correspondingly increase economic rent, the 
 fact is that taxation concentrated upon rent would shortly not be felt by those who pay it ; 
 and this principle, so much dreaded by many city lot owners, would be, and is being found, 
 in operation, not to permanently decrease their incomes. A government which would take 
 the entire of economic rent would be wasteful and tyrannous, the only avenue through 
 which such probably could be spent being in these ruthless extravagances which characterize 
 modern war and its preparations. Otherwise than this, every expenditure made by govern- 
 ment effective for human good would reflect increase upon the rental value of land, and so 
 provide a larger fund of economic rent. The land owner, however, whom the drawing of 
 the support of government from economic rent would harm, is the speculative proprietor of 
 vacant or under-used areas. This operator, while not losing such of his estate, would be 
 obliged to sell or lease to users at such prices as he could get, upon pain of relinquishing 
 altogether his properties to the government, and this not because taxation would take all 
 the rental value of the land, but it would take more than he could afford to pay and hold 
 the land idle. This is considered by many highly confiscatory, and very awful, but I have 
 never been able to see, from his status in society, how 'he is entitled to any special sym- 
 pathy. He is that man who occupies a wrong social position, and who is permitted to 
 occupy such only so long as the wrong is unrecognized ; when society perceives where the 
 error lies, it is its right and its duty to correct that error, and if there are those who 
 immediately lose by the change, they have the recompense that thereafter they can live in 
 a state of society thus far ordered on right lines. To "compensate" him, would be to take 
 from thos-e whose position has been right and give it to those whose position has been 
 wrong, a thing that is unheard of in administrative changes and reforms. He should be 
 glad to escape with what he has wrongfully taken, and not find himself called upon to 
 restore to society any portion of such fund. 
 
 To other phases of the single taxers' program, viz., the ownership and operation by 
 municipalities and other governments of public utilities, I am wholly antagonistic. The 
 business of government is to govern, not to go into industrial pursuits to the shutting away 
 from thence of its people. All such projects are highly Socialistic and harmful, notwith- 
 standing they may seem momentarily to advantage the public. Nor am I in accord with 
 the single taxers linking up with the Socialists and labor unionists, assisting them in their 
 strikes against "capital," and forming escorts for Mother Joneses and other et ceteras, as 
 was done recently in New York. The Single Tax of today is upon a different plane from 
 what it was when Henry George died, if its sympathies are now active in this direction. 
 The Single Taxer is not a communist, he is an individualist, and, propertly, a Constitution- 
 alist ; since the doctrine that society should be supported from that fund which only society 
 creates and can create, and that which a man acquires by earning or by gift is absolutely 
 his, and should be inviolably his this doctrine is in the highest sense a doctrine of the 
 Constitution, and there is no question that the trend of the intelligent thought of the 
 country is to so recognize it. 
 
 61 
 
That the course in which the laborers have been and are proceeding 
 is effective of no results of real benefit to themselves or to the nation, is 
 shown by the fact, that in those countries where labor unionism and its 
 attendant Socialism have had their longest trials and have attained their 
 highest development, there poverty and human misery rankles most. For 
 fifty years the labor union has been active in English industry, growing 
 year by year more absolute, until it has for two decades been dominant, 
 even to moving to its ends the law. Samuel P. Orth, in his "Socialism 
 and Democracy in Europe, ' ' says : 
 
 "There is no country in Europe where there is more agitation about 
 Socialism than there is in England today. It is discussed everywhere; 
 almost the entire time of Parliament during the past few years has been 
 taken up with more or less ' Socialistic ' legislation. The public mind is 
 steeped in it. There is more actually being done in England today toward 
 the 'Socialization' of property, and the State, than in any other Euro- 
 pean country. ' ' 
 
 And this has been the case for years. And yet after all this period we 
 hear the celebrated Chancellor of Great Britain, Mr. David Lloyd-George, 
 exclaim : 
 
 * ' Go outside the Highlands, you have hundreds of thousands of men 
 I wonder if there is not an odd million working unceasingly for wages 
 that barely bring them enough bread to keep themselves and their families 
 above privation. Generation after generation they see their children wither 
 before their eyes for lack of air, light, and space which is denied them by 
 men who have square miles of it for their own use. Take our cities, the 
 great cities of a great Empire. Eight in the heart of them everywhere you 
 have ugly quagmires of human misery, seething, rotting, at last fermenting. 
 We pass them by every day on our way to our comfortable homes. We 
 forget that divine justice never passed by a great wrong. You can hear, 
 carried by the breezes from the north, the south, the east, and the west, 
 ominous rumbling. The chariots of retribution are drawing nigh. How 
 long will all these injustices last for myriads of men, women and children 
 created in the image of God how long? I believe it is coming to an end." 
 
 The real means which Mr. Lloyd-George is taking to bring to an end 
 the conditions which produce the miseries he portrays, is the taxation of 
 land value, which has heretofore been almost immune from taxation in a 
 nation, upon which the entire structure of the aristocratic element, with 
 its House of Lords, was built. The great Chancellor has been compelled 
 in appeasing popular demands to accede to some extent to Socialistic pro- 
 grams as mere expedients, bringing to a large number some measure of 
 temporary relief; but I feel safe in predicting that when he has translated 
 into legislation his completed land program, the Socialistic law-making will 
 not only cease, but the movement for repeal of that line of statutes will 
 set in and will continue until they are practically all wiped out as inequi- 
 table and unnecessary. 
 
 Here then we have initiative, or incentive, immigration and land. If 
 these three avenues of opportunity were kept open we should have no 
 
 62 
 
trouble with Socialism or labor unionism. With incentive free, the genius 
 of man would be constantly pushing forward into new domains of endeavor, 
 and calling labor to his aid. With immigration free on this Coast, the 
 western half of the continent would rise as rapidly and to as high a degree 
 of greatness as exists upon the Atlantic side, which development has been 
 occasioned by the like quality of free immigration, while the countries of 
 the Orient would spring forward with new life, and through building into 
 greatness by reason of the free flow toward them of the light of our civili- 
 zation, would soon become nations affording us a tremendous commerce, 
 and immense opportunities for industrial development, to our vast profit 
 and their benefit; instead of being as now a menace to us, through the 
 inevitable future war which non-intercourse will necessarily provoke. 
 
 These elements are the components of individualism, and there is no 
 other remedy for the industrial situation. Under their untrammeled opera- 
 tion wages would be as high as the market sales of the commodity or service 
 would allow, and they would be freely paid as the result of a bid to get 
 labor, the bidding being against the call for labor elsewhere existing by 
 reason of the door of opportunity being open and activities operating in 
 all localities, in every direction. The laborer would receive the full mete 
 of reward which the industry would allow, and when he receives this he 
 has all he is entitled to and he cannot get more. This condition in the 
 labor situation must not be confused with the theory of " demand and 
 supply of laborers," the error of which I have discussed extensively in 
 my Japan pamphlet. Demand and supply, however, may be treated as of 
 two kinds; that which arises through natural forces, which is industrial 
 conditions unimpaired by the presence of monopoly resting upon law, 
 and that which is artificially created, as is the case of the labor unions 
 with their "closed shop", their union label, and their Congressional laws 
 keeping immigrants out of the country. With the natural condition there 
 is high wages for all with low prices; where with the artificial condition 
 there is high wages for some, idleness and half idleness for many, with 
 high prices, stifled industries, hideous, overbuilt monopolistic enterprises, 
 and starvation; with infinite schemes of minimum wage, workmen's com- 
 pensation, unemployed insurance,* eight hour laws, widows and aged pen- 
 sions, maternity awards, and so on and so on and so on, with ever calls 
 for more and more, until the heart sickens at the thought of the struggling 
 people in their ignorance and misery trying to find relief from the oppres- 
 sions which the pursuit of wrong lines of economic thought has held them 
 in, and has led them into, and in which direction they can get no relief, 
 but must only make their burdens worse, until Samson like for the 
 Philistian is strong in his millions they pull down upon all of us the 
 structure of civilization which withal, we have reared to magnificent 
 heights. 
 
 *A method extensively employed in Germany to lessen the load of the unemployed 
 problem. 
 
 63 
 
Many projects of alleviation of the labor situation have been proposed. 
 Mr. Andrew Carnegie thinks the problem could be solved by profit sharing; 
 another would have compulsory arbitration. Neither will avail. Profit 
 sharing is not other than bonus distribution, a practice common enough in 
 some establishments, and without doubt an innovation stimulating to the 
 laborers employed. That it is bonus distribution may be seen from the 
 fact that it carries with it a minimum wage to the laborer. This he gets, 
 notwithstanding he is a partner and as such would stand to lose not alone 
 his wages but his investment, and such a contingency is not contemplated 
 by the scheme. He is, however, a kind of partner unknown to either the 
 law or business, who shares in the gains, but not in the losses; hence he is 
 not a partner or a stockholder at all, but a bonus taker; though the bonus 
 may be based on profits. The scheme to be properly handled should give 
 these rewards only for excellence, and not merely because the receiver. is 
 an employee. As a means of solving the labor problem it must be wholly 
 ineffective. The great corporation, secure in its business, highly organized 
 and departmentized, may find such methods practicable and even profit- 
 able ; but it is unfitted to general introduction and use. It would be intol- 
 erable to business that whenever a man was called in to do some order of 
 labor, he became a partner in the establishment, entitled to a dividend from 
 its profits in addition to his wages for the time he was employed, and able 
 to force an accounting if he did not receive it, or was dissatisfied with the 
 sum that was paid him. And it is utterly necessary that any system or 
 method adapted to solve the labor question, must be of universal applica- 
 tion; it must be just as fitting to the farmer who hires one man, the store- 
 keeper who hires two clerks, as to the United States Steel Corporation or 
 the Filene Stores of Boston.* 
 
 Nor is the scheme of complsory arbitration any more effective as an 
 engine for securing settlement of the. labor problem. The basis of this 
 plan is that a laborer once employed acquires a vested interest in the 
 business and property of his employer and can never be discharged against 
 his will. That men by striking do not quit the service of their employer, 
 and the latter is powerless to discharge them. This position once conceded, 
 transfers the business from the owners to the employees, and makes Social- 
 ism a thing highly to be desired, for under that system the business at 
 
 * Several years ago the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe R. R. Company, after having 
 won a strike in its shops, introduced a system of piece work and bonuses. The method 
 worked so satisfactorily to both the men and the company, that the bonus feature was 
 extended to the enginemen. The regular rate of wages was continued as theretofore, but 
 gratuities of added sums were paid, at intervals to those having the best records with their 
 respective engines ; the use for a given mileage of the least quantity of lubricating and 
 other oils, the keeping of the engine out of the shop for the longest period, and so on, the 
 points and performances in which men might excel each other in care, diligence and 
 faithfulness to duty, was the basis of the arrangement. This practice had not proceeded 
 far, however, when the company was called upon by the head of the Union and told that 
 the system must cease. "You know as well as I do," said this delegate, "that you a: e 
 laying an ax at the very root of unionism. You are differentiating amongst the men, 
 spurring them to individual degrees of excellence, and fixing their fidelity to the company, 
 when it should and must be with the Union." It was demanded that the company receive 
 back from the Union the full sum of all the bonuses which the company had paid to the 
 enginemen, and that the practice be discontinued. The alternative was a strike. The 
 company acceded to the demand ; the money was restored, and the system was discontinued. 
 
 64 
 
least would pass to the State ; it would not be at the mercy of its servants. 
 The most that can be said for compulsory arbitration is that it is a means 
 of forcing cessation of a strike, compelling both parties to resume relations 
 against their wills ; for without compulsory arbitration there is over a whole 
 country, between the employer and the laborer a practically continuous 
 state of war. With classism regarded as the essential cleavage between 
 employer and employee, and its concomitant attribute, class hatred, always 
 present and active, the peace of industry is a preparation for war. The 
 great plant often becomes enclosed as a provision of defence, and we have 
 again the walled city of mediaeval Europe. Pinkerton detectives, Farley 
 strikebreakers or other guards are enlisted to defend the non-unionists at 
 work, and we have return of the condottiere of the middle ages, the hireling 
 soldier, warring for whatever faction will pay the price. Compulsory 
 arbitration sets aside this wrong by imposing another wrong, and so admin- 
 isters another drive toward Socialism. Obviously industry cannot be con- 
 ducted with lasting success under such an arrangement and where it has 
 been longest tried, as in New Zealand, it is a complete failure, though its 
 insufficiency was not noted during the first years of its use.* 
 
 Another suggestion of supposed remedy now being much talked of 
 on this Coast is incorporation of the unions, whereby, it is assumed, they 
 would become legally liable for their acts, and could in some fashion be 
 brought under control of government. We need waste no space herein in 
 discussing this proposal. It has been tried for years in Europe and has 
 been proven not to produce the slightest deterrent influence to the. objection- 
 able features of the unions which moved the expedient. 
 
 The real solution of the labor question, which is also the Socialist 
 question, and the real interest of the laborer, and the direction in which he 
 must work his way out if he is to live as a free man and not as a slave, is 
 in the opposite trend to which he and his movement have been going. His 
 interest is to increase, not to diminish product; to promote abundance, not 
 scarcity; to lower prices, not to raise them; to open the door of oppor- 
 tunity, not to be indifferent towards it, or to close it. Abundance and low 
 prices; high wages through scarcity of men called off by industry, not 
 thrust out of industry by unions, and kept out of the country by exclusion 
 laws, or starved out by killing off industry through destroying initiative 
 these are the true concerns of labor; and every factor tending to promote 
 these he should encourage, and every one against them he should oppose. 
 
 *"The recently concluded struggle of the Waterside workers shows up New Zealand 
 capitalism in the most astounding manner. A local union of 200 members presents demands 
 to the employers. The demands are turned down and the men go on a strike. The 
 employers' federation declares the union non-existent because it has broken the arbitration 
 law. Then they organize a new "union." That is, they get together a dozen or so of 
 strike-breakers and have them sign up under the law as a union. According to the law 
 any fifteen men can form a union of any trade. It is said that in one case during the 
 Waterside strike six men and a dog formed such a "union." Straightway the strike- 
 breakers become the union men, and the unionists are advertised as outlaws. So the 
 arbitration law places unionism in the hands of the employers. No wonder that the 
 General Laborers' Union, a rebel organization, has grown so amazingly during the past two 
 years." "The Land without Strikes," by William E. Bohn, International Socialist Review, 
 March, 1914. 
 
 65 
 
His interest is not to become a serf to the State, as would quickly ensue 
 under the centralized system of Socialism with its allurements of " demo- 
 era tic management" and "people's rule"; but to remain an independent 
 man, a citizen and not a subject, possessing rights and not permits; 
 prerogatives, not privileges; the entire vouchsafed by an organic 
 instrument, and clenched by written law. A government of limitations, 
 of checks and balances, rigidly held against incursions upon the rights of 
 citizens, yet sufficiently elastic in its universal basis of human liberty to 
 admit any change attaining larger freedom of action, greater security to 
 life and wider recognition of property. Such is the American constitution, 
 and fatal will be the day to the progress of human kind when it is sub- 
 verted or swept aside. Moreover the laborer should remember that so long 
 as he works as a laborer he is a laborer; he is not and cannot be at once a 
 laborer and a capitalist, a promoter, a master or a statesman; nor can he 
 in any aspect expand the share of the laborer to embrace the rewards of 
 any of these, and all attempts to do so must recoil to his own disadvantage. 
 The work he performs is as necessary to industry as that of the others, but 
 not more necessary. The fact that the employer who manages, the general 
 who directs, the capitalist who furnishes the wherewithal, receive a larger 
 share of the product than any individual laborer, a circumstance which 
 occasions so much dissatisfaction to many of the laborers and their advo- 
 cates today, is an inherent and continuous incident, and can never be 
 changed so long as industry endures. It would obtain in just as high a 
 degree under the amplest efflorescence of State Socialism as it exists today. 
 It is an incident of nature and arises through the fact that the chiefs of 
 all action are higher endowed in their several psychologies than are other 
 men. The very fact that they are chiefs is proof of this. The lure of 
 unusual capacity to display of unusual endeavor is always high rewards. 
 Men delight to bestow their offerings upon those gifted ones endowed with 
 powers to render great service, and which they freely employ. Power, 
 however expressed, induces its full mete of material returns. From the 
 savage or the barbaric king to the great inventor or the great captain of 
 industry, and from these in subinfeudation, graduating down to the lowest 
 man who stands on the plane of service above another, are all requited in 
 degree by the free and natural consent of men with greater rewards than 
 another. Were it not so there would be no cause for aspiration, nothing 
 to move ambition or stir man to excel. 
 
 The favorable results to the laborers that would be produced by the 
 change in the land system, while demanded by the Socialists in a far larger 
 measure than that which is here conceded, is by them nevertheless deemed 
 inadequate as giving to the laborer as much as will satisfy him. However 
 that may be it is all he is entitled to receive and when he gets this he sliall 
 have his full measure of rights and cannot possibly get more. He has a 
 right to full, free and fair opportunity, in the face of nature, and in the 
 face of law; and for the rest it is "up to him." Socialism is neither prac- 
 
 66 
 
ticable nor possible as a measure of relief to the laborer, and if ever brought 
 into existence will produce indescribable chaos and war. 
 
 And let me say to you my business friend, if you think you can combat 
 Socialism and destroy it by merely denouncing it, you are gravely mistaken. 
 This gigantic ogre does not exist by mere accident or fad, there is a real 
 cause for its being; and if you who are intrenched in wrong so prize 
 the land value which you erroneously hold against society that you are 
 content to let things come as they may so long as your position is intact, I 
 ask you to cast your eyes over Europe at the present moment where there 
 is operating the final effects of peoples in nations nursing this great wrong. 
 In that day, and it will in its due course be effective here just as it is 
 rending there in that day I say, the ruthless soldiers of the scourge of 
 God will pay not the slightest regard for you or your notions of vested inter- 
 ests, but they will trample with heel and hoof and burn and blast in the 
 fires and shock of battle whatever there is that you value and hold dear; 
 and if you in that day carry with you the consciousness of the cause that 
 lay at the bottom of that havoc, as I am pointing it to you here, your soul 
 will rise to your lips and you will curse it ! It is no longer the time for 
 quibbles, as whether this or that change from obvious wrong to obvious 
 right is going to inconvenience some one; as to whether myself or Mister 
 So and So, who is enjoying the fruits of wrong may or may not like it, or 
 would or will not consent that the change be made. With the sword of 
 Justice wrong must be hunted out and destroyed. It is the high noon of 
 the day for action which can no longer with safety to the nation be 
 delayed. 
 
 And now having gone forward in this discourse through some scores 
 of pages, I must pause and bring my dissertations to a close. These latter 
 comprise three papers in all; the foregoing, with the two pamphlets to 
 which I have herein referred. Not without a sense of regret even to the 
 length of sorrow, do I lay aside the pen of economics, and resume again 
 the work of law. There is so much in this great and tense sociological 
 situation to be said upon what I conceive to be Correct and proper lines 
 for its movement, for the safety and security of the nation, that with my 
 message yet unspoken or only partially, even slightly expressed, I can but 
 turn from it with feelings I shall not describe. With the confusion which 
 is now billowing around us, with the marching armies everywhere beyond 
 the Atlantic, the ferment in Mexico, the guns of Japan on shores of Kiau 
 Chau which may be taken as the primary step to the partition of China, 
 when we shall be fronted on the Pacific by warlike Europe with these 
 conditions now reigning, and the great central cause of it all here, present 
 with us in this disturbed state of the industrial world which we have been 
 discussing, it would seem that every pen able to point the way of light 
 and guidance should be employed. Very certain it is that the only hope 
 of this our nation in this environment is the working out and wise applica- 
 
 67 
 
tion of the true solution of these great questions. When America can and 
 x does apply to practice the principles which attain and hold peace among 
 the peoples within her borders, she shall have pointed the way to the peace 
 of the world, and she will quell the surging onslaught which otherwise 
 surely will involve her. Very certainly this longed for world's peace will 
 never be had by the preaching of the doctrines which have heretofore been 
 employed by the various pacification societies organized and so splendidly 
 financed to that end, and which have been pursuing their endeavors toward 
 static peace for more than a decade past. Far other teachings must be 
 spread abroad than those ; nations will never refrain from embracing war 
 by narratives of how bad a thing war is, how destructive of life, how 
 wasteful of property, how harmful to civilization itself. The call must be 
 made upon other chords of the human soul than those of sympathy or 
 suffering over loss. It must be recognized that war is caused by mass 
 hatred, the hating by men of each other, not for anything which they 
 severally do, but for reasons of race, of nationality, concepts of industrial 
 interests, religious beliefs or political opinions. It is an easy matter to 
 affect the psychologies of multitudes of people, and fill them with bitter- 
 ness toward each other, so that they are ready to murder and destroy upon 
 the slightest provocation. Under the mistaken notion of "patriotism", 
 governments of Europe have fostered this spirit, and they are now reaping 
 the whirlwind. Mass hatred, whatever expression it may take, has its roots 
 in economics. When men are prosperous, free and contented they do not 
 wilfully hate each other. The way to dispel hatred is to show men that 
 human welfare is not direct ; that it is a reflex action and condition issuing 
 from the wellbeing of others, and that men to help themselves must help 
 their fellows; that when they harm their fellows they harm themselves. 
 This is the law, and it can never be otherwise. The vast conflict which is 
 now raging in Europe is but an orgie of mutual destruction, without the 
 slightest possible benefit to those who may win. Next to killing themselves 
 and destroying their own property, the Germans could not possibly do 
 themselves more injury than by killing the Belgians and French, nor the 
 Russians by killing the Germans, and the destroying of properties of the 
 respective peoples. The mere fact that the cities and the fields of Belgium 
 and France are on the yon side of a German boundary line, is of not the 
 slightest consequence to the German people. The latter would be no better 
 off were those cities and country within than without their own boundaries. 
 It is utterly of no importance to the people within a country as to whether 
 they are ruled by one reigning house or another, any more than it is of 
 any consequence to a man here whether he live under the government of 
 California, of Ohio or New York. Mere governmental administration, so 
 long as it be just, orderly and reasonable, is of no moment as to its identity 
 from the standpoint of the happiness and prosperity of the people, to 
 attain which is the only reason at all for governments existing. And this 
 bloated overlordship, with its incident stupendous waste of human labor 
 
 68 
 
in armaments and else, is but the sheerest folly, arising altogether from the 
 erroneous idea that human welfare is direct and not indirect as I state. 
 It is built upon the erroneous notion that one people can best prosper 
 through prevention of others. If we should strike down tariffs on 
 boundaries through which the whole of Europe is octroied, elim- 
 inate immigration exclusion, and make men equal before the law pro- 
 visions aimed to advantage some to the detriment of others within their 
 own countries, there would be but little difference to the individual whether 
 he lived under one European government or another. His opportunities in 
 the respective nations would be just about the same. It is not the flag that 
 affords him prosperity, it is the existence of people about him and beyond 
 who are themselves prosperous and who hence have need for his services, 
 rendered in products or otherwise, and who have the ability to pay therefor. 
 How long will it be before me'n learn that any blow struck at their fellows, 
 whether as individuals or collectively in nations, but rebounds and smites 
 themselves? This is the world lesson. God, or Nature stands first; the 
 next is your neighbor; and if Jesus, in that marvelous propaganda which 
 while the world lasts will stand before men as a pillar of light and leading 
 if he had said nothing else than his answer to the lawyer in Matthew, 
 he would have held a place in history as among the deepest of the philos- 
 ophers of the ancients ; for in reply to the question : ' ' Master, what is the 
 great law?" he said: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
 heart, with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. This is the first great 
 law. The second is like unto it : Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. 
 On these two hang all the law and the prophets. ' ' It may be asserted that 
 the whole structure of correct human conduct lies in these utterances. If 
 all rules, all policies, all ordinances, all relations of men to men were based 
 on this principle, there would be unbroken peace amongst mankind, and 
 the highest happiness upon earth. This is not "religion," not mere 
 altruism, it is hard, bottom-rock economics. To "love God", is merely to 
 get into harmony with Nature; to understand her laws and to conform 
 one's life and behavior to them to be ever ready to change one's conduct, 
 views of things, and to forsake interests, as soon as understanding is had 
 of the existence of a law of nature in conflict with these qualities, which 
 is not being obeyed. This is man's only safety on earth, for if you go 
 against natural law, whether such be in the physical realm, or in the 
 region of human relations, there attends the penalty of unhappiness and 
 woe, and ultimate loss or destruction. And in respect of your neighbor it 
 is not meant that you shall embrace him as do the Latins, or bestow on him 
 the affection which you dote upon your family that is not the meaning of 
 this command ; but you should do nothing to harm him, nothing to deprive 
 him of equal right and equal opportunity to lawfully do for himself. God 
 has schemed it so that if you deal with him at all, looking ever so singly to 
 your own interests, you shall prosper him, and this is all he wants. Given 
 his normal strength he does not wish your gifts; but if he should fall by 
 
 69 
 
the wayside through no grievous fault of his own, it ennobles your man- 
 hood to help him. It is indeed the ethical doctrines of Jesus Christ that 
 will free men of war and all else that breeds destruction. Not the theo- 
 logical edifices which have been built upon those doctrines and with which 
 they have really nothing to do, but the doctrines themselves, the most 
 potential influence that exists in the world today, which hand in hand 
 with economic adjustments need only to be locally applied to abolish war, 
 which will never otherwise go hence. 
 
 But for this and all else, you my friend, who have followed me, 
 patiently, perhaps wearily enough, over this area of economic inquest 
 there is surcease. The labors I have for months past been performing, in 
 order that for the common good I might distribute these writings abroad, 
 must have an end. Foolish, indeed, it is for one, however he feels himself 
 imbued with the sacred principles of equal right and justice, to single 
 handed seek to acquaint the world therewith. Worthless were the task if 
 it be mine alone. But in the realm of compensation and those adaptations 
 which further helpful objects and rebuke such as are vain, there is, it 
 is my hope, some resource which will again call forth this writing to aid 
 mankind. If there be not, then is it Allah's will, and to this all must 
 be resigned. 
 
 70 
 
YC 15437 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY