GIFT OF SOCIALISM E. .' \NE3 AND CHRISTIANITY BY A. J. F. BEHKEKDS, D.D. PASTOR Or CENTRAL CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, BROOKLYN, N. Y. NEW YORK THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY 740 & 742 BROADWAY COPYRIGHT, 1886, BY A. J. P. BEHRENDS. All rights reserved. & KDWARD o. JENKINS' SONS, Printers and Electrotypers^ 20 North William St., New York. TO MY WIFE. 293335 PREFACE. THE cobbler should stick to his last. This old and homely saying may be quoted against me by those who are inclined to divorce religion and ethics from political economy. It is high time that a protest be entered against such an attempted separation, and that the religious leaders of the people acquaint themselves with the industrial and social problems of our day, so as to be prepared to apply the principles of the New Testament to their solution. An applied Christianity is as much needed now as when Paul passed, without hesitation and apology, from the profoundest theolog- ical argument to the plainest and most incisive criti- cism of the social life of the Roman Empire. The lines of controversy were never more sharply drawn than they are at present, and the opposing disputants are not always careful to maintain the temper of dis- passionate argument. They must be brought together upon common ground, and that can be done only by the exhibition and exposition of fundamental and im- mutable principles. Every great debate is an ethical one, and only at the bar of an enlightened conscience can it be rightly and permanently settled. I was induced to undertake the studies, of which this volume is the fruit, by accepting an invitation from the Faculty of the Hartford Theological Semi- vi PREFACE. nary to prepare a series of lectures on the Social Problems of our time, to be delivered before the stu- dents of that institution, stipulating for a year's time in the preparation. This will account for the local coloring of an occasional paragraph, though the seven lectures have been broken up into ten chapters. The months Lave passed all too rapidly, and I should have gladly availed myself of the opportunity for more careful and extended investigation ; but while such a delay would have enlarged the range of discussion, and increased the bulk of the volume, it would not have affected the method of critical treatment. The time sufficed, by patient industry, to secure a clear knowledge of the claims of modern socialism, and of the political philosophy upon which these claims are based ; while the principles of criticism, to which I have constantly recurred, seem to me to require no more vindication than the law of gravitation or the rule of three. The limited time at my command, and the duties of a city pastorate, compelled me to limit my investi- gations to the study of easily accessible English and American authorities. These have, however, been numerous enough, and of sufficiently high repute, to secure accuracy in the statement of facts. " Progress and Poverty," by Mr. Henry George, has received a careful reading, as well as other books and pamphlets not so widely known, but adopting a similar line of argument. Laveleye's " Socialism of To-Day," Rae's " Contemporary Socialism," Ely's " French and Ger- man Socialism," Kaufmann's edition of Schaeffle's " Socialism," Professor Rogers on " Work and Wages," Professor Walker on " The Wages Question," the PREFACE. vii works of Fawcett, Mill, Spencer, and Woolsey on Political Economy, and the more practical contribu- tions of such students of modern industry as Thomas Brassey, Daniel Pidgeon, and Edward Atkinson have been carefully and constantly consulted and compared. Want of time compelled me to abandon the attempt to read the bulky volumes of Karl Marx, and the ex- haustive treatment which Mehring has given to the history of Social Democracy in Germany. I keenly regret that I was forced to forego the examination of standard French and German authorities, and to de- pend upon the testimony of English and American reporters, though in Laveleye's masterly survey the original sources are brought within easy reach, and Professor Ely's little volume is pervaded by so thor- oughly impartial an historical spirit, and fortified by so numerous references, that I have felt justified in accepting its descriptive and analytic results. The standard English and American Cyclopedias have also been freely consulted. In the constructive part of my work I have been careful to maintain an independent position. I have copied from no one, and have frequently found myself in agreement and at variance with the most opposite schools of thought. The method of criticism was fixed for me in my conception of Christianity, and in my settled conviction of its adequacy to solve the pending social problem. For the facts I have given my authorities ; for the logic, be it good or bad, I alone am responsible. I am far from claiming ex- emption from error in matters of fact, or from fallacy in reasoning ; but I should have committed my manu- script to the flames could I not honestly say, after viii PREFACE. frequent revision, that I have been impartial both in description and in criticism. I have written as a can- did man, and as a lover of all men, and to candid men I make my appeal. The study of Pauperism and Crime involved the examination of many pamphlets and official reports, as well as the standard treatises on political economy. This proved to be by far the most painful and op- pressive part of my task, but I have spared neither time nor thought in the endeavor to secure a clear and exact understanding of these most perplexing problems of industrial and social life. I have endeav- ored to trace them to their proximate and remote causes, and by a careful diagnosis to indicate the re- medial treatment to which they must be subjected. The extended discussion, in the closing chapter, on the true doctrine of the family, grew out of the deep- ening conviction that in all radical and permanent social reform, a high view of the sanctify of marriage must lead the way. I may add that the substance of these chapters was given in a series of Sunday evening discourses in my own church, while this volume was passing through the printer's hands ; and the favor with which they were received leads me to hope that I shall not speak without effect to the wider audience, whose ear I now seek to gain. BROOKLYN, May, 1886. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. SOCIAL THEORIES. Aim of the Discussion Christianity Defined Principles of Criticism Plato's "Republic" Cicero's "Common- wealth" Thomas More's "Utopia" The Industrial Features of the Jewish Commonwealth 1 CHAPTER II. HISTORICAL SKETCH. The French Revolution Non-Political Socialism Owen and Fourier Brook Farm Communism in the United States Christian Socialism Kingsley, Maurice, Von Ketteler Political Socialism Lassalle Marx The International Gotha Programme Havre Platform... 29 CHAPTER III. THE ASSUMPTIONS OF MODERN SOCIALISM. The Five Doctrines of Modern Socialism Necessity of Radical Criticism The Philosophy of Socialism Mate- rialistic Its Temper Unhistorical Are the Rich grow- ing Richer, and the Poor Poorer ? 5! CHAPTER IY. THE ECONOMIC FALLACIES OF MODERN SOCIALISM. \s The Function of the State The Right of Lahor to Rule Is Labor the only Source of Wealth ? Socialistic Doctrine of Value Private Property in Land Governmental Direction of Industry The Wage-System The Evils charged against Competition and Machinery Liberty the Laborers Need 80 Ox) X CONTENTS. CHAPTER V. THE BIGHTS OF LABOR. Difficulty of the Debate Inequality an Unalterable Fact- Work can never become Play Formerly more Con- tinuous and Exhausting than now The Natural Limit of Average Possession, as Shown in the Total Wealth of the Country The Natural Limit of Average Income, as Shown in the Annual Production The Necessity of Industry and Thrift Intelligence, every Worker a Brain-WorkerEconomy, Capital must Fight Capital Sewing and Cooking Schools The Necessity and Obligation of Co-operation Trades' Unions Co-oper- ative Production Co-operative Distribution The Rochdale Pioneers Cash Stores Relief and Insur- ance Companies Emigration 97 CHAPTER VI. THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF WEALTH. Rights and Responsibilities, Personal and Mutual Wealth not a Crime The Vanderbilt Fortune Railway Con- solidation Great Profits the Earnings, not of Capital, but of Skilled Superintendence The Duty of Treating the Laborer as a Man Restriction of Child-Labor Factory Legislation Insurance by Employers The Right of every Man to the Sabbath Corporations, and their Responsibility to Public Law Monopolies Lim- itation of the Right of Bequest National Debts Standing Armies 139 CHAPTER VII. THE PERSONAL AND SOCIAL CAUSES OF PAUPERISM. What is Pauperism ? Distinguished from Poverty and In- digence Idleness and Improvidence Illiteracy Man- ual Training Intemperance High License and Local Option Overcrowding The Peabody, Waterlow, and Octavia Hill Plans Looseness of Marriage Tie Ne- cessity of enforcing Parental Responsibility , . 182 CONTENTS. CHAPTER VIII. THE HI8TOKICAL CAUSES OP PAUPERISM, AND ITS CUBE. Pauperism and the City Pauperism and the Factory The Pagan Degradation of Labor The Medieval Canoni- zation of Poverty The Ruinous Wars of Modern Europe The English Poor Law No Outdoor Relief by the State Organization of Private Charity 217 CHAPTER IX. THE TREATMENT OF THE CRIMINAL CLASSES. The Causes of Crime Prison Reform Theory of Penal Discipline The Philadelphia, Auburn, and Elmira Systems The County Jail The Needed Reforms 243 CHAPTER X. MODERN SOCIALISM, RELIGION, AND THE FAMILY. uman Nature Structurally Religious and Domestic Atti- tude of Socialistic Leaders to Religion The Decay of Religion a Cause of Industrial Discontent Wealth a Sacred Trust The Materialism of the Rich Provokes the Envy of the Poor The Prevailing Theory of Mar- riage as a Civil Contract Attitude of Socialistic Lead- ers to Marriage The Family the Unit of Society The Industrial and Political Importance of the Fam- ily The Monogamic Family the Primitive Form of the Household Communal Marriage Monogamy the Social and Moral Necessity of Man's Life Marriage an Ethical Relation and State The Unity of the House- hold Marriage a Solemn League and Covenant, and so Ideally Indissoluble Grounds of Divorce Over-pop- ulation The Necessity of Emphasizing Domestic Re- sponsibilityReview and Conclusion 258 V" Whoever would understand the social question, and contrib- ute to its solution, must have on his right hand the works of Political Economy, and on his left the literature of Scientific Socialism, and must keep the New Testament open before him KODOLF TODT. nc 4 SetiALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. PRELIMINARY; SOCIAL THEORIES OF PLATO, CICERO, THOMAS MORE, HERBERT SPENCER, AND MOSES. THE title of my book prescribes the task I have undertaken. It is not one merely of description, but of comparison and constructive criticism. The history and the demands of socialism are to be reviewed under light of Christian faith. Nor am I permitted to ent myself with the results of analysis, however incisive and exhaustive, for the implication is that sqcialisni_js^ a problem of which Christianity alone is the adequate solution^ If the discussion must sub- ordinate description to criticism, criticism is designed to be only preliminary to positive and constructive thought. The diagnosis of the social disease must be followed by calling attention to the remedies by which alone it can be expelled from the political organism. Our surgery must not leave the patient exhausted, and doomed to hopeless invalidism ; we must tie up the arteries, cleanse the gaping wounds, apply the bandage and healing balm. It would be an easy thing to trace the history of socialistic agitation. Fifty well-selected books, a pair of scissors, and a pot of paste, are all that is needed fc SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. for such an undertaking. Nor would it be difficult to make the story a spicy one, by introducing occasional comments in the philosophic or the jocular vein. But an exact and extended criticism of this phase of thought, in which its living roots are examined, its assumptions are brought to light, its aims and methods are exposed, its underlying and pervading philosophy is defined, is an attempt as difficult as it is delicate. A great part of the literature of the subject is pre- vailingly pictorial, dealing in successive sketches, with- out an earnest attempt to seize the vital thought that dominates the entire movement. The diagnosis deals with the local, rather than with the constitutional, symptoms. The poison in the blood has occasioned manifold eruptions in different parts of the body, while the superficial symptoms have not been so co-ordinated as to probe the malady to its source. As a consequence^ the remedies suggested and commended have been wholly inadequate. They may be effective for tem- porarily allaying local irritation, or for diverting the patient's attention, but they have failed and must fail as antidotes to the subtle circulating poison. And hence it is plain, that if the criticism of socialism is far more difficult than its description, its radical and per- manent cure is an affair of the first magnitude. Here, the discussions are, for the most part, desultory and tentative. They remind one of the lullabies that nurses sing when children are put to sleep. But the modern socialist is not a baby, to be dosed with catnip tea and soothing syrups. He is a full-grown man, with definite grievances against the existing social order, and he cannot be pacified with half-measures. There is reason in his sneering and contemptuous SOCIAL THEORIES. 3 charge that while the pulpit talks much and eloquent- ly of socialism, its occupants succeed mainly in expos- ing their ignorance ; for too many clerical utterances deal with half-way measures, without bravely laying the axe at the root of the tree. The socialist has his indictment against the reigning economic policy of modern lif e, and Christianity must meet the charge ; for we cannot afford to neglect the warning that " any system which makes the mass of any society hate the constitution of that society, must be in unstable equi- librium ; a small touch will overthrow it, and scarcely any human power will re-establish it." 1 A significant illustration of this truth, and one yet fresh in the memory of the present generation, may be found in the history of slavery. It collapsed when the sword, as the agent of a determined public opinion, touched it ; and no power on earth could summon it from its grave. No temporary compromises can avert the final catastrophe, where fundamental and far-reaching wrongs are the topics of public agitation and debate. The evils of the time must be studied in their causes, not in their symptoms merely, and the causes demand a correspondingly radical cure. Here is the first and foremost need of the hour. It is not a side-issue that confronts us. Men are not playing at political economy. There is a social ques- tion of intense vitality and of surpassing magnitude. In its study we are all inquirers, and perhaps the ut- most that we can do is to convince the restless multi- tude that we understand their grievances, and have a quick sympathy for their agony, however we may dis- sent from the methods they are disposed to invoke. 1 Bagehot, " Postulates of Political Economy," p. 63. 4: SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. For let iis remember that patience is the most heroic of virtues, and the poor have been patient, while the exhaustion of patience is the ominous silence that ushers in the cyclone. I do not say that a social cyclone is impending ; but the signs of the time cer- tainly admonish us that if Christianity is to avert a revolution of the most gigantic proportions and the most ruinous results, we have not an hour to lose in assuring the restless masses that they have no better friends than the professed disciples of Him whose glory it was to preach the gospel to the poor, and to lift their crushing burdens. It is vain to argue with a man until you have won his confidence. Until that has been secured, your logic limps and your earnestness is froth. The first and the last duty of the Christian churches is such an habitual and honest attitude of sympathy for the toiling millions that they shall not look upon them as the retained attorneys of rank and wealth, but as the advocates and defenders of the rights of universal manhood. Christian sympathy, however, is not an empty and diffusive sentiment. It is charged with a body of definite convictions. It proceeds from certain funda- mental principles, which it believes to be divinely established and co-ordinated. It rejects the notion of government by chance, and insists that the Christian revelation has disclosed certain basic truths that must be made the corner-stone and foundation of any super- structure, either of personal character or of public welfare. Before we begin to build, we must dig through the sand, fathoms deep if need be, until we reach the immovable bed-rock. There is great wisdom in the words of a political economist, lately deceased, SOCIAL THEORIES. 5 that " if you attempt to solve the problems of social science without some apparatus of method, you are as sure to fail as if you try to take a modern military fortress a Metz or a Belfort by common assault; you must have guns to attack the one, and method to attack the other." ! While pursuing the studies con- nected with the course of lectures out of which this volume has grown, I wrote to a political economist associated with one of our leading universities for a list of books that might have escaped my attention, giving the names of authors whose volumes and pamphlets I had secured. He replied by saying that I seemed to have the salient facts at my command, but would suggest the careful perusal of Herbert Spencer's contributions on sociological questions, as placing in one's hands an extended philosophy for the criticism of socialism. I had not been negligent of this department of the literature on the subject, but the recommendation deepened my conviction that the criticism of socialism is impossible without a definite philosophy, without a constant recurrence to primary and immutable truths. My present task, however, is not the study of socialism in the light of Herbert Spencer's philosophy, but in the light of Christianity ; and therefore a definite conception of what Christiani- ty, in its living essence, is, must precede and underlie the further discussion. Comprehensively stated, Christianity is the religion of the kingdom of God on earth, secured by the re- generation of individual souls, through the agency of the Holy Spirit, in the use of Divine truth. This definition supplies us with five principles of the first 1 Bagehot, "Postulates of Political Economy," p. 15. 6 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. importance. In the first place, Christianity assumes the present and radical sinfulness of human nature. Its attitude toward the present order of life is one of severe criticism and of sharp condemnation. Neither men, nor the institutions which they have created, are what they ought to be, and the improvements de- manded amount to a radical reconstruction of char- acter and of customs. Christianity cannot grant the adequacy of the "laissez-faire" philosophy, cannot admit that the perfect and permanent social state is the product of natural law and of an unrestricted com- petition. The Christian doctrine of sin compels a critical and condemnatory attitude toward the life of our time. In the second place, Christianity as earnest- ly repudiates the notion that human nature and human society are hopelessly debased. Man still bears the image of God, is restless under the bondage of sin, and is capable of restoration to his primeval innocence and to permanent establishment in moral perfection. Christianity is constructive in the ideal which it pre- sents, and whose realization it predicts and guarantees. It is critical, but not pessimistic and anarchic. In the third place, Christianity regards man as the subject, in every age, not only of moral law, but also of redeem- ing grace. Law and love run their firmly twisted strands through the mystic web, both of personal destiny and of human history ; and the Scriptural conception of redeeming energy, as at work in human life, is not that of a sudden and startling infraction upon either the moral or the historical order, but of a fulfilment in time of an eternal purpose, which from the very beginning, and without interruption, has shaped and controlled human history. The kingdom SOCIAL THEORIES. 7 of God is leaven, and mustard-seed. Its law is that of orderly advance and of slowly compacting growth, not of revolution. Its energy is supernatural, but its de- velopment is historical. It recognizes the action of a sound and divinely quickened reason in the travail of the past, no less than in the unrest of the present. It proclaims a millennium as the ultimate outcome of an unbroken historical development of the life of God in the souls of men. In the fourth place, Christianity, in dealing with the race and with all time, concen- trates its energy upon the present moment, and upon the individual man ; its preaches the duty of an im- mediate and personal repentance, a radical change in every man's mental and moral attitude and temper. It knows of no way of making the fruit better, than by improving the tree. It extracts the poison from the hidden sources, that the stream may be sweet and healthful when it meets the sea. It changes men, that it may redeem man. It makes humanity royal, by making every man a king, investing him with the untrammeled independence, and the catholic courtesy, of genuine sovereignty. Its theory of duties and of rights is intensely personal. And, finally, this radical change, nothing less than a new birth in each separate soul, is to be secured, not by the compulsion of force, nor by a miraculous change in external circumstances, nor by a violent overthrow of existing institutions, but by the peaceful methods of instruction and persuasion, by the foolishness of preaching. Christianity, as her- alding the most radical of impending revolutions, symboled in the new heavens and earth, is pacific. It has no sympathy with the gospel of dynamite and dagger. It is a messenger of peace. Its weapons are 8 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. not carnal, but spiritual, and mighty withal, " through God, to the pulling down of strongholds." Here, then, is our philosophy, the compass in our hands as we venture to plunge into the thickets of modern socialistic agitation. To this clue let us hold fast. Christianity is for us the permanent factor in the in- quiry ; social facts and theories must be read and judged in its light. And if our analysis has been just, it follows that we must reject all theories that assume the present order of economic and social life to be per- fect, or the product of violence and injustice, or in- capable of improvement except by revolutionary or violent methods, or that fail to deal with every man, and with man simply as man. Christian socialism must be critical, ideal, historical, pacific, and intensely personal in its philosophy of human improvement. A brief historical and descriptive sketch of the phases of socialistic speculation and experiment is necessary by way of introduction. This will furnish the material for a critical analysis of socialistic thought, disclosing its philosophical assumptions, its demands and methods, and its economic postulates. The first and second chapters will be given to the historical survey, and in the next two the attempt will be made to extract, from the confused and confusing utterances of numerous representatives, the funda- mental principles upon which the debate is conducted. "We shall then be in a position to apply the ideas in which Christianity is imbedded, and from which it draws its perennial energy, to some of the great ques- tions with which socialism deals, such as the rights of labor, the responsibilities and restrictions of wealth, the sources and the cure of pauperism, the origin of SOCIAL THEORIES. 9 crime and its proper treatment, and the true doctrine of family life. Each one of these topics has an im- perative claim to an extended discussion, but the at- tempt will be made to crowd the treatment of these five themes into the six closing chapters of this book. I must confess that I have much greater faith in the excellence of the plan, than I have in the adequacy of the discussion that is to follow ; but at any rate I shall have the satisfaction of sharing in the com- placency with which it is said a preacher once com- forted both his hearers and himself, when after a very nebulous and blundering discourse, he brought the service to an abrupt close by exclaiming : " Well, brethren, the sermon could not have been poorer, but the text and the plan could not have been better." And if any of my readers shall be induced to give careful attention to the great social problems of the day, on which I attempt to write with great hesita- tion, and shall be able to contribute anything to their peaceful and permanent solution, I shall be glad to honor his industry, and to stand in the shadow of his success. The search for an ideal state, in which tranquillity and contentment shall be the lot of all its citizens, has commanded the earnest attention of thoughtful men from the earliest times. To its discovery and dis- cussion Plato devoted his masterly powers of intuition in the pages of the " Republic," the second longest of all his works, and by general confession the greatest of them all. It contains that oft-quoted description of the just man, who is content to be without seeming, who possesses righteousness without the reputation of goodness, who " will be scourged, racked, bound, have 10 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. his eyes put out, and will at last be impaled, and all this because lie ought to have preferred seeming to being," I a picture that seems to have been prophetic in its inspiration, so startling is the correspondence with what occurred four hundred years afterwards, when Incarnate Holiness was condemned to a death of shame, " scourged, bound, and impaled." The object of the great dialogue is the search for jus- tice, whose essential nature is discovered in the con- stitution of an ideal political society. The question whether the professed aim of the argument is the definition of justice, or the construction of the state, Professor Jowett answers by saying that " the two blend in one, for justice is the order of the state, and the state is the visible embodiment of justice under the conditions of human society. The one is the soul and the other is the body, and the Greek ideal of the state, as of the individual, is a fair mind in a fair body." a The individual and the state are constantly compared and contrasted with each other; the per- fection of the state is regarded as based upon the per- fection of the individual ; and the degeneration of the state, through the stages of oligarchy and of de- mocracy, to that of tyranny and anarchy, is pictured as the inevitable result of degeneracy in the character of the private citizen. The love of wisdom is sup- planted by the love of power, then the passion for wealth becomes dominant, and this creates a craving for personal liberty, which chafes under the slightest restriction, and ushers in the reign of lawlessness. The reasoning is somewhat visionary, and has frequently 1 Jowett, "Dialogues of Plato," Vol. 2, p. 183, 3 Ib., Vol. 2, p. 5 ? SOCIAL THEORIES. H been criticised as wanting in historical perspective; but it is remarkable for the tenacity with which it insists on the living unity of justice, for the emphasis with which it affirms the identity of public and pri- vate righteousness. Plato looks for the ideal state only with the advent of ideal men, according to that famous sentence of his : " Until, then, kings are phi- losophers, or philosophers are kings, cities will never cease from ill ; no, nor the human race ; nor will our ideal poh'ty ever come into being." l Here lies the perennial freshness and significance of the Republic, the masterly force with which public and private justice are traced to a common source, and the clearness with which that common element is defined. The ideal state of Plato does not correspond to our conception of political society, for the modern notion of the people was wholly foreign to Greek thought, whose idea of a state was that of a body of citizens devoted to the public weal, who were supported by the labor of slaves. His philosophy of political his- tory has found no defenders. His exclusion of money from the ideal state, made needless by the community of goods and the disappearance of private property, and his timid advocacy of the abolition of private marriage, substituting for this a governmental regula- tion of indiscriminate intercourse between the sexes, and the public care and education of all children, none of whom should know their paternal ancestry, are the views by which the Republic is generally known, doctrines unwelcome to most men in our day, but regarded by some as singular evidences of true philosophic insight. More permanent in value 1 Jowett, "Dialogues of Plato," Vol. 2, p. 301. 12 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. is the discussion of education, which, in the ideal state, is represented as compulsory, universal, and thorough, comprehending the whole life, and of which it has been said, that more than any other of his ideas in the famous dialogue it " admits of application to modern life." But the greatest service which the " Kepublic " has rendered to political science is the fundamental thought that the virtues of the state are the virtues of the individual, and that justice, in whose search men lose themselves in the mazes of speculative subtlety, is the simplest of all things, the seekers stumbling over it while they are straining their eyes in order to its discovery. And justice is simply "every man doing his own ~business" main- taining the harmony of his own nature, and earnestly prosecuting his own calling. 1 It all amounts to this, that social justice is concerned in securing to every man the rights of his personality, and that the ideal state is one in which every man is gratefully content to be himself. This may seem to be a very trivial outcome for so labored and involved an argument, but the implications of the principle are manifold and far-reaching. The philosophical analysis of the idea of justice, and the identification of its public and private forms, impress the careful reader as impreg- nable positions, unaltered and unalterable, though more than twenty-two centuries separate us from the great Greek thinker. He is the earliest, and he is still the best, philosopher of political economy. The Roman may almost be said to have created the science of civil jurisprudence. He had a genius for political administration, as the Greek was distinguished 1 Jowett, "Dialogues of Plato," Vol. 2, p. 258. SOCIAL THEORIES. 13 for the pursuit of philosophy. The latter was the prophet of pure thought, the former devoted himself to practical affairs, and there are no departments of public life in which we are not profoundly indebted to the studies of the Roman lawyers. No historical sketch of the speculative literature, which deals with the ideal forms of political society, can be excused from attending to the sober testimony of a race whose service in the field of practical statesmanship has been so distinguished and so abiding in its results. Cicero's treatise on the " Commonwealth," evidently suggested by Plato's earlier work, and in many parts appropriating its views, is yet wrought out in an inde- pendent manner, and in a thoroughly Roman mood. Plato is the philosopher, Cicero the politician. Plato subordinates history to theory, builds his ideal city in the air, and then looks about to find for it a terrestrial habitation ; Cicero plants his feet on the solid earth, studies political society as it exists, and by a severely historical treatment of the Roman commonwealth en- deavors to point out the causes of every political good and social evil. Plato is the scholar in politics, Cicero subordinates his philosophy to his statesmanship. The former is bent upon discovering the essential nature of justice, as constituting the glory of the state ; the latter fixes his thought upon the stability of social in- stitutions, and makes the safety and the permanence of the state the great problem of his discussion. He avoids or condemns the communistic elements in the doctrine of his Greek predecessor. He makes no war upon money as a medium of exchange, least of all does he advocate the abolition of private property and the subversion of family life. The problem of gov- 14 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. eminent, with him, is the steady maintenance of a healthy equilibrium between the different types of life, whose intermingling and co-operation form a great and powerful state. His personal sympathies are for monarchy, provided only the king " could al- ways be a wise and just man," answering to Plato's philosopher. But dealing with men as they are, he concludes that a balanced system, in which monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy act as checks and counter- checks upon each other, is the dictate of political wis- dom ; there must exist in the state " a just distribu- tion and subordination of rights, offices, and preroga- tives, so as to give sufficient domination to the chiefs, sufficient authority to the counsel of the senators, and sufficient liberty to the people." The constitution of the British empire, blending the royal, the aristocratic, and the representative or popular elements of public life, is almost, if not altogether, an exact counterpart to this ideal scheme ; and in our own Government it finds illustration in the triple form of public adminis- tration, the executive, judicial, and legislative. But Cicero pursues his inquiry beyond the form. The balance of powers must represent a "just distribu- tion and subordination of rights, offices, and preroga- tives "; and this once more, though along a very differ- ent path of inquiry from that of Plato, brings the notion of justice to the front. And here appears the noblest definition of justice which the literature of antiquity contains, and upon which modern thought has not im- proved, though, owing to the fragmentary character of Cicero's original treatise, large portions of which have failed to reach us, this definition survives only in the quotations of Lactantius and of Augustine. I give SOCIAL THEORIES. 15 it entire, both on account of its inherent excellency, and in view of its profound bearing upon the ques- tions of social order debated in our day : " The law is right reason conformable to nature, universal, un- changeable, eternal, whose commands urge us to duty, and whose prohibitions restrain us from evil. This law cannot be contradicted by any other law, and is not liable either to derogation or abrogation. Neither the senate nor the people can give us any dispensation for not obeying this universal law of justice. It needs no other expositor and interpreter than our own con- science. It is not one thing at Rome, and another thing at Athens ; one thing to-day, and another thing to-morrow ; but in all times and all nations this uni- versal law must forever reign, eternal and imperish- able. It is sovereign master and emperor of all beings. God himself is its author, its promulgator, its enforcer. And he who does not obey it flies from himself, and does violence to the very nature of man." There is tonic in these grand words. They cleave the problem to the very core. There can be no permanent peace in society that does not build on universal and eternal justice, in which manhood, protected by law, supersedes the necessity of class legislation, and quietly obliterates the prejudices of race and of rank ; and the best prescription for much of the shallow and sickly thought of our time, in discussions concerning the true social order, would be a heavy dose of Cicero. "We shah 1 never reach settled results until we assume that social institutions are not creations or inventions, but living growths, and that social justice can deal with classes only by dealing with individuals. The admin- istration of public righteousness must be personal and 16 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. impartial; upon any other basis it is tyranny, by whatever name it may be called. The ideals of Plato and of Cicero have never yet been fully realized ; but the travail of the ages has been along the lines they have traced, and only by the supremacy of a law from which " neither the senate nor the people can give us any dispensation," whose " seat is the bosom of God," and whose " voice is the harmony of the world," can the happy goal of the future be reached. If Greece is the sanctuary of speculative thought, and Rome the great school of practical statesmanship, England is the foremost representative of the commer- cial idea as entering into the life of nations. Her energies have been concentrated upon the production of wealth. Her economists, following the leadership of Adam Smith, have discussed the philosophy of trade, the sources of wealth, and the laws of its dis- tribution. The Anglican and the American are known throughout the world as worshippers of " the almighty dollar." But even the spiritual Plato said that man's first need was food, his second a house, and his third a coat. If " nine-tenths of life deals with human conduct," a very large part of that conduct is concerned with the homely questions of bread, rai- ment, and shelter. To make these questions predom- inant and exclusive is undoubtedly demoralizing and debasing ; but to ignore them, or to remand them to a region in which righteousness gives no law and im- poses no checks, is to remand nine-tenths of the human race to the slavery of irresponsible and fierce commercial competition. There must be a morality of bread-winning, otherwise morality is stripped of universal sovereignty; and if righteousness cannot SOCIAL THEORIES. 17 bear rule in factories and on ships, if it cannot mediate between capital and labor, we might as well burn our Bibles and close our churches. They cannot preserve piety by sacrificing humanity, they cannot keep ah' ve faith in heaven, if the earth is to remain a living tomb. The bread and butter question, therefore, can- not be ruled out of the economic debate. And as England has been foremost in the production of wealth, she has also led the way in a discussion whose earnest disputants are found in ail the leading nations, and in all the seats of high learning. Political econ- omy, in our day, is not the science of ideal justice, nor of governmental administration, but of the na- tional well-being of the people. It discusses the nature and the sources of value, the rights and the restrictions of competition, rent, interest, and wages, free-trade and protection, governmental encourage- ment and control of industry. And I am altogether serious when I say that the first great impulse in this direction was given by a man whose name is very familiar, but whose little treatise is rarely read, and generally regarded as extremely visionary, Thomas More, the famous chancellor of Henry the Eighth, the author of " Utopia." The book stands at the head of the romantic literature of socialism, but the romance is pervaded with the profoundest philosophy and the tenderest philanthropy. More was far in advance of his age, and though his work was the excitement and the delight of the hour, there is reason for believing that its immediate impression was superficial and transient. The world was too busy with its wars and schemes of royal aggrandizement to lend its ears to one who pleaded the cause of the poor. 2 18 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. I speak now of Thomas More only as the author of "Utopia," outlining in its pages the distress of the masses, and voicing his aspirations for a better state, in which there should be no idlers, no thieves, no poor. If in the ideal literature of social improvement Plato is the philosopher, and Cicero is the politician, Thomas More is the philanthropist. He utters Ms lament over the decadence of agriculture, through the con- version of farms into pasture lands, and the conse- quent impoverishment of the peasantry. He bewails the idleness which pervaded all classes, which made the homes of the rich the tenements of hundreds of lazy, overfed servants, which filled the land with bands of discharged soldiers, returned from the wars, and demoralized by the life of the camp, which made ale- houses and gambling-dens the favorite places of recre- ation and amusement, and which multiplied thieves in spite of the rigorous justice that punished theft with death. He saw that the ears of princes were open only to words of flattery, and deaf to the misery of the land, while the priests revelled in rich livings and added to the general impoverishment. No land, of which he had any knowledge, presented a different picture. Everywhere the poor lay writhing under the heels of the rich. They toiled early and late, and were rewarded with only the barest means of subsist- ence. Utopia, the " no-place" the undiscovered and imaginary land, is their only paradise. This was the literary foil with which More eluded the assaults of critics, shrewdly veiling his design, while he was left free to uncover the evils of existing society, and to outline his idea of a perfect state. It is not necessary to suppose that he intended to commend all the cus- SOCIAL THEORIES. 19 toms of the Utopians, but there is no reason for doubt- ing that the main features of their social condition do-HSfc fairly represent his notion of a perfect state. There was no idleness in Utopia, and therefore no poverty, and no crime. Certain officers were ex- pected to see to it that every man was kept busy, and no man worked more than six hours a day. The state was founded on agriculture, every man spending not less than two years in farm labor. Each family did its own weaving and tailoring, all garments being made of wool or of linen, uncolored, cut in the plain- est fashion, and in uniform style. Carpenters, masons, and smiths were the only mechanics encouraged and needed. Gold was put to the basest uses, and jewels were the playthings of children. Utopia had no use for money. Every district of twenty miles square had its central city, in whose warehouses the produce of the country was stored, and each family was at liberty to carry away what was needed. Private mar- riage was maintained, and the laws against unchastity and conjugal infidelity were very severe, but no fam- ily was permitted to have more than thirty-two mem- bers, and in case of excess, the older children were removed to families whose numbers were smaller. The family as thus constituted and limited, however, was the communistic household, the organizing unit of Utopian society, and was itself composed of sepa- rate and affiliated families. Each city contained six thousand communistic households, and the fifty-four cities of Utopia were kept at the same level of popu- lation by an orderly transfer of the surplus in one city, to another which fell below its appointed quota. Each family had thus not less than twenty-four, nor more 20 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. than tliirt j-two members ; each city had, not including the surrounding agricultural district, a population of not less than a hundred and forty-four thousand, nor more than a hundred and ninety-two thousand, with about ten or twelve million inhabitants in the entire country. The streets were wide, the houses built solidly, in continuous blocks, well-drained, provided with gardens, and chosen by lot once every ten years. Doors were never locked. For each thirty families, presided over by a Philarch, there was a common dining-hall, in charge of a steward. The sick were cared for in quiet and well-appointed hospitals, for whom the best medical attendance was provided, and the choicest food reserved. Religious toleration had prevailed among them for nearly two thousand years, before Christianity was introduced, and the latter was received with gladness because it appeared that Christ had instituted among His disciples the community of goods. Idleness as the source of all social evils ; agri- culture as the basis of national prosperity ; limitation of the hours given to labor ; community of goods land, instruments of production, and the fruits of in- dustry, public property ; simplicity and uniformity in habits of living; and a careful prevention of over- crowding in cities ; these appear to have been the six leading features of Thomas More's social philosophy ; and their influence can be traced to the latest of mod- ern discussions. It is a great leap to pass from this political romance to the bald, but clear-cut and suggestive outlines of Herbert Spencer's social philosophy. But this phi- losophy must be taken into the account in the study of modern socialism. The law of right social relation- SOCIAL THEORIES. 21 ship is thus formulated : " Every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man." 1 Spontaneity, liberty, not equality, is the keynote of the Spencerian political science. The postulate is shown to involve nine important doctrines : 1. Man's right to himself, to life, and personal liberty. 2. Man's right to the earth. There can be no private property in land. Such a tenure is essential- ly and eternally unjust. Time and custom cannot legalize it. For if one portion of the globe may be- come any man's property, the whole earth may so become, and all other men could exist only by the sufferance of one, which would overturn the law of equal freedom. Tenancy is the only legitimate form of land tenure, and rent should be paid to the state as the common landlord. 3. The right of property in the produce of land held under a lease from society. This right of pri- vate property is based upon contract with society, in the form of a lease ; and no other theory of property is regarded as sound. All present titles therefore are wholly vicious and invalid. Spencer maintains the necessity of private property against the communist but agrees with him in the abolition of all tenure of land except that of state tenancy. An equal division of produce, irrespective of the amount or the quality of labor, is regarded as constituting a breach of equity ; for equality means simply that all men shall have " equal scope," the same opportunity of acquisition ; and to divide among all workers according to what l " Social Statics, "p. 121. 22 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. their labor entitles them, is impracticable on a com- munistic plan, the simplest method being that of com- petition and free exchange, or supply and demand, which communism condemns. It will be seen that this is simply the plan which Mr. Henry George has elaborated in his book " Progress and Poverty," and which, in its constructive part, may be regarded as a very amiable, impracticable, and useless kind of social- ism. It is hard to see how the poor would be helped by concentrating all taxes upon land, and supplanting present title-deeds by state-leases. 4. Right of property in ideas, whether in inventions or in books. Patent and copyright laws are demand- ed by a man's right to himself, though the equal rights of others may require certain restrictions. This con- cession, however, bears fatally against the fundamental postulate. For if I content myself with making a duplicate machine, am I not using my undoubted right, and can the inventor complain, so long as I do not steal his machine? Does not Spencer's law of freedom involve the iniquity of all patent and copy- right laws ? He makes the inventor or author say : " Gentlemen, why do you claim a right to l monopo- lize ' your furniture and the coat upon your back, and your dinner, and call in question my right to monopo- lize my ideas and inventions ? " What shall be said to this logic ? I might say : " JS~obody wants your machine, nor your book ; but you cannot abridge my liberty to see, and think, and fashion, and I will make my own machine, print my own book, just as you may make your own coat, and cook a dinner, just like mine." Some man there must have been who first used an arrow-head or a snare ; could he have claimed SOCIAL Thi^ORIES. 23 an exclusive right to make and use them ? Some man there must have been who first used flint and steel, or who discovered that friction would produce a spark ; could he have claimed a monopoly of fire ? It seems strange to find Mr. Spencer defending monopolies, and denouncing the reprint of a book as " piracy," when monopoly is squarely antagonistic to his defini- tion of equal freedom. 5. Right of property in character ; a man's right to reputation gives a foundation for the law of libel. 6. Right of exchange, involving free trade, the prohibition of all interference in barter, between pro- ducers and consumers. 7. Right of free speech. 8. "Equity knows no difference in sex." Hence women have the same rights as men, personal, social, and political. The bearing of this principle on family life, as now constituted, is not discussed ; but the im- pression is that marriage is regarded as a voluntary contract, based upon free and mutual consent, and terminable at the option of the contracting parties. 9. Equity knows no difference, of age. Children have the same rights as adults. Parental authority is discarded, with the suggestion, however, of a " milder system of juvenile training." Coercive education is condemned ; but coercion may be mental and moral, as well as physical, and the blow is very far from being the most certain means of control, so that the law of equal freedom would seem to require the abolition of all guidance. In fact "No education " is confessedly the ideal state, in which the child shall be left to grow like an acorn or a bird ; and such restraint as children need is justified on the ground that we live in a trans- 24 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. ition state, having outgrown our primitive moral con- stitution, and not yet having evolved the one required for the present social environment. "Man needed one constitution to fit him for his original state ; he needs another to fit him for his present state," such is the philosophy of the evanescence of evil, and of the perfectibility of man ; and the conclusion would seem to be that the most pressing social reform must be to hasten the appearance in each man of the new " con- stitution." After all, it is human nature that needs the reforming touch. 1 Such is the doctrine maintained in the "Social Statics." It advocates the extreme of individual liberty, and the social state appears as atomistic, with- out any other unity than that which is based upon contract. An essay on the " Social Organism " 2 dis- cusses the problem in an altogether different way. Here the analogies between society and living forms, a favorite method of illustrating social phenomena since the time of Plato, are pursued rigorously and with rare scientific skill, and the philosophy of spon- taneous evolution is applied to political society with- out the faintest suspicion of its inadequacy. This would lead to the very reverse conclusion from that found in the " Social Statics." It would demand the maintenance of present institutions and customs, as the result of an extended and complicated process of evolution. The first discussion is revolutionary in its outcome, the second is extremely conservative. The interdependence of the social units has become in- creasingly marked, and the evolution philosophy 1 " Social Statics," pp. 128-213. 1 " Illustrations of Universal Progress/' pp. 384-429. SOCIAL THEORIES. 25 must maintain that the heterogeneity and differen- tiation, with the co-ordinate integration, must con- stantly increase ; so that we are necessarily travelling away from the law of personal independence and equity. The truth is, both the philosophy and the political science of Herbert Spencer start with vicious assumptions. The philosophy recognizes only a spon- taneous and necessary development, of which a moral constitution is only the result, instead of its spring and law; and the definition of personal liberty ig- nores the moral law, makiDg every man an end to himself. The first leads to slavery, man becomes the instrument of the social organism, even as to the quality of his moral life ; the second leads to anarchy or to government by contract, the autonomy of the individual. The autonomy of God is the only solu- tion of the dilemma ; there mnst, })& ar> idftfl.1 laWj de- fining at once individual liberty and social authority, and this leads us back to the Platonic t th fifaftrnnip.^ the^iblicaMifiajrf justice as Anginal, imiversaljjand eternal During one of the annual meetings of the Ameri- can Social Science Association, a venerable member of the body is said to have excused his absence from one of its sessions by saying : " I stayed at home to read a book on social science that furnishes me with a solution of all the problems discussed there." And when the name and author of the book were asked for, the reply was that " the first chapter was written by a man named Moses, and the last chapter by a man named John ; and the name of the book is the Bible." l The story is thoroughly authentic ; and it only con- 1 Homiletic Review, for January, 1885, p. 29, 26 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. firms what Smile De Laveleye, the gifted author of a critical history of Socialism, emphasizes when he de- clares, " It was from Judea that there arose the most persistent protests against inequality, and the most ardent aspirations after justice that have ever raised humanity out of the actual into the ideal. We feel the effect still. It is thence has come that leaven of revolution which still moves the world. Job saw evil triumphant, and yet believed in justice. Israel's prophets, while thundering against iniquity, announced the good time coming." 1 It would be an unpardonable omission, in reviewing the literature that preceded and inspired all socialistic experiments, to ignore the Scriptures of the Jews, and the political constitution embodied in the Mosaic legislation, which was designed to be the polity of an actual state, and was elaborated a thousand years before Plato was born. It is not introduced here as the inspired model to which the order of our modern life should be conformed, for no such au- thority is claimed for it in the Christian Scriptures ; but it will serve to show at least what Moses deemed to be the true idea of a state, and how the uniform welfare of the people under his care could best be se- cured, while in such a study principles of universal application may become luminous, and suggestions may be received for dealing with some of the knotty prob- lems of the present time. The diseases of human so- ciety are very much the same in every age and race, and their cure demands substantially the same remedy. The political constitution of the Jewish common- wealth was based upon religion. The state was 1 "Socialism of To-Day," p. 16, Introduction. SOCIAL THEORIES. 27 a church, a theocracy whose palace was the taber- nacle, whose basic law was the Decalogue, and whose princes were prophets. The demand for a king was condemned as rebellion, and within a cen- tury the new experiment hopelessly divided the na- tion. The original tenure of property was tribal, incapable of permanent alienation. The state was designed to be agricultural and pastoral ; every family was to have its plot of land. It was to be a nation of farmers and shepherds. Manufactures were not en- couraged, commerce was ignored and even deprecated, though for special and local reasons. The produce of the land could be sold, or its income made over for a term of years, but the land itself was to be held as incapable of transfer by sale. The fiftieth year re- stored all original titles, cancelled all leases and debts. Each generation was to begin " de novo," unhampered by transferred and paralyzing claims against its in- dustry. No usury or interest was to be allowed on loans, though this was suggested more as an ideal rule, than enacted as a statute with an affixed penalty. It was to be a sign of the national honor, as hospitality is said to be that of an Arab chief. Hebrew servitude could last only six years, and at the expiration of his engagement, the man or woman was not to be sent away empty, but to be liberally supplied " out of thy flock, and out of thy floor, and out of thy winepress," with sheep, and grain, and oil, and wine. The laborer was to be promptly paid at the close of each day, and there were some things that could not be seized for debt, as a man's raiment, or the millstones that he used for grinding his corn. Kindness to beasts was commanded, The law of the harvest required that 2S SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. the vines should not be stripped of all their fruit, that the olive trees should not be beaten a second time, that the corners of a field should not be reaped with exacting care, nor its surface gleaned after the binders, and that if a sheaf had been overlooked in the gathering it was to be left as the portion of the poor, " the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow." 1 As a consequence there was no pauperism, no bread was eaten without the toil required for its gathering and preparation, and the poor preserved their self-respect and were not taught to regard themselves as supported by charity. It has been said that beggars are unknown in the pages of the Pentateuch ; and though it may be claimed that the Mosaic legislation was suited only to a rural state, it is noteworthy that the mercantile occupations of the modern Jews have not eliminated the traits fostered by their earliest law, and which makes them pre-eminent in our day for the care of their poor. The ancient commonwealth was to be a democratic theocracy, a fraternal community under God's paternal guard and care. Its citizens were not to regard themselves as competitors in an open market, but as members of a great and loving household, and their justice was to be tempered with a rational and habitual mercy. And in these two underlying prin- ciples of their political and social compact, the father- hood of God and the brotherhood of man, the lN"ew Testament idea of the kingdom agrees Vith that of the ancient commonwealth. l Leviticus, chaps. 19 and 25 ; Numbers, chap 36 ; Deut M |haps. 15, 22-24. n. HISTORICAL SKETCH OF MODERN SOCIALISM. THUS far we have considered only the ideal and speculative sources from which socialistic agitation has received its impulse, and I have lingered on what may be deemed only the threshold so long, that the antiquity of the problem and the sustained interest it has commanded from Greek, Roman, Anglican, and Jew, might impress us with the pro- found importance of our inquiry, and incite to the close and frequent study of what seems to me the best critical apparatus for dealing intelligently with the assumptions, the aims, and the methods of modern socialism. The five books that are most useful in pre- paring the way for a discriminating examination of modern socialistic demands and recommendations, are Plato's "Republic," Cicero's "Commonwealth/ 5 More's " Utopia," Herbert Spencer's " Sociological Essays," and the Bible. " Events travel more slowly than the speculations of social philosophers." But the converse is also true, that the theories of great and solitary thinkers, and the dreams of poets, will take the form of experi- mental ventures in a period of profound social dis- content and of political disintegration. The French Revolution gave to socialism its first great historical opportunity. It was the long-repressed revolt of the people against the privileged classes, and its unbridled (29) 30 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. ferocity is the index of a hatred that had made men insane. Long before this there had been occasional and temporary insurrections against an oppressive so- cial order, and from the earliest times, in India, Pales- tine, Africa, and Europe, there had existed communi- ties bound together by the vows of celibacy and poverty, abjuring marriage and the snares of private wealth; but with the year 1789, the protest against the capitalistic organization of modern life becomes sharp, determined, and practical. Christianity had powerfully encouraged the tremen- dous reaction. Basil had cried : " The rich man is a thief." Chrysostom had declared : " The rich are rob- bers ; better all things were in common." Ambrose had proclaimed : " Nature created community ; private property is the offspring of usurpation." And Bossuet, who died in 1704, had startled France by his bold and measured utterance : " The murmurs of the poor are just. All are made of the same clay, and there is no way to justify inequality unless by saying that God has commended the poor unto the rich, and assigned to the former the means of living out of the abundance of the latter." 1 These were not revolutionary utter- ances, designed to incite men to robbery and blood- shed, but the hot protests of quickened consciences against the rapacity and the unlimited indulgence of the rich. When Christian bishops used such speech, what must the suffering millions have thought of the justice of their practical disinheritance ! Had they not been the victims of organized plunder ? Besides, the Protestant Reformation had broken the shackles of ec- clesiastical authority, and the privileged classes in the 1 Laveleye, " Socialism of To-Day," pp. 18 and 19, Intro. HISTORICAL SKETCH. 31 state could not avert the criticism that had given so fatal a wound to a proud and compact hierarchy. The tunes were fully ripe for the new order, whose inaugu- ration would make the earth a paradise, and human life a psalm. But the prophets of the new dispensation were not agreed in their policy. Some were optimists, others were pessimists. Some were pacific, others were revolutionary. Some advocated industrial and social reorganization on a purely voluntary basis, others insisted that the needed reforms could be se- cured only by political agitation and governmental in- terference. Some, with St. Simon, Robert Owen, and Fourier, divorced social reforms from politics^ having an unbounded faith in the primitive forces of human nature, and inaugurating no crusade against natural inequality, adopting as their motto, " To each according to his capacity, to eaclj capacity according to its works." Others, of whom Louis Blanc may be taken as the pioneer and representative, demanded a new organization of labor by political enactment and state control, in which the advantages of inequality should accrue to the good of the general public, the determining principle being : " From each according to his capacity, to each according to his needs." 1 And what Blanc aimed to reach by the peaceful methods of legislation, Proudhon claimed could be secured only by a violent upheaval that would resolve society into its atomistic elements, introducing and making per- manent the reign of anarchy, which he claimed to be the primitive and perfect condition of the ideal order. He would have neither private nor public property, 1 Prof. Ely's " French and German Socialism," pp. 74 and 131. 32 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. neither capitalistic, nor co-operative, nor state produc- tion ; his ruling thought is that of " anarchic equality.' 3 The only clear line, however, that divides the advo- cates of socialism is the political, the interference or the non-interference of the state in economic reforms, while Proudhon and Bakunin may be regarded as de- manding the destruction of every form of organized life, whether represented by industry, the family, the school, the church, or the state. The experiments of non-political socialism have been confined mainly to the United States, naturally regarded by the Continental theorists as most favor- able to the birth and maturity of a new order. The resistance of European society proved to be an in- superable obstacle to the creation of national work- shops, and the massing of laborers in phalansteries of eighteen hundred or two thousand members. Louis Blanc and Fourier succeeded only in creating a literary sensation, and in compelling attention to social phe- nomena. The same thing is true of Robert Owen, whose untiring and generous exertions for the material well-being of his factory operatives in New Lanark, on the river Clyde, Scotland, commanded wide-spread attention and provoked the praise of princes ; " kings and emperors came to visit the model settlement, and returned impressed with the conviction that the eleva- tion of the masses depends on the ready earnestness and self-denying sympathy of those who try to improve them." But when Owen, unwisely taking counsel of his sudden fame, no longer content with providing two thousand operatives with healthy dwellings and adjacent gardens, establishing stores where goods of the first quality could be bought at wholesale prices, HISTORICAL SKETCH. 33 providing a common dining-hall where well-cooked and wholesome meals could be secured at reasonable rates, excluding all children under ten years of age from the workshops, and organizing a crusade against intemperance, ventured to formulate a new social science, based upon the doctrine that man is a crea- ture of circumstances, pronounced in its hostility to religion, and landing at last in the advocacy of com- mon ownership and in the repudiation of marriage, speaking of private property, religion, and marriage as the " triple curse of man," England was deaf to his appeals, and he attempted to do in Indiana what he had despaired of doing in Scotland. In three years the experiment collapsed, and its founder said : "It is evident that families trained in the individual system, founded as it is on superstition, have not ac- quired those moral qualities of forbearance and charity for each other which are necessary to promote full confidence and harmony among all the members, and without which communities cannot exist," a signifi- cant confession that moral improvement must precede economic reform. 1 The later attempt at Brook Farm, near Boston, to create a model of primitive and perfect society, with which Channing, Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller, Theo- dore Parker, George Eipley, Horace Greeley, and others were identified either as active members or public advocates, where labor was to be paid at the same rate of wages, each one to be free to choose his own work and the number of hours devoted to it, keep house or board in commons, and paying for what 1 Noyes, " History rf American Socialism "; Nordhoff, " Com- munistic Societies of United States." 3 34 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. was wanted at the common warehouses, which re- ceived such commendation as the following : " A true life, although it aims beyond the highest star, is red- olent of the healthy earth. The perfume of clover lingers about it. The lowing of cattle is the natu- ral bass to the melody of human voices," and which resolved itself into a Fourierite colony in 1843, had a precarious existence for only five years, when a fire threw the little company into bankruptcy. Haw- thorne's Note-Books contain many glimpses of the in- ner life of the settlement, and their quaint humorous literalness makes them very spicy reading, as the fol- lowing extracts will show : " I have not yet taken my first lesson in agriculture, except that I went to see our cows foddered, yesterday afternoon. We have eight of our own ; and the number is now increased by a transcendental heifer belonging to Miss Margaret Fuller. She is very fractious, I believe, and apt to kick over the milk-pail. I intend to convert myself into a milkmaid this evening, but I pray heaven that Mr. Ripley may be moved to assign me the kindliest cow in the herd, otherwise I shall perform my duty with fear and trembling. I did not milk the cows last night, because Mr. Ripley was afraid to trust them to my hands, or me to their horns, I know not which. But this morning I have done wonders. Before breakfast, I went out to the barn and began to chop hay for the cattle, and with such i righteous vehem- ence,' as Mr. Ripley says, did I labor, that in the space of ten minutes I broke the machine. Miss Fuller's cow hooks the other cows, and has made herself ruler of the herd, and behaves in a very tyrannical manner. I shall make an excellent husbandman, I feel the HISTORICAL SKETCH. 35 original Adam reviving within me." Hawthorne's marriage in 1842 to Miss Sophia Peabody ended his connection with Brook Farm, and it is doubtful whether he ever entered heartily into the experiment. But it was the sensation of the day, and its promoters were sanguine of speedy and marked success. Co- operative agriculture and production, by a system of thoroughly organized phalanxes, and the payment of wages proportioned to labor, talent, and capital in- vested, was preached as the gospel of the new dispen- sation. It cannot be said that the experiment was not fairly tried, and its failure was due to its im- practicability. The history of non-poli tical and volun- tary socialism may be said to have been completed in the collapse of Fourierism in 1846, and such com- munities as still remain are either stationary or in a state of decadence. Mr. Charles JsTordhofl: has given an extended de- scription and criticism of seventy-two communistic families, grouped under eight societies, of which the Shakers, who are celibates as well as communists, pos- sess fifty-eight, the first colony having been established in 1794 at Mount Lebanon. These seventy-two fami- lies were reported, in 1874, as having five thousand members, distributed through thirteen States, owning a hundred and fifty thousand acres of land, which with improvements was supposed to have a value of twelve million dollars. The most obscure of these communities are those in which property has been held in common, meals are served in common dining- halls, but where the modern family life is retained. The strongest, most thoroughly organized, successful, and thrifty communities are those in which celibacy 36 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. is compulsory, as with the Shakers and the Harmony Society in Pennsylvania, or where monogamy has been supplanted by regulated indiscriminate sexual inter- course, as with the Oneida Perfectionists, though this rule has been professedly suspended since 1879. The result of Mr. NbrdhofPs careful examination is that communistic life of the family type is one of the ways in which some men may improve their condition, if they are satisfied to live under authority, to be indus- trious, content with homely fare, and keep out of debt. The higher education does not seem to be encouraged by the system; architecture and art are wholly ignored ; though some things, such as the com- mon market, the common dairy, the common wood- house, and the common laundry, might be generally introduced to very great advantage. There seems also to be agreement in the judgment that no communistic attempt can succeed unless it can command the sanc- tions of religion, that the fraternity upon which com- munism builds must precede it as an article of faith. Horace Greeley, whose public life was contemporary with the great Fourierite movement, was decided in this conviction. Mr. John Humphrey Noyes, the founder of the Oneida Community, has traced the history of forty-seven communistic societies, which ended in failure, and he declares that the two indis- pensable conditions to success are the religious spirit, and previous acquaintance. The same author also calls attention to the fact that those communities have enjoyed the greatest prosperity, who have joined the factory to the farm, who have not contented them- selves with "land and a saw-mill," and who have pushed the principle of public ownership to its ulti- HISTORICAL SKETCH. 3? mate conclusion, as applied not only to property, but to persons. He insists that the question of association and marriage is one ; that if the individual or separate family is the true order of Providence, the associative life is a false effort, and if the associative life is true, the separate family is a false arrangement. Miss Elizabeth P. Peabody, in the columns of the Dial, which represented Brook Farm, was outspoken in re- garding the new order as a religious movement. " The life of the world," she wrote, " is now the Christian life. For eighteen centuries, art, literature, philoso- phy, poetry, have followed the fortunes of the Chris- tian idea. Modern history is the history of revealed religion. In vain will anything try to be, which is not supported thereby." Brook Farm never contem- plated any disturbance of the domestic relations. But the pages of the Dial show that the question was dis- cussed, one writer declaring the great problem of so- cialism to be " whether the existence of the marital family is compatible with that of the universal family." Charles Lane, in the " Present," for 1843, wrote much less timidly and tentatively : " Marriage, as at pres- ent constituted, is most decidedly an individual, and not a universal act. It is made the groundwork of the institution of property, which is itself the f ounda. tion of so many evils. This institution of property and its numerous auxiliaries must be abrogated in as- sociative life, or it will be little better than isolated life. But it cannot, it will not, be repealed, so long as marital unions are indulged in; for up to this very hour, we are celebrating the act as the most sacred on earth, and what is called providing for the family, as the most onerous and holy duty." The associative 38 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. industrial life may not necessarily involve a domestic revolution, but history shows that the presence of the first has always made the second a subject of debate. What has been known as Christian Socialism, un- der the leadership of such men as Charles Kingsley and Frederick D. Maurice, can hardly be regarded as socialistic, for it never contemplated isolation, either of the individual from the family, or of the industrial body from the economic organism. It sought to se- cure co-operation among the industrious and thrifty poor, both for the production of wealth, and for its more equitable and economical distribution. Co-oper- ative production has had, at best, only a doubtful suc- cess, not from the lack of invested capital, but from the insubordination of laborers who were also share- holders, and from the lack of skilled superintendence, in both of which the capitalistic system has marked advantage. Co-operative stores, however, have proved to be a great blessing to the operatives in factory towns, and their number has rapidly increased since the first experiment was made in 1844 by the Roch- dale Pioneers. Robert Owen undoubtedly gave the original impulse to this movement in the north of England, but it seems clear also that its subsequent endorsement by Maurice and his associates gave to the plan a wider field and ensured its permanence. The only point at which Christian socialism in England can be regarded as in agreement with socialistic phi- losophy, is in its idea of the church as an " organized society for the promotion of righteousness " on earth, as " communistic in principle, conservative of proper- ty and individual rights only by accident," while the state is " by nature and law conservative of individ- HISTORICAL SKETCH. 39 ual rights and individual possessions," and that in the union of church and state is to be found the "fusion of communism and property." Christian socialism on the continent is much more radical and scientific. De Lamennais, who was born in 1782, may be regarded as its earliest advocate, and Yon Ketteler, the famous Roman Catholic bishop of Mayence, who died in 1875, as its most industrious promoter. They claim that the church is to be the " animating spirit of the economic as well as the re- ligious world," and that she ought to become a great co-operative association of laborers for the overthrow of capitalistic tyranny. In doing this, however, the church is only to use her social power, without appeal- ing to violence, and by giving greater sanctity to the marriage tie, whose easy dissolution the German bishop insisted was a fruitful cause of present troubles, as it helped and hastened the general disintegra- tion of society, whose excessive individualism is the secret of capitalistic tyranny. 3 It is strange, and therefore doubly suggestive, that John H. Noyes, with a very different theory of family life, arrives at the same conclusion, and declares that his only hope for socialism is a revival of such magnitude and power that the local churches shall become communistic societies. Experimental socialism is uniform in its testimony, that religion must be the solid foundation, and the secret life, of the ideal state. The tone of political socialism, the only form now advocated, and prominent since the wide-spread revo- lution of 1848, is a very different one. It demands, in 1 Laveleye, " Socialism of To-Day," p. 303 feq. Ib., pp. 116-145. 40 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. the language of one of its ablest defenders, " co-opera- tive communism in industry, international republican- ism in politics, and atheistic humanism in religion." 1 It regards voluntary communism as lunacy, sneers at Christian socialists, hates the church, and denounces Trades' Unions as an aristocracy of labor and an ob- stacle to progress. Ferdinand Lassalle, who died in a duel in the year 1864, at the age of thirty-nine, was its popular apostle, and Karl Marx, who died in 1883, in Paris, though for thirty years he had been a resi- dent of London, was its most learned expounder. Rodbertus, who has been called the Ricardo of social- ism, may be regarded as the teacher of both. Both were of Jewish extraction. The first was a fiery, passionate nature, perfectly at home in philosophy and political economy, a dangerous antagonist, and a popu- lar orator in every fibre of his constitution. He gathered up the diffused and nebulous logic of the schools, and concentrated it into sharp pithy phrases, which he hurled upon his hearers like winged thun- derbolts, and which have become the proverbs of modern socialism, as when he called Ricardo's theory of wages " Das eherne Lohngesetz," the iron law of wages, and when he cried out, " Die Luge ist eine Europaische Macht," Falsehood is a European power. Karl Marx was light without heat, ponderous in tread, involved and tedious in argument, cold and passion- less in temper,' but piercing his subject to the core and exploring it to its farthest ramifications. His book, " Das Kapital," is the Bible of modern social- ism, and its ability and learning are unquestioned. Both Lassalle and Marx were Hegelians in philosophy, 1 Belf ort Bax in Laveleye, p. 310. HISTORICAL SKETCH. 41 profound believers in historical evolution, and regard- ed all tentative and philanthropic remedies of existing wrongs as obstructive and wicked. Lassalle's significance in German socialism is not in what he wrote, but in what he did. He stirred the hearts of his countrymen as with the blast of a trumpet. "When he took the stump in 1862 he found the German laborers sunk in what he denounced as a stupid and damnable contentment. They did not know that their manhood was daily pawned, that they were only a commodity in the markets of the world, that they were dying of slow starvation, treated " as vermin against which society wages war." The fire kindled at last, and in 1863 the German Social Demo- cratic Party was born. Universal suffrage was the first claim to recognition which they advanced and finally secured, that they might have representatives in the legislative councils of the nation. But univer- sal suffrage was to be only a means to an end. The ballot-box was to be handmaid to a political revolu- tion, as whose result the state should become the organ of the laborers' party. Historical evolution, Lassalle maintained, pointed in that direction. Slavery had passed away, and feudalism had followed ; cap- italistic domination was nearing its overthrow, and the next revolution must make labor king. In the " Workingman's Programme," he endeavored to show that " as the middle classes had succeeded to the ter- ritorial aristocracy, so the ' fourth estate,' the working class, by means of universal suffrage, were destined eventually to become the ruling power in the com- munity." It may be doubted whether his popularity would have continued, for there is reason to believe 4:2 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. that he grew weary of what seemed to be an unequal conflict, and that he was disposed to make terms with the Prussian government, when his tragic death, the result of disappointment in love, canonized him as the saint and martyr of the labor party, and it is said that " numbers of the people believed, and still be- lieve, that he did not die, and that he will come again in his glory, to preside over the great revolution and reorganization of society." That revolution and re- organization were to be brought about, not by violent and destructive methods, but by the seizure, through the constitutional right of suffrage, of the powers of the state, and their consequent employment for the benefit of the " fourth estate." Lassalle was the orator and organizer of a move- ment whose philosophy is supplied by Karl Marx. His great treatise is described by Mr. Cliffe Leslie as "a striking example of the abuse of the deductive method, so often employed by many economists." The vast superstructure rests upon certain definitions and axioms that are assumed to be self-evident, and upon their integrity the entire argument depends. The aim of the argument is to prove that capital is necessarily the result of spoliation, a philosophical way of saying with Proudhon that property is theft. " Capital," he cries, " is the most terrible scourge of humanity ; it fattens on the misery of the poor, the degradation of the worker, and the brutalizing toil of his wife and children ; just as capital grows, so grow also pauperism, that millstone round the neck of civili- zation, the revolting cruelties of our factory system, and the presence of deep poverty seated hard by the gates of enormous wealth." Personal revenge is not HISTORICAL SKETCH. 43 the secret of this bitter charge. It is not aimed at the millionaire, whose gold he would scatter among the poor, but at the economic system of which the millionaire is only the necessary product and agent. It is against capitalism, not against capitalists, that he draws the sword. The modern methods of produc- tion, by the control of capital in individual hands, are responsible for pauperism and wretchedness, and the latter will increase so long as the former are retained. This position is defended by tracing the origin of capital. It is simply "coagulated labor." Labor is a commodity in the market, for which the employer pays a certain price, and Marx maintains the doctrine of Ricardo that the rate of wages always tends to the minimum of what will support the laborer and make good his removal by death. He and his children must be fed and housed, but the lowest possible cost of such maintenance is the line toward which wages naturally and necessarily tend. Now if the whole of the work- er's time were required to secure this necessary sup- port, capital never could come into existence. But if the laborer can produce what he requires and receives in six out of the twelve hours of a day's work, the employer secures the products of one-half his industry. The multiplication of laborers under a single head, increases the profits proportionally, while the intro- duction of machinery, by increasing the productivity of the laborer, without adding to his wages, inures to the benefit of the employer. Thus capital is not the result of thrift, but of theft, and " the labors of the poor are the gold mines of the rich." And this charge of theft is justified by an exposition of the economic doctrine of value, which Marx, borrowing 44 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. from the older economists, elaborates and makes the foundation of his entire system. Only one thing makes value, and constitutes it, and that is labor. Upon this definition of value depends the indictment of theft against the capitalist. Capital cannot create value, nor can machinery, nor raw material; these can only transmit the value represented in them in the form of " crystallized labor," under the direction of living labor. Labor has produced all that exists, it is the sole source of value ; and capitalism has grown only because the products of labor have not been en- joyed by those who alone created them. Labor alone makes value, therefore if labor has its rights, it must have all, and the mystery of "productive labor re- solves itself into this fact, that a certain quantity of labor is employed without being paid for. By itself capital is inert ; it is dead labor which can revive only by sucking, vampire-like, the blood of living labor, and which lives and thrives with all the more vigor the more blood it absorbs." It is this rigorous, logi- cally consistent elaboration of an apparently harmless doctrine, that gives to modern assaults on capital their peculiar energy and fierceness. The laborer is taught that he is systematically and outrageously robbed, as his fathers have been before him, and that his children will be the victims of an increasing rapacity. He has been cheated out of his own, and it is time that the robbery should cease. At this point appears Marx's philosophy of history. He is a pronounced disciple of the Hegelian school, and of the younger and radical wing, whose watch- word is the doctrine of materialistic evolution. Civil- ization is regarded as a growth, advancing to its HISTORICAL SKETCH. 45 appointed goal through necessary stages. Its determin- ing principle, in his discussion, is regarded as consti- tuted by man's struggle to obtain the means of exist- ence. The bread and butter question is fundamental and controlling. Philosophy and art ore secondary and subsequent, possible only when production has reached such proportions as to make leisure practi- cable. Slavery, as it existed in classical times, was an advance upon barbarism, for it emancipated one class from the necessity of drudgery. The aristocratic feudalism of the middle ages was an advance upon slavery, for it fostered and guided the industrial pur- suits, and was a training-school for a constituency midway between mere laborers and aristocrats, the famous third estate of manufacturers, artisans, and merchants. This is the ruling class of our day, swept into power by the general overthrow of the aristoc- racy. Competition has been free and unchecked. Under its guidance, and with the use of machinery, production has been so increased, that the markets are glutted, and commercial crises are frequent and ruin- ous, while the laborer is more poorly fed, clad, and housed than ever. The capitalistic period of indus- trial development has reached its limit, and gives signs of impending dissolution. The " bourgeoisie " must go, and the " proletariat " must come to the throne. It is the fate of history, which can neither be hastened nor hindered, slow, silent, and sure. Not until now has the world been ready for such a revolution, be- cause only now have productive energy and skill at- tained such perfection as to give promise to a new and successful advance. First the leaf, then the bud, the blossom, and the fruit. First the master and the 46 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. slave, then the lord and his serf, then the employer and the hired laborer, and not till then the crowned and sceptred son of toil. But his time has come. The morning dawns for him, and as from the opening heavens sounds the call : " Proletarians of all coun- tries, unite yourselves ! You have nothing to lose but your chains, and you may win a whole world." It is not the doctrine of dynamite and dagger, nor is it a scheme of defensive association or of gradual amelio- ration, but of united and determined conquest, on which history stamps its naming seal. Marx will listen to no half-way measures and compromises. Parliamentary legislation he scorns to invoke; laws are not to be made for the fourth estate, but by them. Trades' Unions he despises, for they secure only grudg- ing concessions, and there are millions below them for whom they do not care. Patriotism is the mark of a narrow soul, when history summons to a uni- versal advance. Society must be destroyed ; " a vio- lent subversion of the social order" is the only remedy for existing evils, and it is both the fate and the duty of the hour. This sounds like Nihilism, but there is a wide gulf between Marx and Bakunin. Nihilism is of Russian origin, and the gospel it preaches is that of " pan-destruction," the creation of an " amorphous " society, the rehabilitation of prim- itive customs, the return to the savage state, where every man may do as he pleases. Marx looks forward, not backward. He pleads not for a past, but for the birth of the future; and he "looks forward with equanimity to the abolition of the class of capitalists in the course of a revolution which shall sweep away our present social system in favor of communistic in- HISTORICAL SKETCH. tf stitutious," because he is assured that the tempest will clear the air and bring in a fairer day than any the world has yet seen. It is only the vampire that is to be killed, the suffering and emaciated victim will date his convalescence from the fatal thrust. Marx has also figured prominently as an agitator, and as the central figure of the "International," founded in 1864, and falling to pieces in 1872, from internal dissension, and utterly collapsing in 1877, the terror for a season of every European government, though it is as a thinker that his influence must be most enduring. The manifestos issued at the meet- ings of the " International," all of which came from the hands of Marx or were carefully revised by him, are of importance only as disclosing in popular lan- guage the principles and methods of the modern Social Democracy. The following are the Gotha programme, of the year 1875, and that of Havre in 1880, which brings us to the close of our historical review : " Labor is the source of all wealth and all culture, and as in general productive labor is only possible through society, hence to society, that is to all its members, belongs the aggregate product of labor, with the universal duty of work according to equal right, to each according to his reasonable wants." " In the present society the means of labor are a monopoly of the capitalist class ; the dependence of the laboring class in consequence thereof is the cause of misery and slavery in every form." " The liberation of labor requires the conversion of the means of labor into the common property of society, and the regulation of the aggregate labor by 48 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. the community, with utilization for the common bene- fit and equitable distribution of the product of labor." " The liberation of labor must be the work of the laboring class, in opposition to which all other classes are only a reactionary mass." " Starting from these principles, the socialist laborer party of Germany strives, with all legal means, after the free state and the socialist society, the destruction of the brazen law of wages by means of abolishing the system of wages-labor, the removal of spoliation in every form, and of every social and political in- equality." " The socialist laborer party of Germany demands, in order to pave the way for the solution of the social question, the establishment of socialistic co-operative societies, for production aided by the state, and under the democratical control of the laboring people. The productive associations are to be called into ex- istence for the purposes of manufacture and agricul- ture to such an extent that out of them may arise the socialistic organization for labor in common." The Havre programme, representing the demands of the Evolutionist-Collectivists or Possibilists, the con- servative school of French socialism, illustrates the general agreement of European theorists : " Whereas the emancipation of the productive classes is the emancipation of all human beings, irre- spective of sex or race, and whereas the producers can never be really free until they possess the means of production, and whereas there are only two forms under which the means of production can belong to them : (1) the individual form, which has never ex- isted as a general fact, and which is being more and HISTORICAL SKETCH. 49 more circumscribed by industrial progress; (2) the collective form, the material and intellectual elements of which are furnished by the very growth of capital- istic society ; the French socialist workingmen, while announcing, as the aim of their efforts regarding the economic order, a return to the collective ownership of all the means of production, have decided to take part in elections, with the following programme : ECONOMIC PROGRAMME. " (1). One day of rest in the week ; reduction of the labor of adults to eight hours per day ; prohibition of the employment of children under fourteen years of age in factories. (2). A minimum rate of wages, to be fixed by law every year, according to the local price of food. (3). Equal wages for the two sexes, for equal work. (4). General scientific and professional educa- tion of all children, who should be maintained at the cost of the state and the communes. (5). Maintenance by the community of old people and disabled work- men. (6). Liability of employers for accidents. (Y). Workmen to have a voice as to the special regulation of factories. (8). Revision of all contracts that have alienated public property (e. g., banks, railways, mines), and the management of the state workshops to be en- trusted to those working in them. (9). Abolition of indirect taxes, and the substitution of a progressive tax on all incomes exceeding 3,000 francs. Suppres- sion of all hereditary succession, except in the direct line to the extent of 20,000 francs. (10). Eeconstitu- tion of communal property. (11). Application by the municipalities of funds at their disposal to the construction on communal lands of buildings of vari- 4 50 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. ous kinds, such as workingmen's houses, stores for the deposit of goods, etc., to be let to the inhabitants without profit to the municipalities." 1 1 The reader is referred to the following easily accessible au- thorities on the history of modern socialism : Laveleye, "Socialism of To-Day"; Rae, "Contemporary Socialism"; Kaufmann, " Schaeffle's Socialism"; Woolsey, "Communism and Socialism"; Ely, "French and German Socialism." Mehring's more voluminous "History of Social Democracy in Germany," and Marx's " Kapital," can be read only in the original German. The cyclopedias may also be consulted with profit by the busy student. IIL THE ASSUMPTIONS OF MODERN SOCIALISM. OUR historical review of socialism lias brought un- der notice its philosophical, philanthropic, and politi- cal forms. If the word be regarded as defining a pro- test against existing forms of industrial organization, and an attempt to create institutions on the basis of essential and impartial justice, socialism may be said to have passed through its ideal and experimental stages, and to have entered upon its political phase. The slow methods of patient teaching, appealing to sober reason and an enlightened conscience, embody- ing its results in laws and customs, are distasteful to its fiery temper. Nor is it content to be let alone, to found in some new continent and upon an unappro- priated and fruitful soil its ideal state, that the world may be converted by its great experiment. It de- mands the immediate and unconditional surrender of the powers that be, the right to appropriate the fruits of modern civilization, and to use them as the instru- ments of the new order. Its watchword is no longer toleration, nor reformation, but reconstruction ; and reconstruction by the seizure of political power in be- half of the industrial classes. Modern socialism is the doctrine, that inasmuch as labor constitutes the only source of value, and the main function of the state is the creation and division of wealth, government should (51) 52 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. be so organized as to secure to labor all the products of its industry, an indispensable prerequisite to such reorganization being that all land and all the instru- ments of production, and of distribution, including buildings, raw material, machinery, railways, canals, telegraphs, and ships, shall become public property. The details of the new industrial organization have not been wrought out ; it is assumed that these will take care of themselves and that they can be perfected at our leisure ; but there is general agreement in the following claims : First, that labor is the only source of value, and that consequently the workman is entitled to all that he produces. Second, that capital, whether fixed or circulating, is " coagulated " labor, the result not of saving, but of spoliation, a species of theft legalized by the present forms of political administration. Government is de- clared to be only the tyranny of the plutocracy. Third, that the true function of government is the solution of the economic problem, to secure to labor all the products of industry, thus preventing pauper- ism and commercial crises, the inevitable and increas- ing mischiefs of the dominant competitive system. Fourth, that land and the instruments of production, constituting as they do the materials and the tools without which labor is helpless, the first being the free gift of nature, and the second being only forms of labor that a grasping plutocracy has forcibly appro- priated, should at once become common property, and hereafter be held as such. Agriculture and manu- facturing are to be carried on, either under the imme- diate supervision of governmental inspectors, who, f orti- ASSUMPTIONS OF MODERN SOCIALISM. 53 fied by an elaborate science of statistics, are to prevent overproduction and waste ; or as Karl Marx prefers, by voluntary and independent communes, holding governmental leases of land and of fixed capital in the form of buildings and machinery, each commune regulating its own economic affairs, and freely ex- changing its products with other communes. Finally, that this change constitutes a definite po- litical issue, fundamental and international. It de- mands the creation of a party for purposes of agita- tion and propagandism. It takes precedence of all other reforms. The latter will disappear of them- selves, when once labor holds the helm of state, as dead leaves fall before the push of living buds. And in this fight for its longilenied sovereignty, la- bor is reminded that all other classes, the church in- cluded, are its implacable foes. The latter will com- promise, tightening the cords meanwhile, combining for further resistance and refusal, yielding only what they must concede, and withdrawing the scanty pit- tance at the earliest favorable opportunity ; and there- fore labor should enter at once upon the only crusade that will make it free, the seizure of the state. These may be said to be the five points of modern socialism, as closely concatenated a creed of political economy as are the five points of Calvinism ; and of both it may be said that they stand and fall with their assumptions. As yet, these revolutionary theories have found scanty hearing, and scantier endorsement, among the agricultural and industrial classes of Eng- land and America. The hotbeds of socialism are Rus- sia, Germany, and France, and its violence has been greatest where political liberty has been denied. The 54 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. air of freedom seems to smite it with impotence. England has always been the despair of the socialists, while it is the one country where competition has been freest and where the modern industrial organization has reached its highest form. Marx confessed that any economic revolution which England refuses to lead is doomed in advance, and his logic demanded that the English peasantry and factory operatives should exhibit the lowest depths of misery ; but the fact is, that they are better housed, clad, and fed, than their brethren on the continent. The Englishman cares more for liberty than he does for equality, and in the severe conflict for liberty he has gradually im- proved his condition. He is not inclined to throw away what he has, under promise of a treasure that he cannot see. Naturally conservative, he is disposed to secure his prosperity step by step. The Frenchman has been represented as saying : " I want to lay down true principles and to found a society in which justice shall reign." He is a theorist and revolutionist by constitution. The Englishman calmly replies: "As for me, what I seek is better wages and the nine hours bill." He is practical and law-abiding. And the picture is completed as the Gaul mutters to him- self : " What a sorry beast it is, this John Bull ! no ideas, no syntheses, no imagination ! He will never light the torch and lead the world." But the danger is that somebody else may apply the torch where the materials are more inflammable, and when your neighbor's house is on fire, your own is seriously endangered, especially if a high gale is sweeping over the city. The socialistic doctrines have found entrance upon English and American soil, and ASSUMPTIONS OF MODERN SOCIALISM. 55 they are rapidly becoming the staple of cheap plat- form oratory, and the accepted maxims of a popular creed. The English leaders have only recently issued and widely circulated their manifesto, in which they teach that " all wealth is due to labor, therefore to the laborer all wealth is due. We call for the nationaliza- tion of land. We claim that land in country, and land in towns, mines, parks, mountains, and moors, should be owned by the people, for the people, to be held, used, built over, and cultivated, upon such terms as the people themselves see fit to ordain. Above all, the active capitalist class, the loan-mongers, the farmers, the mine-exploiters, the contractors, the mid- dle-men, the factory-lords, these, the modern slave- drivers, these are they who, through their money, machinery, capital, and credit, turn every advance in human knowledge, every further improvement in human dexterity, into an engine for accumulating wealth out of other men's labors, and for exacting more and more surplus value out of the wage-slaves whom they employ. So long as the means of pro- duction, either the raw materials or manufactured goods, are the monopoly of a class, so long must the laborers on the farm, in the mines, or in the factory, sell themselves for a bare subsistence wage. As land must in future be a national possession, so must the other means of producing and distributing wealth. By these means a healthy, independent, and thor- oughly educated people will steadily grow up around us, ready to organize the labor of each for the benefit of all, and determined, too, to take finally the control of the entire social and political machinery of a state, in which class distinctions and class privileges will 56 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. cease to be." ' Certainly there is no lack of clearness in these sentences, and their earnestness suggests pro- found conviction of their truth. Nor is it in books and pamphlets alone that the people are stirred up to discontent, and are made familiar with thoughts of revolution. John Bright is a man of peace. He has the greatest horror of war. Yet in an address to English workingmen, which was received with tu- multuous cheers, he said : " Just now, as I was on my way to this place to speak to you, I watched in the street a magnificent carriage pass me; and in that carriage were two splendidly dressed ladies. Who made that carriage? You did. Who made those splendid dresses? You did. Have your wives any such carriages to drive in ? Do your wives ever wear clothes of that kind ? I watched that carriage farther, and I saw where it stopped. It stopped before a stately house, with an imposing portico. Who built that house ? You did. Do you and your wives live in any such houses as that ? " a Here again is Marx's doctrine that capital is the spoliation of labor, and Proudhon's maxim that property is theft. Let these utterances take shape in the platform of a great po- litical party, and, under a suffrage sufficiently extended, the ballot-box might introduce a revolution whose mischief imagination cannot picture. Thirty years ago Macaulay wrote, venturing upon the role of a prophet, " The day will come when, in the State of New York, a multitude of people, not one of whom has had more than half a breakfast, or expects to have more than half a dinner, will choose a Legis- 1 Mallock, " Property and Progress," p. 98. a Mallock, " Social Equality," p. 36. ASSUMPTIONS OF MODERN SOCIALISM. 57 lature. Is it possible to doubt what sort of a Legis- lature will be chosen? On one side is a statesman preaching patience, respect for vested rights, strict observance of public faith ; on the other is a dema- gogue ranting about the tyranny of capitalists and usurers, and asking why anybody should be permitted to drink champagne and ride in a carriage, while thousands of honest folks are in want of necessities. Which of the two candidates is likely to be preferred by the workingman who hears his children crying for more bread ? I seriously apprehend that you will, in some such season of adversity as I have described, do things which will prevent prosperity from returning. Either some Caesar or Napoleon will seize the reins of government with a strong hand, or your Republic will be as fearfully plundered and laid waste by bar- barians in the twentieth century as the Roman Em- pire was in the fifth; with this difference, that the Huns and Yandals who ravaged the Roman Empire came from without, and that your Huns and Yandals will have been engendered within your own country and by your own institutions." ' I am not an alarmist, nor do I despair of the ex- periment of universal suffrage. But it would be the height of folly to ignore the perils of the future, if the doctrines of modern socialism come to be the ac- cepted creed of the masses, and these become numer- ous enough to hold the balance of power, and control the municipal elections. For in our great cities the revolution would come to its birth, and their ruin might be involved in its suppression. As yet the cloud is only as a man's hand, unnoticed by multi- 1 Laveleye, "Socialism of To-Day," p. 32, Introduction. 58 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. tildes in the political sky, but we have no time to lose in securing shelter from the threatening storm. As yet, men are only playing at socialism, debating it in clubs and conventions, but they are playing with flint and steel, and unless we prepare in time, an accidental spark may kindle a conflagration that shall lay waste a dozen States, and bury a score of cities in ashes. We make a great mistake if we imagine that soft speeches can quiet the prophets of the new order. They laugh at you if you protest against their methods, while you tacitly acknowledge the truth of their principles ; for their methods are only their principles made effective. Our criticism must become scientific and exhaustive. We must either prove the socialist wrong in his as- sumptions, or granting his postulates we must go with him as far as the argument carries us. It cannot be said that the controversy thus far has been marked for its clearness and straightforwardness. There is much in what Mr. Mallock affirms, that while there have been scattered arguments and vehement protests, there has been no systematic treatment of the burning question with which modern socialism deals. No man is a socialist merely because his wrath burns fiercely against existing forms of private and public injustice, because he espouses the cause of the poor against the rich, and because he would interpose the powers of government in setting bounds to an irresponsible and selfish competition ; for socialism is not a description of social diseases, it professes to be a scientific diagno- sis, and proffers an infallible cure. It is one thing to know that a sick man's pulse beats a hundred and twenty times a minute ; it is a more difficult thing to locate the fever, and the hardest thing of all is the ASSUMPTIONS OF MODERN SOCIALISM. 59 prescription of the proper remedy. And when I have read such a book as " Progress and Poverty," I am moved by the graphic power outlining and making vivid the burdens and miseries of industrial life, and the terrible curse of chronic pauperism ; but its phi- losophy does not command my assent, and its patent medicine excites my indignation. The evils to which modern socialism calls attention exist, and we may not be blind to them, nor to our duty to seek for their immediate removal; but in the explanation which socialism offers for these evils, and in the heroic remedy upon which it lays the final emphasis, we are constrained, it seems to me, for the sake of the poor man himself, and in the name of universal humanity, to assume the attitude of manly and earnest opposi- tion. And the justification of this attitude will ap- pear upon a careful examination of the postulates from which socialism proceeds, and of the economic fallacies which its doctrines involve. Consider, then, in the first place, that modern social- ism, in the persons of its acknowledged leaders, and in the literature which they have produced, allies itself with the materialistic philosophy, whose principles are only reduced to popular form when it is said that thought is the secretion of the brain, the soul a loose and accidental bundle of sensations, and conscience habit based upon instinct. Man had his birth in matter; from its elemental energies his being was evolved and woven, and to its unconscious abysses he descends at death, once more to begin the slow and toilsome upward march. Of course, if matter is man's only heritage, then the more he can appropriate of material good the better, an4 the true gospel must 60 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. read : " Take anxious thought for what you shall eat r and how you shall be housed and clothed, and leave; the righteousness of God to those who are content to. chase shadows." Of course, if simple energy is the only God, the creator of all existence, the law of all life, the basis and sanction of all truth and goodness,, then law voices only the will of might, and the strongest class may and ought to rule the world. I am aware that Schaeffle and many other critics of modern socialism deprecate the charges of material- ism and of atheism against the prophets of the new industrial order. They insist that these harsh f eatures< are incidental, and not essential, to its creed ; and yet the concession is tacitly withdrawn when the affirma- tion is made with great emphasis that social science; must deal with man, rather than with the wealth which he produces. 1 If you believe in a man inde- pendent of his industrial surroundings, and if your method of social improvement is first to make the man better and so to pave the way to an increase iit material comfort, you are at the antipodes of the socialist, who assumes that the industrial environment makes the man, or as the German phrases it : " Der Mensch ist was er isst." The passwords of modern socialism are caught up by many who are ignorant of their coinage, and who would repudiate the conclusion to which they lead. But that is only saying that the multitude cannot be supposed to have mastered the philosophy of their creed, and that therefore they may not be held personally responsible for all its implica- tions. The theorist constructs a loaded revolver, which in the hands of a child may innocently occa- i gchaeffle's Socialism," by Kaufmaim, p, 35, ASSUMPTIONS OF MODERN SOCIALISM. 61 sion an awful tragedy ; and while we do not blame the child, we are not so tender of the man who fashioned the dangerous weapon and left it within the child's reach. Not every man who trains in the camp of modern socialism is a materialist in philosophy and an atheist in religion ; for it is possible to advocate the nationalization of land, and the governmental con- trol of the instruments of production, and the abolition of the wage-system, without denying the immortality of the soul or denouncing the Christian religion. But we are dealing with a system, not with its dis- ciples ; with the apostles of the new dispensation, and not with those who have been charmed by their golden prophecies. And if we study modern social- ism in its sources, and in its authoritative text-books, the charge that in its philosophy of man and of his- tory it is materialistic, is capable of the clearest and the most abundant proof. It is an open secret that the scientific expounders of European socialism were, and are, disciples of the Hegelian or evolution philosophy in its most radical form. Karl Marx was its avowed advocate, and his view of history is one in which the material environ- ment of man is regarded as playing the controlling part in determining his character. Lassalle was only his popular interpreter, and the keynote of all his writings and addresses is that man is dependent on " social combinations," and is therefore not " person- ally responsible from an economic point of view." The solidarity of industrial interests was declared to be such that the "exercise of free will by the in- dividual is impossible." He is made by his environ- ment, and therefore the state must interpose to secure 62 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. his economic rights. 1 Robert Owen made the principle that man is a creature of circumstances the basic affir- mation of his advocacy of socialistic reform. And in a more recent and popular volume, political economy is defined as the "Science of man's dependence on matter for his earthly existence. This dependence is his natural and inevitable condition, a condition fixed in the framework of the universe, and therefore he has a natural and inalienable right in that depend- ency." 2 Now if this only meant that man cannot live without eating, the proposition would not only be true, but an empty truism. Its only conclusion would be that no man can be legitimately prevented from earning the means of subsistence. But the claim is that the worker is entitled to all that his labor pro- duces, on the ground that his dependence on matter is " natural and inevitable," so that his material en- richment is the indispensable condition of his personal enfranchisement. The chains that enslave him are not ignorance, incapacity, idleness, and intemperance, but the enactments of an industrial tyranny, in which pauperism and crime can only increase with alarming rapidity, until the system breaks down by its own weight. The political millennium must be inaugura- ted by a public act creating an environment of eco- nomic equality, rather than by dealing with individual men, and summoning them to prove their manhood. Such a philosophy of progress antagonizes the lessons of all history, to say nothing of its repudiation by Christianity. Civilization has advanced under the law of the leaven and of the mustard-seed, working from 1 Laveleye, "Socialism of To-Day," pp. 20-80. 2 Clark, "Man's Birthright," p. 13. ASSUMPTIONS OF MODERN SOCIALISM. 63 within outward, making men more and more con- scious of their dignity, and so rousing within them an intelligent and intense discontent with every form of enslavement. It was Lassalle's bitter complaint that the German laborer was stupid, and ignorant of his degradation, and he well-nigh despaired of rousing him ; and Marx was disconcerted by the apathy of the English operative and peasant. You must first change your man, and only then can you permanently im- prove his condition ; nay, you may trust him, after that, to be the carver of his own fortune. This has been the law of the past, that manhood, Samson-like, breaks its own bonds, and is strong enough to move from their very foundations the pillars of despotism. The method involves patience, self-denial, heroism; but it is as sure as it is slow and painful, and when the victory has been gained, retrogression becomes impos- sible, because manhood is at the guns. Of all the strange alliances that the world has seen, lone is more strange than the partnership which has m proclaimed between the cause of the poor and I the postulates of materialistic evolution. If there be ' a creed that forges fetters of steel, and builds the Bas- |tilles of history, it is the creed which declares that itter and force are the masters of the world, that freedom is an idle dream, and justice a delusion. Such a philosophy is the poor man's natural and im- placable enemy, for it knows no pity, and it looks with calm indifference upon the sifting by which nature eliminates the weak from the strong. Laveleye has declared none too strongly that "followers of Darwin, and those economists who maintain that human societies are governed by natural laws to which 64: SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. a free course should be given, are the real and only logical adversaries at once of Christianity and of socialism." And yet the scientific literature of socialism breaks with the church, and accepts the Darwinian formula as ultimate and exhaustive. Every- where life is regarded as under the triple law of nat- ural selection, the struggle for existence, and the sur- vival of the fittest. The highest types and the best specimens run the murderous gauntlet with safety; the weak fall in the fierce race, and drop into un- known graves, unmourned and unmissed. It is not quantity, but quality, upon which nature is said to be intent ; and a thousand are freely sacrificed that one may live. We call it waste, but it is wisdom ; and it is the supremest folly to check the operation of the same law in the economics of human life. 2 Our contention is not against Darwinism as a phi- losophy of unconscious and irresponsible existence ; it may be true in purely biological science ; but the gifts of reason and of conscience, the powers of self -conscious- ness and of self-determination, make man more than an animal or a plant, and so invest him with the power to modify and control the law of natural selec- tion, and to mitigate the fierceness of the struggle for existence. The bud that survives the frosts of spring cannot help the buds that open into blossoms, but fall at the first rude shaking of the bough ; the brute has no disposition to help the weak and to care for the unfortunate; man has both the ability and the dis- position, enforced by the deep sense of obligation. Natural law has no gospel for the weak ; moral law 1 ' Socialism of To-Day," p. 19, Introduction. 3 Herbert Spencer, " Social Statics/' p. 352. ASSUMPTIONS OF MODERN SOCIALISM. 65 imposes upon the strong the duty of service. If man is the product of his material environment, is it not plain that all attempts to interfere with natural selec- tion, and the survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence, are irrational and doomed to failure ? In such a case, you check the slaughter now by your in- stitutions of beneficence and your protective legisla- tion, only to make it more ruthless and wide-spread generations hence. You are damming up the stream, which should be left unchecked in its course ; by and by your defences will be swept away and the gathered floods will bring in a wider desolation. And if things are to be let alone, it is certain that labor will never come to its rights. For in a free fight, it is not the preponderance of brute force that will win the day. It is the higher organization that seizes the strategic points of the field, and decimates the ranks of the undisciplined multitude. A hundred policemen will break up a mob twenty times as large. The compact phalanxes of Alexander scattered the Persian hosts as a whirlwind sweeps the chaff before its fury. It is the idlest of all dreams to imagine that because work- ingmen are in the majority, therefore they can and ought to seize the power of the state, and that once entrenched they could not be driven out. They would be driven out, betrayed by their own leaders, over- whelmed by superior strategic energy. It would be the old fight between muscles and brains, and brains would win; while the overthrow and abandonment of all moral ideals, not rooted in force, would doom the hosts of labor to a merited and hopeless slavery. It is time that the poor and the oppressed should understand that their deliverance will never come 5 66 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. from the political economy which allies itself with the school of Haeckel and Darwin, tt knows nothing of the duty of mercy, it recognizes only the right of the fittest to survive.' Socialism finds no favor in its eyes, and its plea, for the suffering is heard with a sneer, and condemned as the ravings of lunatics. Herbert Spen- cer represents the attitude of this party, which de- mands the free play of natural law, when he says: " Justice requires that individuals shall severally take the consequences of their conduct, neither increased nor decreased. The superior shall have the good of his superiority, and the inferior the evil of his in- feriority. A veto is therefore put on all public action which abstracts from some men part of the advantages they have earned, and awards to other men advan- tages they have not earned." " I claim," cries Las- salle, " that the industrial life of man is an exception to this law"; but John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer are deaf to the protest. In the matter of bread-winning, the superior must have the advantage of his superiority, and every man must take the con- sequences of his conduct, with which no public action may interfere. "It is impossible to understand," says Laveleye, " by what strange blindness socialists adopt Darwinian theories, which condemn their claims of equality, while at the same time they reject Chris- tianity, whence those claims have issued and where their justification may be found." The cry of the poor is just only on the theory that every man is a child of God and the heir of eternity ; his impassion- ed plea must be thrown out, without even a hearing, in the court of materialistic evolution, where superior energy determines every question of right. You cut ASSUMPTIONS OF MODERN SOCIALISM. 67 the tap-root of modern socialism, withering it in the secret sources of its life, when you recall the toiler to his imperishable dignity, when you teach him that man liveth not by bread alone ; that man is to be the master, not the slave, of his material environment, and that in seeking first the kingdom of God all other things will be added unto himl Let us believe that, preach it earnestly, practice it ; let us honor men for what they are, and not for what they have, and make the churches, whether they be small or great, rich or poor, the sanctuaries of Christian manhood. There must be neither flattery of the rich, nor condescension to the poor ; we must put the " enthusiasm of human- ity " into our teaching, and grasp the bronzed palm as tenderly and heartily as we do the gloved and jewel- led hand. Preach the original greatness of the soul, and you will be the poor man's best friend, making him strong in knowledge and virtue, stirring within him honorable ambitions, and so arming him effect- ively for the struggle of material improvement. If I should say that modern socialism is as unhis- torical in its temper, as it is materialistic in its philoso- phy of human nature, the charge might seem to re- quire no other refutation than to be confronted with the frequent and emphatic utterances of its scientific expounders. They base their protests and prophecies upon the facts of an historical evolution which they claim to trace from the earliest times. They appeal to the fact, established beyond dispute, that the earliest organizations were communal, and not capitalistic, and they point out that the unconscious revolt of our day is along the line that leads back to the primitive order, whose natural development has been arrested 68 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. by the tyranny of a plutocracy. The original state of nature has been succeeded by a state of violence, as- suming the forms of slavery, villeinage, and wage- labor ; each form an advance upon its predecessor, and paving the way for a return to the point of departure, with the added gain of all that the intervening strug- gle has secured. Have we not here the thesis, the antithesis, and the synthesis of the most rigid and un- broken historical development ? First, socialism with- out capital, then capital without socialism, and, finally, socialism appropriating capital. But, after all, the dialectic alone is historical, while the material is han- dled in a thoroughly arbitrary way. The logic exhausts itself in the empty Hegelian formula. The deeper, living, historical intuition is wanting, according to which development is to be sought, not by a return to antiquated and discarded institutions, but by pushing forward along the lines established by modern civiliza- tion. The philosophic garb of socialistic literature should not blind us to the fact that in its secret thought there lurks the denial of sound reason and of ideal justice as the sovereign forces of history, with the correlate assumption that all institutions have re- posed on force, and that there is no other law of right than the demand of the majority. Sir Henry Maine calls attention to the fact that the modern doctrine of the state of nature, borrowed from Rousseau and the French jurists, and whose return is the ideal of modern socialists, is a very different doctrine from that of the Roman lawyers, who used the more significant phrase, " the law of nature." The central figure, in all the speculations of Rousseau, is " man in a supposed state of nature." Every law or ASSUMPTIONS OF MODERN SOCIALISM. 69 institution which would seem to do violence to this imaginary being, under these ideal circumstances, was condemned as having lapsed from an original perfec- tion; every transformation of society which would give it a closer resemblance to the world in which the creature of nature reigned, was admirable and worthy to be effected at any apparent cost. The hypothesis of Natural Law, in the hands of the French jurists became, not so much a theory of guiding practice, as an article of speculative faith ; it passed suddenly from the forum to the street, and became the keynote of controversies far more exciting than are ever agitated in the courts or the schools. The Roman theory, as Sir Henry Maine goes on to show, is here turned up- side down. It is not the law of nature, but the state of nature, which is now the primary subject of con- templation. Rousseau's belief was that a perfect social order could be evolved from the unassisted con- sideration of the natural state, a social order wholly irrespective of the actual condition of the world and wholly unlike it. The " natural law " of the Romans was never thought of as founded on quite untested principles. The notion was that it underlay exist- ing law, and must be looked for through it. Its functions were remedial, not revolutionary or anarch- ical. The great difference between the views is that one bitterly and broadly condemns the present for its unlikeness to the ideal past ; while the other, assum- ing the present to be as necessary as the past, does not affect to disregard or censure it. And our author concludes that though the philosophy of Rousseau has fallen low in general esteem, it is still the great an- tagonist of the historical method ; and whenever any 70 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. mind is seen to resist or contemn that mode of in- vestigation, it will generally be found under the in- fluence of a prejudice or vicious bias traceable to a conscious or unconscious reliance on a non-historical natural condition of society or of the individual. It creates disdain of positive law, impatience of ex- perience, and its tendency with shallow minds is to become anarchical. 1 This, without being so intended, is an exact descrip- tion of the temper of scientific socialism. It does not look for the natural law through existing law. It is not remedial, but revolutionary. It utterly ignores the great truth that in history the present is as necessary as the past, and is entitled to at least equally reverent consideration. Modern socialism is unhistorical and anti-historical. It ignores and antago- nizes the lessons of the past. It is indiscriminate in its condemnation of laws and institutions that repre- sent the patient and painful thought of many gener- ations. It charges all past time with ignorance and cruelty, and assumes that wisdom and justice are only now travailling in birth. Such an assumption discredits the system which is built upon it. The true view of history compels the recognition in every age of sound reason and ideal justice, as intent upon the improvement of society, and the removal of its deep- seated diseases. No age has ever been satanic, nor has any been angelic; and the present, like every other, is a mixture of both. But in the incessant conflict of good and evil forces, there has been a steady evolution of social justice, which invites and com- mands a further patient elaboration. The historical 1 Sir Henry Maine, " Ancient Law." ASSUMPTIONS OF MODERN SOCIALISM. 71 method suffers us to be neither optimists nor pessimists ; it does command us to believe that thousands of years have settled some things, and created some institutions that will live. The world is not so good that it needs only to be left alone ; nor has it been so bad that its very foundations must be wrenched from their bed; truth and falsehood, justice and injustice, have always faced each other with drawn swords, and still crowd upon each other's lines, but truth and justice have won one province after another, constantly widen- ing the area of their occupation, and the lines of advance need only to be pushed earnestly forward to make an end of every form of tyranny, and convert the round earth into the kingdom of God. A third assumption of modern socialism, to which it owes much of its popular force, is that the existing industrial organization has increased the evils of pov- erty, and is rapidly making them irremediable ; that the rich are growing richer, and the poor poorer. That assumption is the single thread on which the logic of "Progress and Poverty" hangs, 1 the very title of the book taking the fact for granted, and it is repeated, in varying forms, from the platform and on the printed page, as one of the axioms of political economy. The affirmation has called out a volumin- ous literature of careful comparative statistics, upon whose examination we cannot here enter, and whose results are all that can be given. Taking England as an example, where capitalistic industry exists in its most perfect form, Mr. Mulhall has shown that while the working class has increased from 759,000 in 1688, to 1,117,000 in 1800, and to 4,629,000 in 1883, the 1 Henry George. 72 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. earnings of this class have grown from 55 million dollars in 1688, to 390 million dollars in 1800, and to 2235 million dollars in 1883. From 1688 to 1800 there was an increase of less than fifty per cent, in the number of laborers, and an increase of 610 per cent, in their total earnings ; while from 1800 to 1883, the working-class increased a little over four hundred per cent., and its income nearly six hundred per cent. The average income of the laborer increased from TO dollars a year in 1688, to 345 dollars in 1800, and to 480 dollars in 1883. 1 A writer in the Edinburgh Review shows that pauperism has decreased, both ab- solutely and relatively, within the last forty years ; that the proportion of the population receiving relief under the Poor Law has diminished from six per cent, to three per cent, during that time ; that wages have risen both in amount and in purchasing power ; that the hours of labor have been shortened ; that there has been increased attention to the housing of the poor, and that the rate of mortality has shown marked decrease." There is no higher statistical authority in England on this debated question than Professor Leone Levi, and his careful investigations show that the physical condition of the laboring classes is better now than it ever was ; that they have more food, and are immensely better sheltered. The death-rate has decreased from 21-8 per 1,000 in 185T, to 19'6 per 1,000 in 1882. Education has been fairly brought within their reach, wages have increased 30 per cent, since 1857 among common laborers, farm hands, and domestic servants. Two hundred and fifty million 1 Kae, " Contemporary Socialism," p. 400. * " Social Problems," p. 257. ASSUMPTIONS OF MODERN SOCIALISM. 73 dollars were deposited to their credit, in 1884, in the Savings Banks, the Building and the Industrial So- cieties. Not a few of them owned shares in ships and mills, and houses of their own ; and Professor Levi concludes that " taken as a whole, the working classes of the United Kingdom may be said to be stronger in physique, better educated, with more time at their command, in the enjoyment of greater political rights, in a more healthful relation towards their employers, receiving higher wages, and better able to effect some savings in 1884 than they were in 1857." * Mr. Neale, who is more conservative in his estimates, agrees in the conclusion that the houses of the labor- ers are more substantial, neat, and roomy ; that many more own their own dwellings; that furniture is more costly and tasteful ; that food has greatly in- creased in quantity and improved in quality, and that many articles regarded as luxuries thirty years ago are now considered necessary. Auguste Laugel, writing of the earlier years of this same period, and before the year 1874, declared that " during the last twenty-five years the working population has become healthier and more robust, and, consequently, more intelligent." * No more judicial and disinterested a witness could be summoned on this question than Professor Rogers, who has made a very critical examination of the con- dition of the wage-laborer, covering a period of six hundred years. The inquiry brings to light a mass of iniquitous legislation by which for so many centuries the working classes were oppressed, and whose effects they have not even yet outgrown. The process of 1 " Social Condition of the Working Classes," 5 " England, Political and Social," T4: SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. reparation has only been active within the last sixty years, since the repeal of the laws against trades' unions, but the beginnings are regarded as full of hope, and the assumption upon which Mr. flenry George bases his argument is dismissed with the re- mark that the book was written "by a clever man who had caught up a few real facts and a few doubt- ful theories, making a sketch not lacking in dramatic force, and in that probability which is frequently un- real, because it is based on, or appeals to, narrow or exceptional experiences." 1 Professor Rogers recog- nizes that poverty has always existed in agricultural societies, though not to a greater extent than may be found among peoples " who are still wanderers, or hunters, or herdsmen," and while he withholds none of the dark colors in the picture of English labor, he insists that in other countries it has been even gloomier. And of England he says : " I make no doubt that the ordinary hardships of human life in England were greater, and I am sure they were more general six centuries ago than they are now. Life was briefer, old age came earlier, disease was more deadly, the risks of existence were more numerous. The race was smaller, weaker, more stunted At present, I believe that the workmen of this country, speaking of them in the mass, are better paid than those of any other settled and fully peopled community, if one takes into account not merely the money wages which they earn, but the power which these wages have over commodities." Nor is his testimony concerning the condition of destitute and criminal London, where one might expect to find least traces of improvement, " Work and Wages," p. 531. ASSUMPTIONS OF MODERN SOCIALISM. 75 any less emphatic and cheering : " It is not, I am per- suaded, so miserable and so hopeless as nearly all urban labor was sixty years ago. It is not as bad as it was at the beginning of the eighteenth century, when, as one sees from LuttrelPs diary, the execu- tions at Tyburn formed a notable percentage in the weekly bills of mortality. It is not so ignorant nor so unclean as it was twenty years ago." l This modest judgment is fully borne out by the statistical tables prepared by Andrew Mearns, from the census reports of 1880, showing that since 1871 the ratio of pauperism had decreased from 47 out of every 1,000 to 26 out of every 1,000. The apathy of the agricultural classes, overcrowding in the cities, and the frightful prevalence of intemperate habits, are the main obstacles that prevent rapid improvement, but the gain has been steady and sure. When it is asserted that 30,000 men own nearly all the land in England, it might be inferred that all except these favored few must be tenants at will ; but the facts are, that besides these few great landowners there are 25,000 who own seventy acres, 12,000 who own two hundred acres, and 72,000 who own twenty acres, besides 820,000 who own from four acres to a quarter of an acre each, while the rentals of the 133,000 who own between 20 and 700 acres each, exceed the landed income of the entire English aristocracy by nearly fifteen million dollars, and are exceeded in turn to the same amount by the rentals of the urban and suburban pro- prietors. A further analysis shows also that during '"Work and Wages," pp. 500-550; Andrew Mearns' " Lon- don and Its Teeming Toilers"; Robert Qiffln, "Progress of the Working Classes." 76 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. the last thirty years there has been a rapid increase in the number of the well-to-do, and that this increase has been greatest in the class of lower incomes. Of those who have an income of over 5,000 dollars a year there has been an increase of 76 per cent.; of those whose income ranges between 3,000 and 5,000 dollars, there has been an increase of 77 per cent.; the class whose income ranges from 1,500 to 3,000 dollars a year has grown 130 per cent.; and the class whose annual revenue is between 750 and 1,500 dollars has increased 148 per cent.; while the average incomes of those who receive less than 750 dollars a year has in- creased 130 per cent, in forty years. 1 This does not mean the disappearance of pauperism, nor does it imply that the lowest classes have not been recruited nor that their misery is less biting ; it does mean that pauperism has not been gaining on the population, and that there has been a large relative as well as real increase in the middle classes, whose ranks are open to the thrifty and intelligent poor. Consider- able reprisals have been made upon the masses of the dependent poor, and the self-supporting ranks of labor have been greatly augmented. It would have been easy to give a much more favorable sketch of the present condition of the work- ing classes, by reference to statistics in our own coun- try. There are eight million landowners in the United States, where England, with nearly three- fourths of our population, has only a million. The mechanic often becomes the master, the clerk a part- ner, the operative a superintendent or manufacturer. A good carpenter or mason can purchase a barrel of 1 Mallock, " Property and Progress," pp. 167-229. ASSUMPTIONS OF MODERN SOCIALISM. >tf flour, giving him bread enough for a year, at the cost of a single day's labor, and a week's work will buy the year's bread for a family of six. The amount of money in the savings banks of the country is estimated at 1,100 million dollars, of which one-half must repre- sent the property of the working classes, to say noth- ing of bonds of various classes, amounting to 1,000 millions more, which it is believed are owned by them. But I have not availed myself of these facts, for the simple reason that America is the workingman's paradise, where there is a lack of skilled labor and abundance of elbow-room. The conclusion would have been discredited by the reply that the vast un- occupied stretches of good agricultural land, the un- developed mineral resources of our territory, and the absence of political complications with adjacent powers, have thus far served to check the natural operation of the capitalistic system of industry, and that we must wait until our population has increased ten or twelve- fold before the distress of continental nations can be reproduced here. England is open to no such criticism. Its scanty territory, containing only a hundred and twenty thousand square miles, shelters a population of thirty- six million souls, three hundred to the square mile, one to every two acres, a density which would give us a census of nine hundred million inhabitants. Eng- land and Wales, with an area only twenty-five per cent, greater than that of New York, support twenty- six million souls, a density of population which would crowd the entire race into the United States, without sending a man to Alaska, and which would make Texas an empire of a hundred and twenty-two million inhab- YS SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. itants, greater than France, Germany, and Great Britain combined. England is full. The country is one vast workshop. It must import its food. Competition has been free. Capital has grown to almost unwieldy pro- portions. For centuries the laborer could not fix the price of his own work, was not allowed to offer it in the market, nor even to go where it was needed, was deliberately pauperized by a Poor Law that was so administered as to keep his wages below the level of JT O subsistence, and only in 1824 was the last one of these iniquitous laws, which had disgraced the statute books for five hundred years, repealed. It is England, there- fore, that ought to confirm the socialistic assumption that the rich are growing richer and the poor poorer. But England gives no countenance to the assumption, and repudiates the logic based upon it ; England, with the shackles of a landed aristocracy still manacling her industrial classes, England with the scars of five cen- turies of legislation against the rights of labor upon the wrists of her patient toilers. Professor Rogers states the case none too strongly when he says : " The growth of society has been distorted by partial and injurious laws, and the distortion will not be removed by the removal of the causes which induced it. You cannot, as the adventurer in the Greek comedy does, take the nation, and, by some magic bath, restore it from decrepitude, disease, vice, dirt, drunkenness, and ignorance, to manliness, health, virtue, self-respect, sobriety, knowledge, forethought, and wisdom at a stroke. It will need long years of patient and disap- pointing labor before the marks imprinted by cen- turies of misrule are effaced." l But the good work 1 " Work and Wages," p. 549. ASSUMPTIONS OF MODERN SOCIALISM. T9 is fairly under way, not by state help, but by self- help, by giving the laborer the right to meet the capi- talist on the platform of free contract, and to com- bine for purposes of mutual support. The record of the last sixty years is as cheering as the advance of the negro population of our Southern States within the last twenty years. The assumption on which modern socialism builds is as groundless as a castle in the air, and the rebutting evidence is so ample and convincing that revolutionary agitation, urging to the overthrow of existing industrial conditions, must be condemned as f oolish and criminal. IV. THE ECONOMIC FALLACIES OF MODERN SOCIALISM. THEKE are two other assumptions of modern social- ism touching more directly the domain of political economy, which will require little more than state- ment to make evident their unsoundness. The first of these is that the function of the state is the solution of the economic problem, by its becoming a vast and thoroughly organized industrial establishment, regula- ting the production of wealth and superintending its distribution. Modern socialism is uncompromising in its denunciation of free competition, and brands the law of supply and demand as tyrannical ; it wages an unrelenting warfare against the regime of industrial liberty. It needs no argument to prove that all this contravenes our inherited ideas of civil freedom, de- fined by Professor Sumner as " a status created for the individual by laws and institutions, the effect of which is that each man is guaranteed the use of all his own powers exclusively for his own welfare." ' The plain drift of legislation and of public opinion for two hun- dred years has been in the direction of greater per- sonal liberty, giving to every man the right to secure his well-being in his own way. Socialism declares all this to be radically wrong, and that it is the business of the state to make men happy, to provide them with bread and amusements and means of culture. Its 1 "What Social Classes owe to each other," p. 34 (80) ECONOMIC FALLACIES OF SOCIALISM. 81 theory of government is paternal, and its establish- ment would require a minuteness and comprehensive- ness of bureaucratic organization that would leave no vestige of liberty worth the maintenance. It could not be anything else than a despotism of extreme type, more oppressive and exacting than any that ever cursed the fair lands of the East. Labor would be carried on under taskmasters and inspectors, none the less irresponsible because chosen by ballot. Wages would once more be determined by law, or by vote of committee, for men, and not by them. The only remnant of freedom would be the rule of the ma- jority, and that may be made the most terrible en- ginery of despotism ; for a free state is distinguish- ed by the legal and moral restraints which a minority imposes upon the majority. John Stuart Mill finds in this elimination of personal liberty the chronic weakness of modern sociah'sm, the immovable rock against which it must be wrecked ; and an unbiassed student of modern life must agree with him when he declares : " After the means of subsistence are assured, the next in strength of the personal wants of human beings is liberty ; and (unlike the physical wants, which as civilization advances become more moderate and more amenable to control) it increases instead of diminishing in intensity, as the intelligence and the moral faculties are more developed. The perfection both of social arrangements and of practical morality would be, to secure to all persons complete independ- ence and freedom of action, subject to no restriction but that of not doing injury to others ; and the edu- cation which taught or the social institutions which required them to exchange the control of their own 6 82 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. actions for any amount of comfort or affluence, or to renounce liberty for the sake of equality, would de- prive them of one of the most elevated characteristics of human nature." * In the month of February, 1848, the provisional government of France actually con- - tracted " to guarantee the means of livelihood to the laborer by work," and it promised with equal readi- ness to procure work for all citizens. The project was pushed by Louis Blanc, and the times were favor- able for the experiment. But in six months the de- cree was revoked, its only fruitage being a popular in- surrection, bloodshed in the streets of Paris, and the establishment, by force of arms, of the Second Em- pire. And in the hostility which the gospel of social- ism preaches against personal industrial liberty, there lurks both the secret of its danger and the certainty of its ultimate overthrow. It may apply the torch and dynamite, but it can never organize a state where men are free, and prize liberty above equality. * Closely associated with this assumption, that the state should be an industrial establishment, giving its citizens work and paying them for it, is the second claim that the energy by which wealth is produced should control the government. The socialistic ideal is the dominance of the laboring classes, a supremacy as really sectional as the monarchical, the aristocratic, the military, and the plutocratic, against each of which in turn society has protested and revolted. The Di- vine right of labor to rule is as partisan and despotic a formula, as the Divine right of kings, of birth, blood, and wealth ; and on this matter there can be no com- promise with the advocates of the new order. "We 1 " Principles of Political Economy," Vol. 1, p. 269. ECONOMIC FALLACIES OF SOCIALISM. 83 have had a surfeit of class legislation and rule, and the present calls for the complete elimination of this most despicable element in governmental administration, so that manhood, and not its accidents of occupation, may be enthroned in the counsels of the state. There might be historic justice in the spoliation, by the hands of England's workingmen, of its pampered aristocracy and wealthy manufacturers and merchants, when we recall the five centuries of wrong which the poor have endured, just as there might be a deserved reckoning if the millions of our recently liberated slaves should avenge themselves by seizing the places of political power and compelling us for a season to wear their broken chains ; but such a turning of the tables would be none the less indefensible and tyranni- cal, and a government thus organized would provoke an instant, wide-spread, and determined revolt ; for the state, to the stable, must concern itself with ideal and impartial justice. Modern socialism, then, is discredit- ed by its assumptions that man is a creature of circum- stances, that civil institutions rest on force, that the capitalistic form of industrial organization, based upon freedom of contract, has made the rich richer, and the poor poorer, that it is the business of the state to find work for its citizens, and that political power is the prerogative of labor. Whatever may be thought of the adequacy or the inadequacy of the present expo- sition and criticism, these fundamental affirmations must be faced and mastered if socialism is to be dealt with intelligently and successfully. It can never be discredited, unless its postulates can be refuted ; and if its postulates are true, manliness requires an imme- diate acceptance of all their implications. 84 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. In turning from the assumptions of modern social- ism to its leading economic doctrines, we are only pressing our critical inquiry a little farther. The first and most important of these is that labor is the only source of wealth, and the sole element in value. It is true that this doctrine is borrowed from the economists of the old school, represented by Adam Smith, but it is formulated in such a way that its original expounders would have repudiated it. They opposed it to the doctrine of the physiocrats, accord- ing to whom the soil is the only source of wealth. Adam Smith insisted that nature did not create values, and that the worth of commodities depended on labor. As might be expected, in maintaining this counter thesis, the discussion was somewhat unguarded, and modern socialists have availed themselves to the ut- most of this indefiniteness. They seem to stand on the solid foundations of established economic science. But it is plain, as Schaeffle argues, that property is the result of the two factors, land and labor. Labor busying itself with nothing, sawing the air never so violently, produces nothing ; and labor expended upon useless materials does not create wealth. Three things must be present to make it possible for labor to be- come a productive factor in the creation of wealth. It must be provided with the raw materials drawn from land or sea, and the energies that play in earth and air ; it must be intelligently and economically direct- ed, the brain guiding the muscles ; and it must pro- duce an article that somebody wants. Karl Marx recognizes that his theory of labor as the only standard of value requires modification, other- wise the man who spoils a piece of cloth and makes ECONOMIC FALLACIES OF SOCIALISM. 85 a coat that nobody wants to wear, working diligently ten hours a day for an entire week, ought to be paid three times as much as the man who in twenty hours fashions a garment that half a dozen men are ready to buy. It is skilled labor, labor mixed with brains, that everywhere commands the highest price, and it is unskilled, careless labor that is a drug in the market. The carpenter who keeps his planes and edge tools in prime order, and whose hand and eye are so trained that square and level can be dispensed with, or used only as final tests, will do twice the work with half the effort that is done by another who cannot make a straight edge, because his long jointer is warped, whose saws are ill-set and dull, who can- not drive a nail without marring his work or striking his thumb, and who uses square and level every few moments. Marx, therefore, modifies his theory by say- ing that it is the '' socially necessary " labor that fixes value, the average amount of labor that is required for the production of an article. Without raising the question here as to how this socially necessary amount of labor is to be determined in order to fix exchange value, it is plain that such a system of averages would re-establish the veryi inequality which socialism seeks to abolish, and dividi society once more into rich and poor. For even if good coats and poor coats are to be valued alike, labelled equally as representing thirty hours of socially ne/essary labor, the man who spent sixty hours over ins work would earn only a third as much as he wfy/spent only twenty. But the element of utility cannot be excluded from the account. Bad coats will not bring the price of good coats, unless men are forced to purchase coats by 86 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. compulsory lottery, taking whatever they draw, or unless people shall grow to be wholly careless as to what kind of coats they wear. Labor must not only be economically and intelligently directed, it must pro- duce an article which men must have or which they want, in a word, it must be useful. Muscular exer- tion, therefore, is not the sole energy that creates value ; mental labor enters into all production of wealth, and may be said even to be its controlling factor. The superintendent of a great cotton-mill, selecting the raw materials, anticipating the wants of the trade, hitting upon novel expedients and styles, improving the machinery, disposing of the manufactured goods with promptness and skill, instead of piling them up in warehouses, may do more in the production of wealth than the thousand operatives that only do his bidding. Without him, a month would bring bankruptcy, and stop every spindle. And if labor must be intelligent and engaged in useful production, the fact that one man works hard in making a worthless article, while another places a useful product on the market with comparatively light exertion, does not make it tyranni- cal for the latter to become rich, while the former is poorly paid. The case would not be altered by intro- ducing the "socially necessary" labor-standard of valuation. Let a coat represent forty hours of labor, the equivalent say of twelve dollars in current money. He who makes a coat in twenty hours would make six dollars a day ; and he who wasted one week in spoil- ing one coat, and spent another week in making good the loss by making a second coat, would be compelled to be contented with " starvation wages," at the rate of a dollar a day, while the socialistic inspector, bound ECONOMIC FALLACIES OF SOCIALISM. 87 by governmental regulation, could give him no more. The simple truth is that there is no conceivable pro- cess by which intelligence and utility can be dispensed with in the economics of society, and the only way for the laborer to become more prosperous is for him to make himself more indispensable to his fellows by in- telligent and well-directed industry. No less serious is the fallacy involved in the social- istic crusade against property in land. The national- ization of land is advocated by Herbert Spencer, who in every other doctrine antagonizes modern socialism, and there is a disposition on the part of many to con- cede the justice of this demand. But the ownership of the land carries with it the ownership of all that the land produces, and of all who live upon it ; and if individual ownership cannot pertain to land, the logic must affirm that there cannot be individual ownership of anything. Man cannot even own himself, for bone and muscle, brain and blood, have been drawn from the land. Possession cannot be defended when own- ership is denied. The question is not whether present titles have been justly acquired, and whether equity does not demand considerable modifications in the rights and limitations of ownership, and of inheritance and bequest, but whether ownership in land is in any way defensible ; and to this it may be said that the right of a man to himself involves also the right of private property in land. It is inconceivable how the American advocate of land nationalization could have written these sentences : " The pen with which I am writing is justly mine. No other human being can rightfully lay claim to it. It has become mine because transferred to me by the stationer, to whom it was 88 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. transferred by the importer, who obtained the exclu- sive right to it by transfer from the manufacturer, in whom, by the same process of purchase, vested the rights of those who dug the material from the ground and shaped it into a pen. Thus my exclusive right of ownership in the pen springs from the natural right of the individual to the use of his own faculties." * Just so ; and adopting the words of another, it is plain according to this rigid logic that a man can own a piece of gold, but he cannot own " the hole in the ground out of which it was dug." Is there some subtle magic in the transfer from the mine to the manufacturer, the importer, the stationer, and the writer? Must not a defect in ownership vitiate all subsequent exchange? Can a flaw in the original title be eliminated by the method of transfer? It would seem to be self-evident that if the owner of the land was, a robber, the miner had no right to dig the ore, the manufacturer had no right to shape it into a pen, the importer had no right to bargain for it, the stationer had no right to sell it, and Mr. Henry George had no right to write " Progress and Poverty " with it. From beginning to end the pen was stolen goods. And the argument, in the vein of Herbert Spencer, may be pressed to the further conclusion that the food out of which our bodily fibres and tissues have been woven, having come out ol the soil held under an indefensible tenure, equivalent to robbery, was not justly ours even after it had been eaten and assimilated. "Where does the theft end which began in the soil ? So then the conclusion would seem to be that nobody can ever own anything, not even his own bones. 1 Henry George, " Progress and Poverty," p. 300. ECONOMIC FALLACIES OF SOCIALISM. 89 Disguise it as we may, the land question is the ques- tion of a man's right to ownership in himself. For if the natural right to the use of my own faculties gives me a right to the pen with which I write, and which I have secured without becoming a thief, neither the stationer from whom I purchased it, nor the importer, nor the manufacturer, nor the owner of the mine from which the gold was dug, was a thief provided each in turn secured his property as I secured mine, under a system of free contract, rooted in the general sense of social justice. Dr. Schaffle pricks this bubble of a login which would set aside private property in land, without sacrificing personal liberty, when he says : " Property is itself a part of the individual possessor ; it forms that circle of external goods which centres in him per- sonally. It is the apparatus of personal life, and the destruction of private property would become ulti- mately the extinction of personal life." ' The national- ization of land involves the nationalization of man, his ownership by society as the only landlord, the destruc- tion of his right to himself. And, then, whom do we mean by society ? Does each nation own the land it occupies, and by what title from the race that owns the earth ? Has there ever been a representative parlia- ment by whose deliberations and enactments the conti- nents have been parcelled out to their present occupants, or must we now summon one without delay to settle this great economic question ? Shall it be said that national ownership rests upon general consent ? But that is the very ground upon wliich private property in land may be justified, and is defended by the lead- ing economists, as having been found to be " the most 1 Kaufmann, " Socialism," pp. 35 and 86, 90 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. effective form for administering the external resources for the production of national wealth, and the most effective form of providing the necessary supplies in order to the most complete satisfaction of individual consumers." ' There has beern no deliberate, definite legislation creating right of individual ownership in land ; the growth of civilization, starting from com- munal tenure, has individualized the ownership and occupancy, subject only to such restrictions as the safety of the state requires. " Land and all the in- struments of labor," Laveleye points out, "are the collective property, among the Southern Slavs, to-day, of groups in which deaths never cause a succession. There is no inheritance, nor private ownership in land. Is not this the ideal of certain Collectivists ? How comes it then that it has vanished at the touch of mod- ern civilization, and that it is even now disappearing in those distant countries where it had been kept up ? " a Logically, this denial of the right of private ownership in land is indefensible, so long as personal liberty is not to be sacrificed ; and historically, it involves a re- turn to crude and discarded forms of civilization. It is one of the fancies of modern socialism that the governmental direction of industries would be more economical and effective, than their management on the basis of private ownership, or of free capitalistic co- operation. There is nothing more scathing than Her- bert Spencer's exposure of this delusion. He shows, what indeed would seem not to need any proof, that whatever government attempts to do is done at greater expense, and with much greater waste, than individual 1 Kaufmann, " Socialism," p. 45. 8 " Socialism of To-Day," pp. 165-171. 'ECONOMIC FALLACIES OF SOCIALISM. 91 enterprise incurs or permits ; and it is notorious that government contracts are regarded as mines of profit to those who secure them. Responsibility must be individualized, and competition must be free, to secure cheapness and abundance of production ; and unless all history is delusive, a bureaucratic industrial organ- ization would be the most expensive and the most in- efficient of expedients. "Capitalistic management," argues John Rae, "is proverbially unrivalled for two qualities in which bureaucratic management is as pro- verbially deficient, economy and enterprise. Indi- vidual capitalists are more enterprising, as well as more economical managers, than boards. Their keenly-in- terested eyes and ears are ever on the watch for op- portunities, for improvements, for new openings ; and having to consult nothing but their own judgments, they are much quicker in adapting themselves to situ- ations and taking advantage of terms of trade. Now, this habit of being always on the alert for new exten- sions, and new processes, and new investments, is of the utmost value to a progressive community, and it cannot be found to such purpose anywhere as with the capitalistic despot the socialists denounce, whose zeal and judgment are alike sharpened by the hope of personal gain and risk of personal loss. And if pri- vate enterprise is more advantageous than joint-stock management, because it has more initiative and adapt- ability, so joint-stock management is for the same rea- son more advantageous than the official centrah'zed management of all industry." ' This conclusion does not admit of reasonable doubt. A socialistic organi- zation of industry would necessitate an army of govern- 1 " Contemporary Socialism," p. 300 seq, 92 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. ment officials, whose places would be fiercely scrambled for, and whose incubus upon production, and example of easy-going life, would paralyze energy, lower the quality of goods, and greatly enhance their cost. The best brains, and the most industrious hands, of the nations are not as a rule, nor to any very great extent, found on the civil lists, and there is no good reason to sup- pose that an enlargement of governmental supervision would be attended with any marked improvement in the official staff ; while mismanagement or extravagance in the department of industry would be so serious a misfortune, that no community can afford to venture; upon experiments whose success would be a miracle in history. Few things are more marked in the attitude of mod- ern socialism to the existing industrial organization, than its hostility to the wage-system, with the counter demand that the present coinage be superseded by labor certificates, whose unit shall be an hour's work. Hours are to take the place of pounds and dol- lars in barter and exchange. It is difficult to see what advantage would result from the proposed change, especially if, following out the doctrine of Marx, such labor certificates are awarded upon a nicely determined scale of the socially necessary amount of labor repre- sented in the production of any article. These paper checks could not feed the hungry and clothe the naked, any more than can gold and silver. An over-issue would depreciate their value, and raise the nominal cost of subsistence. Money is not wealth, nor are labor cer- tificates or greenbacks ; they can only be mediums of exchange, and the things ultimately to be secured by their use, can be neither increased nor diminished by ECONOMIC FALLACIES OF SOCIALISM. 93 them. What a nation produces constitutes its wealth, and upon that depends the purchasing power of its currency. What difference does it make whether the unit be a franc, or a pound, or a dollar, or an hour's labor ? Besides, the medium of exchange must be in- ternational ; otherwise, as in the case of our present silver coinage, it becomes greatly depreciated and may even wholly lose its value in commercial transactions. This necessity of a world-wide revolution in the methods of finance, before the new plan can be made effective anywhere, indicates the chimerical nature of the attempt. The more closely compacted humanity becomes, the less easy will it become for communities to do as they please, and to introduce commercial changes that are not universally sanctioned. The unmixed evils of free competition in produc- tion, and the enslaving effect upon labor of the intro- duction of machinery, are matters concerning which modern socialism never wearies of complaining. These, it is affirmed, have benefited only the capital- ist. In 1867 the International declared, by formal resolution, that the lowering of wages was and must be the principal weapon in the hands of universal competition. The sophistry of this affirmation is ad- mirably exposed by Edward Atkinson in his essay on capital and labor, and in which he maintains that " the absence of communism, that is to say, inequality in respect to possession and property, leads, as time goes on, to practical communism in consumption ; that is, to a more and more equal distribution of the prod- ucts or means of subsistence that are necessary to comfort." 1 Ultimately, free competition in produc- 1 " Labor and Capital, Allies not Enemies," p. 45. 94 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. tion inures to the benefit of the consumer, by lower- ing the price of commodities, or, what amounts to the same thing, by increasing the purchasing power of the day's wages. And the same thing is true of ma- chinery as applied to productive industry and the transportation of commodities ; though Marx, in his masterly review of the industrial history of England, seems to regard with regret every triumph of modern civilization, as if the abolition of steam would restore the vanished Paradise of the poor. But the facts are that every class has been immensely benefited by the change, as plainly appears when it is remembered that thirty-six million men and women are better fed and sheltered in England, to-day, by four hundred per cent., than one-sixth as many people were two hun- dred years ago. How can it be otherwise, when ten men, by working one year, can provide bread enough to feed a thousand for the same period ; when one operative in a cotton-factory can make all the cloth two hundred and fifty need ; when one modern cobbler can furnish a thousand men with all the boots and shoes they require for a year ; and when, in the mean- time, as the same authority shows, from whose pages these facts are taken, wages have risen in this country, since the introduction of machinery, forty per cent. 1 Still, it cannot be denied that the working classes have not shared in the advance of the present century as they ought to have done. They have suffered for centuries from oppressive legislation. They have been late in the start, and they are handicapped in the race. Many of their complaints are just, but the prophets of revolution and of violence are not the 1 Edward Atkinson, " Distribution of Products," p. 75 aeq. ECONOMIC FALLACIES OF SOCIALISM. 95 guides by whom they will ever be led into the indus- trial Canaan. It is instructive and suggestive that revolutionary socialism is most widely diffused where government is despotic, and that the insurrectionary classes of our own population are emigrants. I do not say this by way of censure so much as by way of explanation. The man who has been the victim of misgovernment naturally attributes to this source all the evils he endures, and he craves a paternal guardian who shall secure him against want. What he really needs is liberty, and the homely virtues without which the treasures of liberty cannot be secured. Labor has only just begun its career of freedom, and its most pressing requirement is that government shall let it alone, interfering only in so far as perfectly fair play may demand. The English laborer has already come to see this. William Traut, as representing the Trades' Unions, says : " The British workman is far from a socialist. He believes hard work should be recompensed with proportionately good pay, and is not prepared to accept a doctrine which says that, however much or however little he may work, his pay shall be the same, and that pay to consist, over and above his actual wants, of nothing but the gratitude of those around him. He is not prepared to abandon his individuality or to shirk his responsibilities. He asks not for an equal division of wealth, but for its equitable division, in which the claims of capital, labor, and ability shall be duly acknowledged ; and the results of his own thrift properly protected." ! Here, at last, we have a fresh breeze from across the sea, and the mists lift before its strong and steady pres- 1 "Trades' Unions," p. 152. 96 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. sure. The sturdy common sense of the Saxon race is leading the battalions of labor out of the smoke of the socialistic cannonade, and they are beginning to see that, in a fair field, they must and may work out their own salvation. They want liberty, they have tasted it, and they will never go back to governmental bond- age, either capitalistic or communistic. Let the path everywhere be cleared for the man, whatever his an- cestry or occupation ! Then shall there be a steady forward march in improvement, and ground once gained will never need to be recovered. Meanwhile, we can but pity those who cherish delusive hopes of progress by political intervention. They are like men, in whom the fever has produced delirium, and who would lay violent hands on themselves, while they dream of destroying their tyrants. They may sometimes need the restraints of clubs and bayonets ; they need more the knowledge which is the burden of the gospel of Christ, and the intelligent pluck which is the secret of modern civilization. And these, may God help us to give them ! V. THE BIGHTS OF LABOE. IN the delightful, though somewhat carelessly written and diffuse, biography of Robert Moffat, by his sou, it is related that when the young missionary finally succeeded in obtaining the necessary official permission to leave Cape Town for the interior, he halted one evening at the house of a wealthy Boer farmer, the owner of many slaves, a hard-headed, but honest- hearted man. Young Moffat, then only twenty-two years of age, was made welcome, and when the master of the house learned that his guest was a preacher, he proposed that religious services should be held after supper. The request was very promptly and cheer- fully granted, and, when the table had been cleared, the Bible and psalm-books were brought out, and the farmer's family took their places. But the servants had not been asked to come, and none were present. Moffat quietly referred to the fact, when his host gruffly retorted : " Servants, what do you mean ? " "I mean," replied the guest, " the Hottentots of whom I see so many on your farm." The rage of the slave- owner can be imagined as he blurted out : " Hotten- tots ! do you mean that, then ! Let me go to the mountain, and call the baboons, if you want a congre- gation of that sort. Or, stop, I have it ; my sons, call the dogs that lie in front of the door they will do." To this no reply was given, and the service was quietly 7 (97) 98 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY, begun. After singing and prayer, the preacher read the story of the Syrophenician woman, commenting especially on the words : " Truth, Lord, but even the dogs eat of the crumbs that fall from the master's table." In a few minutes the farmer interrupted the sermon by saying : " Will Mynheer sit down and wait a little : he shall have the Hottentots." They were summoned, and in obedience to the strange command they trooped into the master's house, whose interior many of them had never seen. At the close of the service, the astonished slaves quietly and quickly dis- persed, and the Boer turned to his guest with the remark : " My friend, you took a hard hammer and you have broken a hard head." 1 It was a brave thing to do ; but the boldness of the manoeuvre was matched by its discretion. The loving heart secured its object under the guidance of a wise and wary head. The young man discerned the folly of an open conflict, and so, instead of crossing swords with his host, he quietly undermined the foundation upon which his prejudice rested, and the honest man confessed that his head had been broken. Tact is in- dispensable in a world full of hard heads, and harder hearts. There must be no compromise with wrong, and there must be no acrimony in the sharp encounter ; the truth must be spoken in love. Now, the problems which modern socialism discusses touch the interests of vast numbers of our fellow-men, appealing to preju- dices of long standing, and deeply rooted, and many of these prejudices are as unwarrantable and wickedly wrong as was the Boer's contempt of the Hottentots. Neither fawning, nor scolding, will wither them at 1 " The Lives of Robert and Mary Moffat," p. 82. THE RIGHTS OF LABOR. 99 the roots ; that can be done only by firm, gentle, man- ly, straightforward dealing. Many sermons and treat- ises, professedly mediating between socialism and Christianity, deal with vague declamation, with nicely turned rhetorical periods, in which the cause of the poor is timidly espoused, while aggression and violence are deprecated. But " soft words butter no parsnips," and bring no salt to the porridge. The poor are hard- headed, though as a class they are not hard-hearted ; and no man can command their confidence and re- spect who does not use plain speech, and who is not prepared to make his words burn in deeds. They understand their misery better than their well-fed teachers, and what they ask of us are cold-chisels and strong hammers that they may break the bars of their prison-houses. They do not want any man's patronage, and if they wanted it, he ought to be too manly to grant it, because mutually degrading ; what they want and need is justice, pure and simple. Equally wide of the mark, as a remedial agency, is the temper of ill-concealed contempt and of fierce denun- ciation. The discontent of great classes will not yield to a sneer, nor will men stop their complaint by being haughtily ordered to behave themselves. The violence of the laboring classes is occasional, it is not their pre- vailing and controlling disposition, and they can only resent as an insult even the implied charge that they are insolent and unreasonable. We cannot remind ourselves too frequently that modern socialism, so far as it involves wrong, and even wicked, assumptions, must be "discredited, not crushed," or crushed by discredit. Bayonets can never settle the painful con- troversy, and an armed neutrality, dealing with tern- 100 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. porary and scanty concessions on both sides, will only add fuel to the flame ; there must be a manly dealing with manhood. There is a special disadvantage under which the Christian preacher labors in his debate with the poor. He belongs to a professional class, whose training, tastes, and associations link him with the well-to-do, even when his income is scantier than the wages of an ordinary mechanic. He has free access to the homes of the rich. He is often a guest at their tables, and the place of honor is frequently accorded to him, while the ordinary toiler is passed with a nod, and receives the scantiest recognition. That stings more deeply than the difference in the means of material comfort, the ill-concealed neglect with which wealth treats the honest poor. The preacher may be poor, but he is not ignored. Besides, his support comes mainly from those whom fortune seems to have favored. These build the costly churches, sit in the best pews, pay for the trained choir, and listen to the measured speech of men robed in silk gowns or shining broadcloth. Do not misunderstand me. I am not pleading for uncouth audience-rooms, and nasal singing, and slovenly dress, and coarse speech in the preacher ; beauty, cleanliness, and decorum win their way to the hearts of the poorest, if only archi- tecture, and art, and gentlemanly bearing, and refined speech, do not bury an earnest manhood out of sight. The eyes of the poor are keen ; they can detect the knave under the homespun, and the man under the glossy, close-fitting coat. None the less true is it, that from the very nature of the case, there is a chasm that separates the preacher from the working classes, THE RIGHTS OF 'LABOR.- 101 though lie may be the hardest toiler of them all ; and the sympathy which is born of piety alone, however genuine and profound, never can bridge the distance^ The New Testament has its message to the men who toil early and late, securing only food and rai- ment for themselves and their children, and its gospel is one of contentment ; but we must not forget that the preachers themselves were men of the people, who through life carried the burdens of the poor. Our Lord was a mechanic, and grew up in a humble home. The apostles were fishermen, who beat the waters night and day for the means of livelihood. Paul wrought with his own hands, earning his own bread. These men were not paupers, tramps, levying taxes upon the industrious ; but they were poor men, as a rule, who were compelled to practice a rigid economy in the management of their common treasury, and to whom three hundred pence, or forty-five dollars, seemed a fortune. From the lips of such men, whose utterance was charged with personal knowledge, the call to contentment and patient industry came with resistless and unanswerable force. How can we be their successors in such a ministry, never needed more than now, when the mighty pulses of a conscious manhood, long degraded and oppressed, are beginning to stir among the lowest ranks of human life ? It will be comparatively easy for us to follow the ancient leaders of our faith, if like them we have come up from the hard-toiling ranks, if we have known what it is to be hungry, and homeless, and unfriended, with none but God above us and a brave heart within us to carve our own way in the world. Such an experience will give a clearer insight into the subtle and hidden 102 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. sources of the world's misery, and a finer knowledge of the means by which its cure can be effected, than the com- pletest mastery of the literature of political economy ; while he who speaks of what he has experienced will command an attentive hearing. And he who has not risen from the ranks of the poor, cannot do better than to walk among them, studying with large heart and undimmed eye their present estate, and making him- self familiar with their history in the past. Let him pass from the stately avenues to the crowded tene- ments of our great cities ; let him read and inwardly digest the witness of history showing one long and deliberate attempt to degrade labor, and to brutalize the laborer by making work a disgrace, and by giving it the scantiest remuneration ; let him note how the poor have surrendered unconditionally to their cruel masters, drowning their grief in the drunkard's cup, and accepting without shame the pauper's portion, and he will not lack for a message to the men of wealth, and to the sons of toil. Wherever there has been tyranny at the top, there has been moral debase- ment at the bottom ; and the dynamite that is needed to break up the tyrant's power, is that whose upheaval makes the willing slave a man. But it is so much easier to make way with an emperor, or to sack a palace, or to wreck a railway-train, or to blow up Houses of Parliament, than to place the lever beneath the very foundations of the social state, that we must be prepared to be laughed at by men with whom heroic measures constitute the philosophy of reform. Nevertheless, let us have faith in God, confidence in those subtle, invisible, invincible forces, by whose energy manhood is developed and compacted, and THE RIGHTS OF LABOR. 103 before whose steady uplift all oppression must ulti- mately disappear. There is a cure for the evils of modern life, as there was for the leprosy that made Naaman an outcast, but the remedies are as simple as that which Elisha prescribed to the haughty Syrian. In the first place, then, the fact needs to be em- phasized that inequality, in physical and mental en- dowment, is an original, ultimate, and unalterable fact. It can no more be ignored in the economic life of man, than can the force of gravity in mechanics. Speak as men will of the " accidents of birth," there is nothing less accidental than ancestry and blood ; and all social improvement, to be radical and permanent, must begin with the habits of parents, and the earliest care of the new-born babe. Intemperance, overcrowd- ing, and lack of cleanliness, are confessedly the three main causes that recruit the ranks of pauperism. The second may, and probably must, be removed by sani- tary legislation, compelling unprincipled landlords to loosen their grip upon the necks of the poor. The first and the last will defy all philanthropic and legislative measures, unless the sufferers themselves lead the way in emancipation. There is an inequality for which the state is responsible, so long as under its guardianship any child is born in a den where pure air is impossible. There is an inequality which the state cannot remove, but whose guilt must be charged against careless fathers and mothers, who spend in the saloons what is needed at home, and whose drunken stupor makes them reck- less of the squalor into which their children are born. Temperance and neatness are virtues from which none are debarred, by any decrees either of God or of man, and their absence dooms the young child to a disadvan- 104 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. tage in the struggle for existence, for which nothing can be a compensation. A pure mind in a healthy body is the most priceless heritage of childhood, and that is impossible where vice and filth hold perpetual carnival. Here is the inequality which is eating out the life of the poor, and by which they doom their children to early and sometimes hopeless misfortune. Many there are, who, like Robert Moffat and Martin Luther, have risen from the humblest homes to places of power, but they have been homes where mental sanity was supreme, where the fear of God ruled, where the reason was not clouded by the fumes of the inebriating cup, and where dirt was hated as fiercely as the devil. Poverty is no bar to advance ; drunkenness and squalor are, and so long as these cause so much of existing misery, it is blasphemous to talk about the accident of birth. But with the removal of inequality occasioned by neglect of adequate sanitary legislation, and with the elimination of that more accursed and cruel inequality which is voluntary and deliberate on the part of par- ents, there is still an inequality which is inherent and abiding. Neither public statute, nor private virtue, can do away with it. He who fights it, fights against God. Not every man can be a Samson in strength, nor a Plato in philosophic insight, nor an Arkwright in inventive genius, nor a Rothschild in financial sagacity, nor a Paul in moral energy. If every man has a fair start, and the opportunity to develop all there is in him, he has no cause for complaint, unless he chooses to argue the matter with his Maker. Society certainly is not responsible for the existence of in- equality, any more than it is to blame that the violet THE RIGHTS OF LABOR. 105 is not an oak, or the humming-bird an eagle. The analogy of nature suggests that inequality in the social organism, so long as it is pure and unmodified, kept free from unnatural and vicious trammels, is not an evil, but a good, no more to be regretted than that all eyes are not blue. But, apart from any attempt to vindicate such an order, its existence is the plainest and most stubborn of all facts, a granite wall against which it is vain for any man to beat his head. And a fact so indisputable will make its presence and power felt in any economic polity that the genius or the fancy of man may invent. There never can be equality in the possession of material goods, so long as there is inequality in human nature. Another equally prosaic fact, which it is fatal to ignore or depreciate in any claim that may be made in behalf of the poor, is the impossibility of annulling the law according to which man is compelled to eat his bread in the sweat of his face. It may serve the purposes of shallow demagogism to say that the move- ment for lessening the length of a day's labor will ultimately result in its compulsory limitation to six hours, and that this reduction will be accompanied with such an increase of wages, under the system of co-operation, a that the commonest or the most obscure laborer will live, if he chooses, in dwellings as beauti- ful and convenient as any which are now monopolized by the wealthy." 1 Is there a man outside of Bedlam who can persuade himself for a moment to believe in so wild a dream ? Yet such balderdash as that was preached not many years ago to the workingmen of Massachusetts. Such utterances give plausibility to the 1 Wells, "Practical Economics," p. 248. 106 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. charge that the laborers have no more dangerous ene- mies than the men who pose as their leaders, who incite them to ill-timed rebellion, and counsel compromise only when starvation is impending, while they them- selves are careful to see to it that the treasury from which their salaries are drawn is always in good condi- tion. It may be true that every human being needs only " about three pounds of food per day, a few yards of cotton or woollen cloth each year, two or three tons of coal, or five or six cords of wood, a year, and a given number of cubic feet of space, sheltered by a roof." But scanty as such a provision may seem to be, there never has been a time when much more than that could be secured by the most patient and persistent toil. Savagery is a perpetual struggle for existence, in which insufficient food, and scanty rai- ment, and constant exposure, dwarf the body, and ensure premature old age and death. There is no gainsaying the statement of Mr. Edward Atkinson that a hundred years ago men obtained the necessaries of life, on our own favored soil, " only by working twice or thrice as hard " as men do now. " In the primitive days, under the primitive methods," when there were neither railways nor machinery, " the labor was so arduous and the hours of work were so con- tinuous that only the strongest survived. The con- ditions of life were more equal, but it was the equality of sordid, continuous, excessive manual labor." l An agricultural society is still the dream of many, as it was that of Thomas More ; but a nation of farmers and weavers must be a nation of hard workers, where in the season of harvest the day of toil must be from 1 " The Distribution of Products," pp. 36, 37. THE RIGHTS OF LABOR. 107 sun to sun. There is undoubtedly something very charming and poetic about the scent of the new mown hay, and the lowing of cattle ; but to swing the scythe under a burning sun, or to drive an ox-cart in mid- winter, is not the work of a holiday. Agriculture is not the royal path to wealth and leisure. If the farmer is the most independent of men, he is also the hardest driven by his work. He must grub, and plow, and hoe, until every joint in his body is stiff; he must fight the weeds in the ground, and weavil, cankerworm, and potato-bug above ground, the frost that kills his apple-blossoms, the crows that dig up the newly -planted corn, the hail that cuts his ripening grain. Horace Greeley has been quoted as saying that every turnip grown in his garden cost him a dollar. Peas, fresh from vines of your own plant- ing, are very delicious no doubt, but they are a luxury, for which many a man pays five-fold the market price, or concerning which the matter-of-fact farmer would tell you that every spoonful had cost him all it was worth. Nature is the hardest of masters; you must wring out of her bauds all she gives you. At first the harvests are so abundant that corn is cheaper than fuel ; but the years gradually exhaust the pro- ductive energy of the soil, and as population increases other avenues of industry drain the country of its younger and more ambitious men. Destroy the present industrial organization, break up every factory, level every rolling-mill, banish steam from land and sea, settle every family on a farm of a hundred acres, and the struggle for bread and raiment would once more be a struggle for life, with famine stalking through ten thousand homes on the local failure of a 108 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. harvest. As it is, with machinery multiplying ten- fold our powers of production, and with rapid and cheap methods of transportation, we are always within twelve months of starvation. Let the world play for one year, and famine is king. We are actually living from hand to mouth, and the world's ceaseless toil is needed to keep its fourteen hundred millions alive. The truth is that the more primitive your society, the harder must men work. There is something idyllic in the bold life of a hunter, and the free life of a fisherman ; but even if one had an unlimited supply of powder and lead, of rods, flies, and landing-nets, he would soon prefer the cotton-mill to the forest or the stream. The fishermen along our upper Atlantic coast are among the poorest of our population, for many of whom a severe gale means financial ruin and biting want. Modern socialism never wearies in picturing the primitive forms of life as vastly superior to those of the present, and the factory system especially is the target of unqualified condemnation as an enslavement and degradation of labor. But a com- petent English observer and student, Mr. Daniel Pidgeon, declares that " in spite of a bad beginning and early maladministration, in spite of a low condi- tion of labor and lower conceptions of its claims, the factory-system has benefited the English operative as no other form of industry has done"; and that it " alone prevented England from being overrun, dur- ing the latter half of the eighteenth century, by the most ignorant and depraved of men, and it was only in the factory districts that the demoralizing agency of pauperism could be effectually resisted." ' It is 1 " Old World Questions and New World Answers," p. 255. THE RIGHTS OF LABOR. 109 not true that the laborer's toil has grown more exact- ing ; it has always been hard and exhausting, and the farther back we push our study, the more universally heavy and chafing do we find the yoke to have been ; while, so long as the fish will not leap into our frying- pans, nor loaves of bread rain down from the sky, nor the forests and clay-banks shape themselves into dwellings, nor the mines empty themselves of their treasures, can life on earth have any other law than that of downright hard work. I believe the law to be holy and good, ministering both to manhood and enjoyment. Industry outflanks the devil in his designs, and no bread is so sweet as that for which a man knows he has paid the full market price in honest work. But apart from all vindication of this stern law, it is a fixed and unalterable fact in the life of man on earth. So long as the globe remains what it is, its conquest means eternal vigilance and unremitting toil. The discontent of our time is largely caused by the notion that vast stores of grain and merchandise are piled up in the warehouses, whose prompt distribution would make want unknown, and measurably increase average comfort. Productive energy is supposed to have so greatly increased, that a modest fortune ought to be within every man's reach. A sober study of the actual facts dissipates the happy illusion, and makes it plain that under the most favorable conditions the natural limit of average acquisition must always be comparatively low. Half a dozen men are sometimes singled out of a population of many millions, and be- cause these men have accumulated great fortunes, while the vast multitude has been forced to be content with a pittance, in comparison, it is assumed that 110 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. some awful iniquity is secretly at work defrauding the many, and that an aggressive, determined demand would break down the baneful monopolies, and se- cure to every man forthwith an easy competency. I believe it can be shown that the great fortunes com- plained of have resulted from exceptional circum- stances, from the monopoly that a great invention se- cures, or from the consolidation of lines of transporta- tion, movements that have always benefited the mill- ions vastly more than the original projectors ; and that the general tendency, under free competition, is not to the concentration, but to the wider and more equitable diffusion of wealth. But without enlarging upon this fact, the accumulated wealth and the annual production of our day are so limited, that upon an equal division, independent of all intelligence, skill, and thrift, of the recipient, every man would be forced to be content with a very moderate amount. The estimated wealth of the United States, in the year 1880, when the census reported a population of over fifty millions, with a total of nearly seventeen and a half millions of producers, was about forty- three thousand five hundred million dollars, represent- ing the slow accumulations of two hundred and fifty years, much of it in land, buildings, and machinery. An equal division, however, of this vast sum, would give to each man, woman, and child, a capital only of 870 dollars, a very large part of which would be abso- lutely worthless to the individual owner, in the form of fixed capital, whose withdrawal from skilled super- vision would involve its total loss. If the national wealth were equally divided among the more than seventeen million producers, from the youngest un- THE RIGHTS OF LABOR. HI skilled operative to the railway magnate, every work- er's share would be less than 2,500 dollars. That is to say, the extreme limit of average acquisition, to which three centuries of industry, enterprise, and thrift, have carried us, is twenty-five hundred dollars. Or if, in order to secure greater accuracy, we strike a rough average among the workers, assuming that half of them only are competent to render a full day's labor, the remainder representing the productive en- ergy of children and youth, with a capacity only half as great as that of the mature laborer, the average property of all kinds, including land, buildings, machinery, ships, railways, and raw material, would only be 3,200 dollars. He who has secured that amount stands at the present natural limit of average wealth in the most favored and prosperous country on the globe, and ought to represent the average intelli- gence, energy, and thrift. Having reached that line he may find many thousands above him, and a few almost out of sight ; but there are millions below him, and very many between whom and himself the dis- tance is greater than that between himself and the owner of a thousand millions. Seventy per cent, of the population are supposed to belong to what are known as the working classes ; but these, as Professor Levi reminds us, include " artisans and skilled workers, enamellers and lapidaries, machinists and engineers, with eyes and hands as cultivated as those of any other portion of the population, and as far removed from common laborers and miners as clerks and curates are from those who have reached the highest places in the liberal professions or wealthy merchants and bankers, all of whom pass under the category of the middle 112 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. classes." There are skilled artisans in New York City, working in small and dingy rooms, who command their own prices, and whose charges are always promptly paid. There are many whose daily occupation is that of manual labor, among the middle and higher ranks of artisans and mechanics, who own consider- ably more than three thousand dollars worth of prop- erty, and a perfect storm of righteous indignation would be provoked by the intimation that their ac- cumulations were nothing but legalized robbery. Yet every man who has three thousand dollars of his own stands far beyond the great majority of toilers, and has no reason to complain. And they who have not reached that natural limit of average acquisition should school themselves to moderate their ambition, and re- member that even this moderate sum is within the reach only of those who represent at least the average intelligence and economy, without which capital can- not be accumulated, nor our productive industries maintained. If we turn from the estimated wealth of the nation to its annual production, the results emphasize the same lesson of very moderate ambition. The most careful estimates place the annual production, in agri- culture and the industrial arts, at about ten thousand million dollars. The people can have no more than what an equal division of that amount would entitle them to. National, state, and municipal taxes consume more than seven hundred million dollars. It is esti- mated also that the entire capital of a community must be replaced within a generation, much of it go- ing to waste in a very much shorter period, and not a little of it wearing out in a year or two ; so that three THE RIGHTS OF LABOJR. 113 per cent, on the capital employed in production must be withdrawn from the gross annual product, to keep the industrial machinery intact. This, in our own case, would amount to over 1,300 million dollars; which, added to the YOO million dollars paid in taxes, leaves the net annual earnings of the nation 8,000 million dollars, without any deductions for profits to which capital and management may be regarded as entitled. If the latter be granted only three per cent, on the total investment, the net amount is reduced to 6, YOO million dollars, and a share of five per cent, would leave only 5,Y25 million dollars of grain and merchandise to be divided among more than 50 mill- ions of people. There is no more to be had, and no philosophy of distribution can alter the hard fact that when the granaries and the warehouses have been emptied, the only thing for men to do, if they want more, is to produce more. Dividing the amounts thus reached by the most careful computation, we find that an equal division would entitle every man, woman, and child, to 160 dollars a year, after deduct- ing taxes and necessary repairs, to 134 dollars a year if the invested capital receives three per cent., and to 114^ dollars if jwe per cent, interest be allowed ; an average of from 31 to 44 cents per day. Forty cents a day must suffice, on the average, to feed, clothe, and shelter the people of this country ; less than that must be made to suffice if the productive capital is to be in- creased, and provision made for the growth of popu- lation. Or if the annual production be divided among the actual producers, and in the order already given, the average income will be 45Y, 3YY, and 32Y dollars. Three hundred and fifty dollars a year must buy bread, 8 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. raiment, pay house-rent and doctor's bills, and provide a margin for saving, in every family of three persons. And if the workers be graded, as before, each able- bodied laborer, with average intelligence and skill, would be entitled to 600, 500, and 436 dollars a year, not more than two dollars for every working day. This amount represents the present natural limit of average income ; and every man who earns two dol- lars a day has no ground for finding fault with the present economic order, nor could he secure more by its subversion. There may be many above him, but there are many more on his own level, and there are many below him, and he may well hesitate to surren- der what he has in an endeavor to subvert industrial conditions, whose disappearance could not secure him more. Deducting what is fairly due to capital as interest, he can claim only about 450 dollars a year, which is the present natural limit of annual income to the average able-bodied laborer, less than a dollar and a half a day. This is the exceedingly modest sum to which our thousands of millions are reduced, when we deal with single pairs of hands, and with single stomachs ; and were such commonplace things taught, understood, and acted upon, the classes that now are most restless and discontented would be deaf to all insurrectionary appeals, and modify very largely their traditional conceptions about the tyranny of capital. Fourier's famous division of gross production, which was hailed with acclamation, gave four-twelfths to capital, three-twelfths to talent, and five-twelfths to la- bor ; while the modern industrial regime secures not less than 80 per cent, to the workers, and is therefore nearly a hundred per cent, more considerate of the la- THE RIGHTS OF LABOR. 1 115 borer than the co-operative socialism of the French school. And Bastiat announces as the great law of distribution under the modern capitalistic system, what Mr. Atkinson has confirmed by carefully pre- pared statistical tables, that "in proportion to the increase of capital, the absolute share of the total product falling to the capitalist is augmented, but his relative share is diminished ; while on the contrary, the share of the laborer is increased both absolutely and relatively." l That is to say, the more money, or what money represents, there is in a community, available for productive investment, the more moder- ate will be the rate of interest it can command, and the larger will be the net amount to be divided amoog the actual producers. Where ten men want one plow, and no more plows can be had, the fortunate owner can command his own price, within a very close mar- gin to the difference in profits which the use of the plow can create ; but when plows multiply until they can be had by all who want them, and when the sup- ply exceeds the demand, plows will diminish in ex- change value, until they can be secured at prices little above actual cost, and the major share of the profits in improved agriculture will fall to the farmer. This being true, it is plain that the hope of improvement for the laborer lies in the increase of capital ; and that increase must be provided for out of an annual average income of 450 dollars. Such a conclusion may well produce a sobering effect upon those who have been inclined to imagine that the preponderant majority of men are kept poor by adverse legislation or by an iniquitous system of distribution ; for when 1 "The Distribution of Products," p. 24. 116 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. we reflect that three thousand dollars represent the natural limit of average acquisition, and four hundred and fifty dollars the natural limit of average annual income, contentment with food and raiment is not only the recommendation of a religion that discounts material treasure, but no less the injunction of a hard common sense, which encourages every man to secure all he can. This consideration emphasizes another, the import- ance of cultivating the old-fashioned and difficult virtues of intelligent industry and thrift. There is no easy road to either fortune or fame. The path is steep, and rugged, and long. In the first place, labor becomes independent, and secures an eager welcome, in proportion to its intelligence and conscientiousness. The man who needs an overseer, to show him how his work should be done, and to watch him in its per- formance, must pay both himself and his guardian out of the proceeds of his labor. The ignorance and the easy-going indifference of great classes of laborers are the most potent of causes that keep their wages down to what is called the starvation limit. Where a man, like the master of whom Hugh Miller speaks, puts his conscience into e^ery brick he lays, so that his part of the wall never sags or bulges, his labor will command a premium, or he will soon become an overseer or master builder. Knowledge will always be power, and a pair of keen eyes will double and treble the productive energy of the hands. This is an economic law as righteous as it is inexorable, for it puts the honor where it belongs upon manhood, and not upon muscular exertion. It is universally conceded that slave labor, involving only the cost of subsistence, THE RIGHTS OF LABOR. 117 is the most expensive and unremunerative. The peasants of Kussia are the most poorly paid class of European laborers, and for that very reason agricul- ture is nowhere so depressed as there. They are poorly paid because they are ignorant and inefficient. It has been shown that " two Middlesex mowers will mow in a day as much grass as six Russian serfs ; and in spite of the dearness of provisions in England, and their cheapness in Russia, the mowing of a quantity of hay which would cost an English farmer a copeck will cost a Russian proprietor three or. four copecks." The senior Thomas Brassey has been called the "greatest captain of industry the world has ever seen," a famous builder of railways, between 1834 and 1870, in Europe, Canada, Australia, South Amer- ica, Syria, Persia, and India. There were times when he had contracts to the amount of eighty-five million dollars on his hands, and when he gave employment to eighty thousand men. 1 The carefully tabulated statements, drawn from his diary, of the comparative efficiency of laborers, are full of instruction. The English workman who received five to six shillings a day did more work for the money, than the Canadian who was paid only three and sixpence ; and the cheap labor of Ireland proved to be of no advantage in the construction of an Irish railway, as compared with a similar contract in South Staffordshire, where wages were fully double. The capacity of English- men and Frenchmen working side by side on the Paris and Rouen line, was found to be as five to three. In mining, which is confessedly the most laborious and exhausting of all occupations, the Frenchman 1 Brassey, " Work and Wages." 118 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. received three francs a day, the Irishman four, and the Englishman six, and yet the latter was found to be the most profitable employe. The wages of factory operatives are higher in England than any- where on the continent, while the manufactured prod- ucts of English industry are dreaded and excluded by heavy duties in all the countries where labor is cheap. " Jeder Arbeiter ist auch ein Kopf arbiter" say the Germans, and they speak true. In his testimony before the Trades' Union Com- mission, Mr. Nasmyth said : " When I have been watching men in my own work, I have noticed that at least two-thirds of their time, even in the case of the most careful workmen, is spent, not in work, but in criticising with the square or straight-edge what they have been working, so as to say whether it is right or wrong ; and I have observed that whenever you meet with a dexterous workman you will find that he is a man that need not apply in one case in ten to his straight-edge or square." 1 An interesting incident is cited by Mr. Atkinson, showing how intelligence increases both the efficiency of labor and the wages of the laborer. A German steamer, on the way to New York, a few years since, became disabled, and extensive repairs were necessary. Authority was given to have the work done in New York, but the agents were instructed to report, from time to time, the number of men employed and the rate of their wages. The first report alarmed the owners at Bremen, and a cablegram ordered the vessel to be sent back without delay, as the work could be done more cheaply in the German dockyards. But it was too 'Rae, " Contemporary Socialism," p. 344. THE RIGHTS OF LABOR. 119 late ; the repairs had already been begun, and there was nothing to do but to complete them. And when the bills had all been paid, it was found that the total amount of the wages was less than the same repairs would have cost in Bremen. The higher wages proved to be more economical to the owners, and more advantageous to the shipwrights, because they were paid to men who knew how to make every blow of the hammer tell. No wonder that "since then there has been no reluctance to repair German steamers in New York." l Thus the same amount of muscular exertion, in mining and in the mechanic arts, may be doubled, trebled, quadrupled in efficiency and consequent increase of wages, by intelligence and conscientious care in the laborer. He need work no harder, will not work as hard, because he works with- out fretting or haste, and yet be paid twice and thrice as much as his ignorant or careless associate. No single force, outside of religion, will do so much for the steady improvement of the toiling classes, as a sensible system of common school and industrial edu- cation, by which every child among the poor shall know how to read, write, and cipher, with a fair knowledge of hygiene, geography, and history ; and it may be fairly questioned whether that should not be the limit of the ordinary public school curriculum, leaving to the encouragement of industrial training what is now expended on German, Latin, algebra, and the 'ologies. Hardly less important is the good old-fashioned habit of saving, of compelling expenditure to move within the limits of the earnings. The reader will re- 1 "Distribution of Products," p. 60. 120 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. call John Foster's illustration, in his essay on Decision of Character, of the young spendthrift, who after squandering his patrimony, and parting with his an- cestral acres to pay his debts, determined to end his miserable and useless existence by suicide, but instead suddenly resolved that the parted title-deeds should once more be his own. He began that very day. He earned a few pence by carrying coal that had just been dumped on the street, and then begged for some- thing to eat as an additional gift. He worked early and late, spending only what was actually necessary. After a while, he began cautiously to trade in cattle, gradually increasing his profits as his operations ex- tended, but never altering the extreme simplicity of his life, until long before he died, the old homestead, with its wide acres, was again his own. Next to ig- norance, it is waste that is the poor man's greatest enemy. It is estimated that one-fourth of an English workingman's income is spent for tobacco and intoxi- cating drinks, an amount which, if carefully husbanded and invested, would at the end of thirty years leave him owner of more than a thousand pounds. It is at once amazing and discouraging to discover how reck- less many wage-earners are in their expenditures. They make no provision for a rainy day, and they spend their money in the most thoughtless and ex- travagant fashion. They buy on credit, where the ready cash would secure them a better article at a lower cost ; and they want what is reputed as the best, where a lower grade of goods is really more nutritious and serviceable. I recall an ironworker, whose ordi- nary income was from thirty to thirty-five dollars a week, who when the mills suspended for a few THE RIGHTS OF LABOR. 121 months was at once reduced to the verge of starvation, without credit even to supply a week's food, without coal in his bin, without money to pay his low rent, without a decent suit of clothes, and without sufficient bedding to keep his children warm at night. For years he had spent his wages on what the markets of- fered for sale, making his cheerless hovel a place where gluttony held perpetual carnival. I know of another, a skilled operative, who in England rarely re- ceived more than a pound a week, who upon his re- moval to a New England factory, where he received three times his former wages, at once adopted habits of living so much more generous, that he found it more difficult than ever to meet the demands upon his purse, growling against his employers when he ought to have turned a sharp pruning knife upon his own extravagances. Mr. Mallock cites the cases of English factory operatives, the united wages of whose families amounted to three hundred pounds a year, who live in " squalid cottages, with hardly a perma- nent comfort," but who spend their money on grapes, for which they will pay more in a year than for house- rent ; on pianos, when no one in the family knows a note of music; on beef -steak for feeding bull-dogs, and on pipes with four bowls to them, " so as to consume in a given time as much tobacco as possible." 1 These may be extreme illustrations of reckless and wicked waste ; but the waste is very far from being confined to such marked instances, and of such there are many more than many suppose. The poor have their extravagant habits, no less than the rich ; for ex- travagance is a relative term, whose degree is to be 1 " Social Equality," p. 133. 122 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. measured by thv ability of the consumer, or by the benefit which he receives from the expenditure. It is true also that vanity and luxury among the rich en- courage and stimulate extravagance among the poor ; but the latter have vastly more at stake in cultivating habits of economy and thrift, than the former, because without these they are reduced to dependence and helplessness in the struggle for bread. One of the best ways for resisting the encroachments of the great capitalists is a few hundred dollars in a savings bank, enabling the laborers to maintain a manly independence pending any controversy about wages. Starving men must yield to dictation, while a company of men who have saved enough to provide for a year's food and shelter, can always secure fair and honorable terms. It has been said that military success depends as much on the commissariat as upon any other one thing, and in the industrial campaign a liberal supply of bread will do more execution than dynamite and lead. The increase of capital, it has already been shown, inures mainly to the laborer's advantage ; and it is equally plain that small savings are the workingman's most effective economic armament, for the employer is as anxious to secure the laborer, as the latter is to have work, while he practically makes resistance madness, when hunger must compel an unconditional surrender in forty-eight hours or in a week. Here, at all events, homoeopathy is the true philosophy, fight the power of money with money, and a little money in many hands will prove to be mightier than a great deal of money in a few hands. Schools, too, for sewing and cooking, and the care- ful cultivation of these homely arts by the wives and THE RIGHTS OF LABOR. 123 the daughters of the poor, are among the most needful and promising helps to economy, thrift, and growing comfort. The milliner runs away with altogether too large a share of the earnings ; and competent author- ities agree in the verdict that the poor suffer more from inefficiency in cooking, than they do from scarcity in the raw materials. It is waste that makes want in many a household. There is ignorance in the buying ; and the good gifts of God, that are ready to feed blood, brain, nerve, and muscle, are made both unpalatable and indigestible, turned to murderous uses, by the incompetency of the kitchen. These homely arts need a revival. Careful and frequent ex- periments show that a liberal supply of wholesome food, of a large variety, including bread, groceries, vegetables, meats, fruits, fish, and dairy products, can be provided at an outlay of from 15 to 24 cents a day for each adult, the cost including fuel and service. These are not scanty estimates; an average of 20 cents a day provided the larder with a list of seventy- two articles, and the table was abundantly supplied. There never was a time when so much could be had for so little, and our abundance curses us simply be- cause we do not know how to use it. Domestics pass from service to marriage, but they carry with them only such culinary skill as they learned in the homes of their mistresses, and this proving unavailable in a cottage they soon sink into depths of suffering and squalor. These are not heroic measures that I am ad- vocating, and many may sneer at their suggestion, but along these humble and homely lines of endeavor must be largely sought the improvement in the material condition of the poor ; and what is more, they must 124 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. be encouraged and urged to take this improvement into their own hands. Throughout the present discussion it has been assumed, as calling for no proof in a distinctively Christian study of economic reforms, that the im- provement of the poor, like that of any other class? must be secured by them, and not for them ; must be won by their own intelligence and determination. The utmost that an enlightened philanthropy, giving direction to public justice, can safely do, is to clear away the obstacles in a man's path, and to protect him against interference with his natural rights. Be- yond that the responsibility rests entirely upon per- sonal manhood, and all external pressure must move along the lines that stir to honorable ambition. That, however, involves the right, nay it implies the neces- sity and obligation, of association. Professor Walker modifies the traditional doctrine of the economists that wages obey the purely natural law of supply and demand, and that consequently if the laborer will only cease to seek his own interest, his interest will seek him, by introducing the moral factor into the great debate, in virtue of which it becomes true that "if the wage-laborer does not pursue his interest, he loses his interest." l The degradation of the laborer is in- evitable and incurable, until he rouses himself to work out his own salvation. To do that he must know what he is justly entitled to, and that he cannot know unless he acquaints himself with the state of the mar- ket; knowing that, he must firmly demand what fairly belongs to him, and that he cannot do so long as he acts singly and independently. Wages cannot 1 "The Wages Question," p. 411. THE RIGHTS OF LABOR. 125 be raised at will, without regard to industrial condi- tions ; and on the other hand, so long as labor exists without organization, it fights against heavy odds and at a terrible disadvantage. The capitalist, the super- intendent, the merchant, subsidize all means of in- formation to their personal advantage. They cannot be expected to do anything else. They make a free use of the press, the telegraph, and the telephone, to say nothing of the mails. They are careful students of the world's markets, and come to understand as by intuition what it is safe for them to do. Their knowl- edge is their most ^valuable capital, enabling them sometimes to reap immense profits, by anticipating demands, and by taking advantage of industrial and commercial fluctuations. They are acquainted with each other, and they act in concert, not so much through deliberative assemblies and majority votes, as by the instinct of that common and exact knowledge which creates the closest ties of fellowship. Even here they maintain their independence; they are silent and secretive men, always ready to listen and learn, equally reluctant to impart, acting on the nursery advice about the two ears and one tongue; and if they occasionally confide their discoveries to each other, they never bulletin them on the doors of their factories. That may seem to be very selfish and wicked ; but if there is anything to which a man has a legal right it is his knowledge, and there is no social enginery by which he can be forced to part with it for the benefit of those who refuse to take the pains to secure it. Knowledge must be met by knowledge ; the partnership of capital by the co-operation of labor. The problem is simply this, the employer wants the 126 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. greatest amount of work for the least possible wages, and the employe wants the largest wages for the least possible amount of work. It is the battle between minimum and maximum, and unless the laborer knows his ground, he will fight when he ought to stay in camp, and he will sleep when he ought to fight. It is a hard and cruel necessity, but it is simply the law that a man must be a man to secure a man's rights; and the laborer cannot learn the lesson too soon. It is one of the stupendous iniquities of legislation, a burning disgrace to modern civilization, that not until 1824 were combinations of workingmen "for improving wages and reducing the hours of labor" rendered legal in England, and for nearly fifty years afterwards they were hampered by unjust discrimina- tions in favor of the employers, until at last, in 1871, the laborer secured his charter of untrammeled liberty. Up to that time, and for six hundred years, he had been treated as a child, who had no right to make a free contract, and who could not be trusted to confer and debate with his fellows. There are traces of this repressive legislation on our own statute-books, though the freer air of our institutions was fatal to their enforcement, and they have long since passed into merited oblivion. But there are many still who re- gard trades' unions as Satanic conspiracies against in- dustrial prosperity, and who cannot see the wisdom of giving to the laborer what has never been denied to the capitalist. It is easy enough to convict these labor associations of folly and tyranny. They cannot boast of an unstained history, and they are very far from being invulnerable ; but their faults are such as they THE RIGHTS OF LABOR. 127 may be expected to outgrow in the sharp school of experience, while the principle upon which they rest is perfectly legitimate, demanded alike by the theory of civil equality, and by the necessities of industrial elevation. They have had bad counsellors and selfish leaders; they have been captured by unprincipled men who saw in them the opportunity of gaining a livelihood without productive industry, and of forcing themselves into public notoriety ; they have resorted to terrorism in cowing those who differed with them, and to "boycotting" the employers; they have de- manded that factories shall be controlled by their own committees, in whose conferences the capitalist and owner shall have no voice, and whose decisions shall be final ; they have insisted that no distinction shall be made between efficient and inefficient labor, and that every man shall have the same wages for his work ; they have claimed the right of dictating to employers whom they shall employ, and the authority of calling them to account for dismissals from service ; they have restricted the number of apprentices in many of the trades, closing the avenues of honorable industry against their own children; they have de- manded arbitration and then deliberately violated their most sacred pledges ; and they have organized industrial insurrections that have for the greater part failed, causing untold misery, involving immense losses, and leaving a discontented and dispirited con- stituency after a forced surrender. They have been bold, aggressive, and plucky ; but they have not been equally wise and wary. All this is true ; and there are many claims which they must withdraw. They can- not give equality of industrial standing to intelligence 128 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. and ignorance, to the skilful and the blundering work- man. They cannot usurp the place of the employer, and make him only the submissive paymaster. They must enforce against themselves the sanctity of free con- tract, without which no industrial system can live. And they must remove all mediaeval restrictions in- terfering with universal freedom of choice in occupa- tions. The trades, like the professions and the avenues of commerce, must be perfectly free to all who may choose to enter upon their apprenticeship. All these things they will be compelled to do ; many of them they have already begun to do in England, where their temper is at present less revolutionary and dictatorial than it is here. But making al] these allowances, they have not altogether failed in secur- ing substantial advantages, and under more intelligent direction they may serve to bring about a more just and friendly understanding between capital and labor, producing a public opinion that will promptly secure to them, through courts of arbitration, impartially constituted, all that can be reasonably demanded, and without a resort to violent methods. There are many sober students of industrial economy who regard the trades' unions as the great corrective of modern socialism, and it is significant that Karl Marx severely condemned them as obstructive. But they must substitute accurate knowledge for imperious demands, and they must remember that employers have rights as well as employes. Mario is the representative of a class who lay great stress upon co-operative production, technically known as industrial federalism, in which the present system of employment by wages shall be replaced or modified THE RIGHTS OF LABOR. 129 by a proportionate share in the net profits, the share of each producer to be determined by a carefully graduated scale, giving due recognition to special energy and skill. 1 The hostility between capital and labor is to be removed by uniting both in the same hands, by making every laborer a capitalist. Few, however, have been disposed to advocate the system as capable of supplanting the present regime, because its theoretical advantages are counterbalanced by se- rious practical difficulties, though writers like Schaeffle and Kae are inclined to commend it as one of the available methods for giving greater elasticity to labor, in those communities and industries where the working classes have attained the requisite intelligence and power of self-command. "Without these qualities, co-operative production is impracticable. The labor- er must submit to control, even where the system in force depends for its formal authority upon his free election ; he must be content to pay heavy salaries to superintendents and managers, and he must be as ready to make good annual losses as to pocket gains. The fluctuations of the market may compel him to surrender a part of his stipulated income, instead of receiving a substantial dividend; and the danger is that while heavy profits will make him an enthusi- astic federalist, very slight losses will stir him to resentment and resistance. At present the capital- istic and employing classes assume all the risks, leav- ing the employes with fixed and guaranteed incomes ; and this industrial security cannot be enjoyed without being paid for, by a certain rough average balancing 1 Kaufmann's " Socialism," pp. 137-163 ; Kae, " Contemporary Socialism," pp. 172-192. 9 130 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. the probable gains and losses for a series of years. Hence it has been found that co-operative production encounters the most serious obstacles from the very men whom it is intended to benefit. It has not been altogether a failure, but the general verdict is that wherever it has been tried, in England, France, and Switzerland, it has not realized the hopes of its pro- jectors, and it yet remains to be tested on any very large scale. The trouble is not in the want of capital. Of that there is an abundance, as the large deposits of small amounts in the savings banks show, and as the low rate of interest proves ; but capital is extremely sensi- tive, and the man who has only a hundred dollars is even more clamorous for good security than the millionaire. Professor Walker touches the main diffi- culty in the problem when he says that the real trouble is not between capital and labor, but between the employing and the employed classes. The Gordian knot is not the financial, but the intellectual, factor, the necessity of the man whom he calls the "entre- preneur," the industrial "go-between," the trained superintendent and mediator between the producer and the consumer. 1 The " entrepreneur " is the rare man, and he commands a high price. Co-operative shareholders, as Thomas Brassey urges, would hesitate to pay their administrative head a salary of 5,000 pounds, yet this sum and even more is not unfre- quently paid " by private employers for an able lieu- tenant"; and if a lieutenant can command such a price, what would the laborers be compelled to pay for the services of the great " captains of industry," 1 " The Wages Question," p. 262 seq. THE RIGHTS OF LABOR. 131 without whom their labor would remain unremuner- ative or uncertain ? It may be said that exceptional ability should be made to serve the public weal, but it is idle to argue with a man who imagines that indus- trial economy can ever be organized upon such a basis. To change the tyranny of capital for the tyranny of labor, would only be a change in the form of slavery, and would not be the elimination of economic injus- tice. The only sound, sensible, and Christian plan is that which secures to every man what he is fairly entitled to ; and that, so long as the " entrepreneur " is indispensable, entitles him to exceptional remuneration without the charge of robbery. And so we come back once more to the homely remedy that the labor- er's lot can be improved, only by advance in intelli- gence and skill, ultimating in the ability of the work- ingman to become his own superintendent and em- ployer. Co-operation in production demands a high average of mental and moral discipline in its members, which only the most patient and persistent training can secure, and which no legislation can create. What is known as " co-operative distribution " has been more successful, because the problem with which it deals is much simpler. There is here no attempt to regulate the rate of wages, nor to substitute for it some other and more equitable form of remuneration ; the aim is simply to secure for the labow )jio mo^t for his money. Cooperative distribution is an attempt to get rid of the commercial middleman, the army of re- tailers who mediate between the producers and the consumers, or to reduce their ranks to a minimum. A loaf of bread goes through many hands before it reaches me, and every pair of hands employed in the 132 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. transfer must be paid out of my pocket. It has been proved in the Howe National Bakery, of New York, that a two-pound loaf of bread can be sold for six cents, with a fair profit to the owner. A careful analysis shows that the actual cost of a loaf of bread, under the most liberal estimates and made from the best flour, is only about 3 cents a pound, when it leaves the baker's oven, while the consumer pays for bread made from a medium grade of flour, not less than six cents a pound, the difference representing the charges paid for transfer from the oven to the table. There is some ground for the sharp reminder that "the whole railway service, from the field to the baker's oven, costs but half a cent per pound ; but the service of the baker, and the grocer, and the shop- man, costs 2-J to 4: cents per pound of bread. If you will analyze your pound of beefsteak, or if you are a Yankee, analyze the salt pork with which your beans were baked for your Sunday breakfast, I think you will find that the great monopolists, if any there are, are running the butcher wagons and the provision shops of your cities." 1 This may mean very little to those who can afford to give their orders at home, and pay for the delivery of hot rolls every morning, but it is a severe tax upon the poor who must bear their share of the taxation in such a system of distribution, where no rebate is allowed to the man who gives his own orders and is his own carrier. This is the problem which the co-operative stores aim to solve, and which has created in so many cities those great establishments where provisions are sold only for cash, the purchaser being responsible for the delivery. 1 Atkinson, " The Distribution of Products," pp. 291-295. THE RIGHTS OF LABOR. 133 Co-operative distribution may be said to have orig- inated with Robert Owen. It commanded attention by the success of the Rochdale Pioneers, was greatly advanced by the Christian socialists of England, and in the land of its birth it has come to be recognized as a permanent institution. The latest statistics, as given by Mr. Orpen, report 1,346 co-operative societies in the United Kingdom, with a capital of probably thirty million dollars, and annual sales amounting to a hun- dred and thirty million dollars. 1 Outside the city of London, T82 co-operative stores existed in England alone, whose annual sales amounted in 1882 to over sixty-five million dollars. In the same year the Roch- dale Society, which inaugurated the system of co-oper- ative distribution in 1844, on a capital of twenty-eight pounds, representing forty incorporators, had nearly eleven thousand members, with a capital of a million and a half dollars, and sales to the amount of thirteen hundred thousand dollars.* The goods are sold at the usual retail prices, but the net profits are annually or semi-annually divided among the stockholders, pro- portioned to the sum total of their several pur- chases. Mr. Holyoake may be pardoned for his enthusiasm, when, describing the success of the sys- tem at Rochdale, he says : " The industrial districts of England have not such another sight as the Rochdale Co-operative Store on Saturday night. These crowds of humble workingmen, who never knew before when they put good food in their mouths, whose every dinner was adulterated, whose shoes let in the water a month too soon, whose waistcoats shone with devil's 1 Laveleye, " Socialism of To-Day," p. 327. 8 Fawcett, "Manual of Political Economy," p. 257. 134: SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. dust, and whose wives wore calico that would not wash, now buy in the markets like millionaires, and as far as pureness of food goes, live like lords. They are weaving their own stuffs, making their own shoes, sewing their own garments, and grinding their own corn. They buy the purest sugar and the best tea, and grind their own coffee. They slaughter their own cattle, and the finest beasts of the land waddle down the streets of Rochdale for the consumption of flannel weavers and cobblers." ' The net profits, after paying all expenses, have averaged ten per cent, on the gross purchases, and in many instances have been much more. In France, Germany, Denmark, Belgium, Austria, and Italy, the results have been equally en- couraging, in supplying good food at greatly reduced cost. In the United States it has been widely tried, but without the same marked success of European experiments, partly owing to the superior general prosperity of the laboring classes, and partly owing to the growth of the cash and non-delivery stores. It is clear, however, that the most intricate and expensive part of our economic system has been, and still is, that which deals with the conveyance to the consumer of the necessaries of life, and that few things will do more for the general comfort of the laboring poor than the utmost possible simplification in the machinery of distribution. This may eliminate the small shop- keeper ; but it will concentrate responsibility, and so guarantee a better grade of goods, while the relative decrease of middlemen, who now must pay rent and get their living out of half a hundred uncertain cus- tomers, will be an advantage to the buyers, and com- 1 Mill, "Principles of Political Economy," Vol. 2, p. 375. THE RIGHTS OF LABOR. 135 pel the transfer of the superfluous commercial element to the ranks of productive energy, a result greatly to be desired. For the only class whose ranks are over- crowded, is the class that is engaged in the convey- ance of food and merchandise ; of producers, as of consumers, there cannot be too many. There is still another form of co-operation open to the poor, capable of almost indefinite application, the organization of relief and insurance societies, whether voluntary or under state supervision, by which members, in consideration of small weekly pay- ments, may secure themselves against sudden misfor- tune or sickness, and their families against want in the event of death. Here again it is in England that such societies have spread most widely, and have taken deepest root among the working classes. In 1874, there were 32,000 such organizations in England and "Wales, with a membership of four millions, and funds to the amount of fifty-five million dollars ; and it was estimated that these societies had diminished the poor-rates by ten million dollars a year. 1 The principle needs no vindication, and it is very far from having attained its greatest possible extension. The main danger to be guarded against is insecurity, for the contributions of the poor should be protected to the utmost limit of the law ; and to secure this end, it may be advisable to remove all relief and insurance societies from the list of free competition and even of voluntary organization, and remand them to govern- mental supervision and control. And if, in any community, all these methods fail to 1 Walker, "The Wages Question," p. 403; Rae, " Contem- porary Socialism," p. 220. 136 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. secure substantial relief against the fearful odds of competition, there is one more heroic measure left, emigration. Let the young and* vigorous act upon Horace Greeley's laconic advice : " Go West, young man." Not that life will be easy there. It is full of hardship, and none but the strongest can endure it. Eighteen hours is not an unusual working day on the frontier. But to him whose heart is brave, whose head is clear, and whose hands are muscular, who is not afraid of hard work and plenty of it, the virgin soils and untrodden forests of the globe offer a roomy home and the certainty of plenty. It is sheer laziness that keeps thousands of families in miserable hovels and perpetually on the brink of starvation, and ignorance that chains thousands more to the lands where they were born. The latter need a little knowl- edge of geography, and the former need the sharp prick of honorable ambition. The country needs them, but they hate its work ; and so, now as ever ? the pioneers of civilization must be the men who have pluck and push. For them the earth still waits, and has a generous welcome. Five hundred million acres of as good land as ever waved with a golden harvest, yet remain uncovered by any title-deeds, in our own country. The single State of Texas can grow the entire cotton crop of the country, wheat enough to feed the nation, with abundance of grazing room left for millions of head of cattle. There need be no con- cealed profanity in the retort upon the grumbler, " Go to Texas!" It has been estimated that the entire cotton crop of the world could be produced on one- fifteenth part of that unwieldy State, which has an area sixty thousand square miles larger than the Ger- THE RIGHTS OF LABOR. 13Y man Empire. The average annual crop of wheat now raised in the United States and Canada would feed one-twentieth part of the world's population, and, were all the land under ordinary cultivation, we could easily supply the world with bread. Besides, no one yet knows what the productive capacity of an acre of land may not be made to become. The occidental plow has supplanted the oriental forked stick, but agriculture is all the while improving its methods and increasing its gains. It may be doubted whether one-third of the globe has ever been scratched even with a stick. We may as well let Malthus sleep awhile. He frightened everybody in his day with his theory of a geometrical ratio of in- crease in the population, with only an arithmetical increment in food, and with his conclusion that men were rapidly encroaching upon the limits of subsist- ence ; and the Malthusian ghost has not yet wholly vanished. But the assumption has been discredited by the discovery that another law operates upon pop- ulation, as the limits of subsistence are gradually reached, the law that makes it stationary. As yet, however, and for many years to come, there is no cause for alarm. There are a good many people in the world, but it is a good-sized world they live in. It contains no less than fifty million square miles of solid land, enough to give every moderate family a farm of a hundred and fourteen acres. There is plenty of elbow room if men will only go where it is. The entire population of the globe could find com- fortable standing room in a lot ten miles square ; and on a plain twenty miles square they could all be easily seated. And for this population there is not 138 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. only what the soil can be made to yield, but the im- measurable wealth of the seas and the winged tenantry of the air. There is more than enough, there is an astounding prodigality ; and the only question is, how shall we provoke men to go where plenty waits for them? Lack of knowledge has hitherto hindered many, but it need hinder them no more, for even the dark continent has become luminous under the light of missionary and commercial exploration. Difficulty of transportation has hitherto hindered many, but it need hinder them no more; ships and railways are eager to carry them at low rates, and we may hope that the increasing facilities of travel and the rapid extension of commerce will be hailed by many able- bodied poor as open doors into homes of honest plenty. VL THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF WEALTH. THE chaotic and voluminous literature of socialism is occasionally relieved by a clear, brief, crisp discus- sion, dealing with a few fundamental and far-reaching principles, whose statement and advocacy bring re- ireshment and hope to the reader. One wearies of unceasing and unqualified diatribes against existing institutions, as if modern civilization were a monster of injustice, whose insatiable appetite must devour all the poor unless the harpoon be plunged at once into its vitals. The universal assumption of scientific so- cialism is that the industrial relations have always been tyrannical, and that they were never more tyran- nical than at present under the system of free contract and competition ; while every form of improvement is denounced as the compromise of cowardice, which does not aim to secure at once such a reversal of exist- ing customs as to result in making the employes mas- ters of the situation, while capital and skill meekly receive what the former may choose to give them. However wild and impracticable such a scheme may seem to be, it is at least clearly and boldly stated ; and it is always an advantage to have the lines of contro- versy clearly marked out. Karl Marx knew what he wanted, and he never loaded with blank cartridges. (139) 140 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. He had no patience with co-operative production, be- cause he claimed that free competition would, even in such a system, force labor down to the lowest limit of earnings ; he regarded co-operative distribution as an enemy in disguise, a wolf in sheep's clothing, as the capitalist would ultimately reap the benefits of better food at lower prices, by reducing the wages of the operative ; he was an enemy of Trades' Unions, be- cause they fought only for fewer hours and higher wages, while they ignored the millions not represented in their councils ; and he looked with little favor upon modern factory legislation, because it assumed to do for the laborer what it was his prerogative to impose for himself and upon his own terms. He laid the axe at the root of the tree ; reformation must begin by the confiscation of land, and of all the machinery of pro- duction and of distribution, and by their surrender to the hands of those who are the sole producers of wealth. All things must serve labor, though labor may be trusted to be just, and even generous, to in- telligence and skill. There is tremendous resonance in such a charge, but it is the sound and fury of solid shot, sent hissing upon a definite aim. One reads many books and pamphlets, however, reminding one of the fire-crack- ers and pop-guns of a Fourth of July celebration, which drive sleep from one's eyes, and leave the air heavy and sulphurous. It is taken for granted that the devil has always had his way in the world, that behind the fair face of modern civilization there beats the purpose of a gigantic tyranny, and that society is on the verge of a profound convulsion, unless good men promptly unite in averting it. But when we THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF WEALTH. 141 listen for the proposed remedies, we are treated to fine phrases and sentimental suggestions, to homilies on love and the beauties of self-sacrifice, homilies in- tended, of course, only for the rich. The pessimistic philosophy of socialism is suffered to pass unchallenged, while the men who for ages have suffered the wrongs of social tyranny are treated to sugar-plums. I have little hope of our religious teachers contributing to future industrial peace and prosperity, by ostentatious- ly patting the laborer on the back, and then joining in the cry of thief against the men of wealth. Let us have the courage of our convictions. If it be true, as is so frequently asserted, that no great fortune can be the honest reward of legitimate industry, then be it our first social and political aim to crush out the rich, as we would murderers and thieves. And if wealth be not a crime ; if the rich, no less than the poor, have their rights, let us champion their rights as honestly and fearlessly as we defend the manhood of the poor. Upon an impartial examination of the facts, it may be found that neither the virtues of history, nor its vices, have belonged to any single class; and that while modern civilization is far from being perfect, it is not an unqualified conspiracy of the rich against the poor. As a firm believer in Christ, and in the kingdom of God, illustrated by the mustard-seed and the leaven, I am constrained to break with the pessim- ism that not only dominates the logic of socialism, but no less vitiates many an attempted reply. When, therefore, a disputant appears, whose pointed pen quietly punctures the arguments of an inflated logic, and leads the way to the simple principles of justice, upon which all permanent institutions must be 14:2 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. built, his brave and needed venture merits recognition. Such a criticism may be found in a little contribution by Professor "W. G. Sumner, of Yale College, entitled " What Social Classes Owe to Each Other." The tone of its discussion is perhaps a trifle scornful, and the sarcasm becomes occasionally very biting ; but this is the somewhat natural result of reaction against shal- lowness and sentimentalism in the camp of the oppo- sition. The higher ethics of the debate are not emphasized; but then the argument is professedly upon the plane of political justice and of economic equity, and these must rule the markets of the world. I have seen the author's spirit condemned as pagan and selfish, but frequent careful perusal fails to justify the sweeping and unkind criticism. He sim- ply protests against the assumption that everything is wrong, and that we are going to swift destruction; and he claims that the simple remedies of an even and impartial justice, granting to every man his native right to be himself and placing him upon his mettle, guarding him against the encroachments of selfishness and greed, are all that public law can safely do to cure the evils of our time. That there are evils he freely confesses, and he certainly has no love for a vulgar plutocracy, but he has no faith in the quack medicines so freely advertised in the market. " Hands off," he cries, " let the secret energies of freedom, intelligence, industry, and conference do their appointed work, and the problems of our time will slowly and surely solve themselves." There is here a simple faith in reason and manhood, which needs only the affirmation of faith in God, to make it Christian ; and even that is present by implication. THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF WEALTH. 143 There is one 'point, on which he touches, that IB fundamental in the present debate. It is, that all duties and rights are personal. Classes, as such, owe nothing to each other. There are no reciprocal duties between wealth and poverty, between capital and labor. It is not the business of one class to promote the happiness of another class. Such a philosophy re- tains the notion that some men are necessarily doomed to imbecility and dependence. Rights are between man and man ; duties are purely personal, and per- fectly equivalent. The rich man, as such, is no more bound to care for the poor man, than is the latter under obligation to defend the former ; both owe to each other the respect to which manhood is entitled. There can be no other ethics. Morality deals primarily with men, not with their circumstances. Strictly speaking, there are no such things as the rights of poverty, and the responsibilities of wealth. Both the rights and the responsibilities inhere in manhood. The poor man has not more of the former, nor less of the latter ; nor has the rich man more of the latter, and less of the former. Both are under obligation to defend their personal rights, and to be helpful to each other ; though the inveterate selfishness of human life may and does violate the law of harmonious mutual adjustment, compelling economic reform to emphasize the rights of the poor, and the responsibilities of the rich. But of no class can it be said that it is called to be the guardian of another. Service is a universal duty, it is not a badge of distinction. We are all summoned to bear one another's burdens, yet in such a way that every man shall bear his own. It follows, therefore, that no man is to be regarded 144: SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. as a criminal, simply because lie is rich. There is no end to the indiscriminate abuse that has been heaped upon the bonanza farmers, the mining speculators, the cattle kings, and the railway magnates, as if they were a band of outlaws and pirates. It would seem as if death must have been a welcome release to one of these men, who has been more roundly denounced and bitterly blackguarded than any of his contemporaries, and against whose home violence has felt safe to utter its threats. With half of his great fortune tied up for a generation, and the other half divided among eight heirs, we shall be spared the frequent and in- delicate parade of his name, a publicity that always annoyed him. For it appears that his exceptional wealth forced him into a conspicuousness wholly un- congenial. His pre-eminence made him solitary, and his compulsory isolation pained him. He found his relaxation among horsemen, whose brusque and un- conventional ways made him feel that he was a man among men. Everywhere else it was his gold that was counted, and his manhood revolted against the homage of sycophancy. He longed to be respected for his personal qualities, and he felt that these were under perpetual eclipse because of his millions. I saw him but once, at the Glen House in the White Moun- tains, and his party was as quiet and well-behaved as any. The waiters in the dining room, that year, were college students. He had learned the fact, and seemed greatly interested. When he left, he slipped a sealed envelope into the proprietor's hands, with the request that it should not be opened until after his departure, when it was found to contain a check for three thou- sand dollars, with instructions that the amount be THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF WEALTH. 145 equally divided among the thirty college men. One of these young men, I remember, had availed himself, on the day before, of the prerogatives of an American citizen, and had organized a strike for higher wages on his own behalf, no obstacle being offered to his solitary rebellion, while the hundred dollars intended for him found their way into the pockets of the re- maining twenty-nine. He probably has his tirade against the bloated capitalist, while his associates will remember the dead millionaire with tender respect. The examples of Peabody, and Slater, and Otis, and Swett, show what avenues of influence for good are open to consecrated wealth, and we may regret that the greatest single fortune in the hands of an Ameri- can citizen was not linked for all future time with some vast philanthropic or educational enterprise ; but it is fair to ask how far a reckless violation of the ordinary courtesies in the use of his name, in pulpits and presses, may not be chargeable with the failure ; and the neglect of my neighbor to use his property as I think he might and ought, does not make him a scoundrel in its possession. But, it is said, this immense fortune was wrung out of the earnings of the poor from the taxes imposed by a railway monopoly upon a helpless people. There is no truth in the charge. It was as legitimately earned as is the wealth of any great inventor. For Cornelius Yanderbilt, the first great railway king, had constructive ability of the highest order, as marked as that of any military or political leader. It was not inherited or borrowed capital that made him rich. It was the new departure in railway consolida- tion, in the rapidity and continuity of transportation, 10 146 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. which he inaugurated, that laid the foundation of his prosperity, and that benefited the whole people more than himself. The railroad has ceased to be a local affair, and has become the main artery of economic distribution. It has brought the wheat-fields of Da- cota nearer than were the farms of Central New York twenty-five years ago. The knitting process began in 1861, and may be said to have been completed in 1869. Since then the yearly amount of freight moved on a single line has increased nearly four-fold, and the charges have been reduced to nearly one- third. The profit on each ton of freight averages only a quarter of a cent per mile, and twenty-five cents represents the net earnings of the road in bring- ing a barrel of flour from Chicago to New York. Comparing present freight charges with those of 1869, the country saves 400 million dollars a year ; and, as compared with 1866, '67, and '68, the gain is 600 million dollars annually. In the single State of New York there is a yearly advantage in favor of the people of nearly seventy-five million dollars. In Ohio, a similar consolidation of railways, effects a saving to the people of 60 million dollars a year, as compared with 1869. 1 In the light of such facts, the great Yanderbilt fortune should be criticised. To denounce it as theft is to invite the contempt of busi- ness men, and to advertise one's ignorance of modern progress. In the words of another, " He (Cornelius Yanderbilt) accumulated a colossal fortune in a single generation, which may possibly be held by his pos- terity through two or three generations ; but when we Atkinson, "The Hallway, the Farmer, and the Public," pages 231-289. THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF WEALTH. examine the method of his accumulation, we find that it represented only a small share of the labor that he saved men from doing, and not work that he either compelled or could compel them to do. He abolished distance at the cost of his small accretion of wealth ; which accretion, compared to the work that he did, would be like comparing the work that a drop of water will do by its falling weight compared to the power it will exert when expanded into steam and directed against the piston of an engine. His fortune was but a trifling share of the labor that the men of Massachusetts and other Eastern States have been saved by the application of that single piece of capi- tal, the railway which he controlled, to the mQre me- chanical work of distributing the products of the Great West." The savings in JS"ew York State alone, in two years of time, are equal to the entire amount that has been distributed to the members of his family ; and who shall say that such an advantage was not cheaply secured ? I do not maintain that all great fortunes have been as honorably acquired ; the point of my present insistance is, that enormous personal wealth may be, and often is, the legitimate reward of exceptional ability in diminishing the waste of pro- ductive or of distributive energy. In fact, it may be laid down as a rule that great profits are not the earnings of capital, but of skilled superintendence. The current rate of interest, as in- dicated in the quotations of government bonds, is the best barometer of the power of capital. The morning paper of present date (Dec. 15, 1885) shows that the three per cent, bonds were worth 3* cents above par, and the price of four per cent, bonds was 123| ; show- 148 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. ing that capital was satisfied with an assured income of even less than three per cent. A higher rate of inter- est will, of course, be demanded where the risks are greater ; but this is only saying that the difference is paid as an insurance against possible depreciation and loss. There is no lack of money, and it is eager to find secure investment at low rates ; intelligence and skill in the organization of profitable enterprises are the rare commodities that command the high prices. The man who can reduce the price of cotton goods by half a mill per yard, by some improvement in machinery, or by a more economical arrangement of his operative force, or by slightly cheapening the cost of transporta- tion, has a free path to wealth ; but in the long run he will be overtaken, and the public will reap the per- manent advantage of his temporary gain. Industrial economy cannot prosper without its rich men, simply because it depends on brains more than it does on money ; and there is wisdom in the warning that a reform which begins by putting statutory limits to the acquisition of wealth, or makes the latter a crime, is like cashiering and shooting the generals of an army, or passing a law that no man shall command more than a thousand soldiers. It has been suggested that no man should be allowed to be worth more than five million, one million, one hundred thousand dol- lars, and by many, doubtless, the latter limit would be very much reduced ; but all this involves the right of the state to regulate personal ability, to prescribe to the Almighty how much brains a man shall be per- mitted to have. It is the old appeal to the fabled iron bedstead of Procrustes, the robber of Attica, who stretched some captives to the requisite length, THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF WEALTH. 149 and cut off the feet of all who were unfortunate enough to be too tall for his liking. "Whatever message we may have to the men of wealth, it is not one which denies to them the use of their powers, or which would rob them of the full fruits of their energy. If the poor need to be protected against the unscrupulous greed of the rich, the latter have a right to claim exemption from the unreasoning and unreasonable prejudices of the former. In both classes it is the mom to whom the appeal must be made, and on whose behalf the law must be invoked. It is here that we touch the vital point in the de- bate on the responsibilities of wealth, the duty of treating the laborer as a man. To murder him is a crime ; and the crime is not diminished because he is starved, or crowded into unhealthy quarters. Labor may be a commodity in the market, but the laborer is not an article of commerce. He is always more than a machine, more than a horse. The discovery of a hot journal brings the express train to a full stop, be- cause the railway company is determined to preserve its rolling-stock, and the public insists on safety. For the same reasons the road-bed is kept in perpetual re- pair, and under incessant vigilance. The horse is liberally fed, comfortably stalled, and moderately worked, as the dictate alike of prudence and of kind- ness. It does not pay to starve and overwork the brute. The poorly-fed, badly-housed, overworked laborer is the victim of an injustice whose curse returns sooner or later upon the head of his tyrants. When we are told that in the West of England " it is impossible for an agricultural laborer to eat meat more than once a week," when the Devon peasant must breakfast " on 150 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. tea-kettle broth hot water poured on bread, and flavored with onions, dines on bread and hard cheese at twopence a pound, with cider very washy and sour, and sups on potatoes or cabbage greased with a tiny bit of fat bacon," when many a factory hand in France " never has anything better for his breakfast than a large slice of common sour bread, rubbed over with an onion so as to give it a flavor," when the working classes of Holland and Belgium very rarely taste meat, their food being mainly "potatoes, with a little grease, brown or black bread, often bad, and for their drink a tincture of chickory," it is time for enlight- ened legislation to compel employers to cease from a policy that is as demoralizing to economic industry as it is brutalizing to the laborer. 1 It is both suicidal and tyrannical. It degrades the workman, and im- pairs the quality of his work. It may make cheap labor, but it will increase the cost of production. The latter consideration will appeal more immediately to the interest of the employer. The men under his care are his most valuable stock in trade, and he can get the most out of them only by treating them well, by paying them all he can afford to give. The cattle- farmers of the West listened with scorn to the protest against branding their stock, on the ground of cruelty; but when they were reminded by one of their number that the practice diminished the value of the hides, they began to discover reasons why the heated iron should not be used too freely. " A plentiful subsist- ence," are the plain and weighty words of Adam Smith, " increases the bodily strength of the laborer, 1 Fawcett, "Manual of Political Economy," p. 192 ; "Walker, " The Wages Question," p. 56. THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF WEALTH. 151 and the comfortable hope of bettering his condition and ending his days perhaps in ease and plenty animates him to exert that strength to the utmost. Where wages are high accordingly, we shall always find the work- men more active, diligent, and expeditious than where they are low ; in England, for example, than in Scot- land ; in the neighborhood of great towns than in re- mote country places." No man will do his best under the lash, and with barely enough to keep him from starving. "If any will not work, neither shall he eat," was one of Paul's economic principles, in which he added the sanction of Christianity to the original law of nature ; and the converse is equally imperative " if any man does work, he has a right to eat," and that right certainly can involve no less than such a quantity and quality of food as is demanded to make good the waste of nervous tissue, and protect the body from disease, and the mind from depression and des- pair. Employers who fail to act upon this principle are as foolish as they are wicked, for "the human stomach is to the animal frame what the furnace is to the steam-engine. It is there the force is generated which is to drive the machine. "What the employer will get out of his workman will depend very much on what he first gets into him. Not only are bone and muscle to be built up and kept up by food, but every stroke of the arm involves an expenditure of nervous energy, which is to be supplied only through the alimentary canal. What a man can do in twenty- four hours will depend very much on what he can have to eat in those twenty-four hours; or perhaps it would be more correct to say, what he has to eat 152 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. the twenty-four hours previous. If his diet be liberal, his work may be mighty." 1 It may seem strange that the free laborer should ever have fared worse than the pauper maintained by public charity, or the soldier living in camp. Yet the labors of the English Poor-Law Commission in 1833, revealed the fact that while the soldier received a ration of 168 ounces per week, and the pauper one of 151 ounces, the independent laborer, the descendant of the ancient yeomanry, could get no more than 122 ounces. This is an injustice which society cannot afford to tolerate ; and even if many farmers cannot see the policy of feeding their cattle well, the employ- ing force of a community must not be permitted to try the experiment on men and women. Humanity must step in where self-interest is blind and iron- hearted. It is true that no class of laborers in our country has as yet reached so low a state of destitution as may be found in many districts of France, Ger- many, and even England ; but it is one of the possible dangers of the future, and in a comprehensive survey this obligation of the employer not to imperil and diminish the soundness and strength of his employe assumes primary importance. Only second in gravity is the matter of shelter, and the restriction of child-labor, together with the preven- tion of demanding tasks beyond the natural limit of endurance. The cottages of the Devon peasants are declared, even at present, as a rule, " not fit to house pigs in." For such people, the factory is a paradise. Children only nine years old have been kept at work fourteen, and even eighteen hours a day ; and it is only 1 Walker, " The Wages Question," pp. 53-60. THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF WEALTH. 153 twenty years since many little ones, six, eight, and ten years of age, were driven into the fields to work for twelve and fourteen hours, under a hot sun and against chilling, cutting winds, " disorganizing the cartilages of the joints, producing curvature of the spine, dwarfing the growth, and preparing the way for an early break- ing down from rheumatism and scrofula." 1 "When we remember that such survivals of cruelty remained after philanthropic legislation for more than sixty years, the first factory act having been passed by the English Parliament in 1802, under the premiership of the second Pitt, we shudder at the thought of what Christian men so long permitted. On the continent these abuses lingered for many years longer. French factory legislation dates from 1841, that of Belgium from 1813, that of Germany and Austria from 1839 or a little earlier. Spain, Portugal, Kussia, and Hol- land had no legislation restricting the labor of children as late as 18Y3. The English have been most aggres- sive and persistent in their endeavors to defend the manhood of the toiler, and the parliamentary statutes cover a great variety of cases, and all forms of indus- try. Persons under 18 years of age cannot be en- gaged to do night-work, and their day-labor is limited to 12 hours, including an hour and a half for meals. Children between 9 and 13 years of age are not per- mitted to work more than 8 hours daily, except in silk-mills, where they may work ten hours. In France, no children under ten years of age are al- lowed to work in factories, mines, or shops, and then only six hours a day ; and until they are 16 years old, they are not permitted to work at night ; nor may 1 Walker, " The Wages Question," pp. 58, 60-65, 201-203. 154 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. women of any age work in the mines. Germany has fixed the labor age at twelve; from 12 to 14, six hours is a day's work ; from 14 to 16, ten hours, with two intervals of rest ; and all night-labor is prohibited. Sweden allows no children in its factories who are not 12 years old, and night-work only to those who are 18. In Kussia children work 13 hours, as long as the men ; and in Austria they are compelled to keep busy 15 and even 17 hours, exclusive of meals. These are some of the sadder chapters of a sad story, but they serve to show how wide is the field for humanitarian agitation, and how imperative the demand for united and earnest endeavor. Childhood must not be muti- kted. Womanhood must not be sacrificed. Labor must not issue in dangerous exhaustion, and the hours of toil must be graduated by its severity. Workshops must not be fire-traps, and sanitary legislation must supervise the laborer's dwelling. More is needed. The principle of insurance should be made to cover, at least in occupations of special danger, as in mining and the manufacture of explo- sives, the operatives as well as mines, buildings, and raw materials. In England and in Germany em- ployers are liable for damages to the workman, or compelled to insure him against accident. The spirit and the scope of such provisions, demanded by simple justice, cannot be better portrayed than in the following quotation from a recent report (1885) of the president of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad : " The time has come in America when capital, if it expects to be taken care of by labor, must in turn provide the means for thoroughly taking care of labor. The earnest efforts of the Baltimore and Ohio Eailroad manage- THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF WEALTH. 155 ment to so provide for its subordinates and employe's generally as would bring about the most prosperous condition of affairs with them, have been most heartily seconded by those most interested. The Relief Association, to which the company gave so freely at its organization, and the management of which has ever been directly within the hands of those who come in daily contact with its members, has proven one of the most beneficent, and, at the same time, ad- vantageous sources of labor protection. Its results are as apparent and as convincing to capital as they are to labor itself. By its provisions every employ^ has within sight aid both material and medical if ill, and is assured of his family having the means of a com- fortable subsistence in the event of his meeting the fate common to us all. More than this, when old age ' c3 comes on, and with it physical weakness or incapacity for continuing daily toil, the man who has exhausted his energies in the service of the company knows that his declining years will be marked by an income in the form of a pension, greatly assisting in continuing a comfortable living. And, again, his children are first upon the list for employment in the company's service, and during apprenticeship they are given in night schools a thoroughly practical, and, to them, most valuable education without cost. We beliere that we to-day have more completely and more satis- factorily solved the problem of the relations of labor to capital than any other corporation in America." And there is one other right that must not be with- drawn, the right of every toiler to the Sabbath as a day of rest and of worship. To deprive him of that is to dehumanize him, to rob him of his highest birth- 156 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. I/right, the right to find time in which to worship God. Plato is quoted by the author of " Gesta Christi" as say- ing that leisure is necessary to the acquisition of virtue, and that therefore no workiiigman can acquire it ; and the same writer so forcibly states the importance of the Lord's day to the laborer, that I give his own words : " Christianity early obtained for the working classes of the Roman empire this great blessing. Under the prodigious impulse of the leading races of modern times toward the production and the acquiring of material wealth, there would have come, without some such day, an absolute breaking down of the physical power, a wearing out of the brain, and a cor- responding moral degeneracy. In fact the Christian Sabbath may be said to have saved the modern European and American races. Had the greed of money never known an enforced rest ; had the wheels of the factory, the hum of the market, and din of business sounded through the streets seven days as now through six, and no customary day called away thoughts to things not bought or sold and to principles unseen and eternal, the modern people might have run to the lowest point of materialism." ' The clean linen and best coat on the first day of the week, the Sunday dinner unhurried with the household, the ele- vating and consoling influences of the sanctuary, are the rights of universal manhood, and industrial civiliz- ation must be adjusted to them. Sunday labor of many kinds may be a necessity, but it must not be permitted to make a churchless class. The laborer is not a com- modity ; he is a man, whose toil may not be pur- chased or controlled in such a way as to involve the 1 Brace, " Gesta Christi," p. 410. THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF WEALTH. 157 sacrifice of his manhood. He has a soul, as well as a body ; he has affections, as well as muscles ; he needs the consolations of religion, and is a child of God by the adoption in Jesus Christ, as well as his master ; and no contract is free that ignores these facts. ** The plea of this argument is not that of charity or of sentiment, but of simple justice. The poorest man is a man ; and the man at the social bottom may not be ground to powder between the upper and nether millstones of commerce and an unchecked competi- tion. Better break the millstones than the man be- tween ; and the man between will break the grinding wheels. For if men of wealth cannot be made to hear and heed the still small voice, there will come again, as in the Peasants' War, and Wat Tyler's Re- bellion, and the French Eevolution, the rumbling earthquake, the rending whirlwind, and the sheeted fire. There is One on the throne of the heavens to whom the children are dear, and who is the champion of the weak, and He warns us all against the tyranny that robs them of their heritage : " It is impossible but that offences will come ; but woe to him through whom they come ! It were better for him that a mill- stone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones." And if that be true, there can be no nobler work, nor one more pleasing to Him who delighted in the name Son of Man, than that we "loose the bands of wickedness, undo the heavy burdens, let the oppressed go free, and break every yoke." It is the voice of eternal justice, demanding that manhood be never sacrificed in the service of Mammon ; that there 'Lukexvii. 1 and 2. 158 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. shall not only be freedom of contract, but contract between free-born men. And to secure that, we shall not only need such legislation as has been suggested, but what is infinitely more important, and vastly more difficult to secure, the genuine and profound regard between man and man, which Christianity emphasizes and commands. There is another form, however, of capitalistic in- dustry, which has provoked frequent and earnest criticism, as dependent upon public consent, and as therefore subject to public responsibility. In it the corporation is the central idea. It is based on the concentration of capital and intelligence, moving in concert, and competent by their superior strength and tact to eliminate and crush out the individual pro- ducer. It is claimed that the smaller industries are rapidly disappearing, and that the centres, both of production and of distribution, are falling into the hands of the few. This may be true, without its being an evil, so long as the corporation is held to strict account, and any tendency to tyrannical admin- istration is carefully guarded and promptly checked. If one factory with a million dollars of capital can produce a greater quantity and a better quality of goods, at much lower cost to the consumer, than a hundred mills with a capital of ten thousand dollars each, why should not the public enjoy the advantage? The consumers are in the overwhelming majority, and production is carried on only for them ; why should they be compelled to pay more than needful, simply to continue the old system in power? The real difficulty in such cases is the comparative immo- bility of labor. The new combinations and improved THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF WEALTH. 159 processes throw a number of men out of employ- ment, and some time must elapse before they can find other satisfactory and remunerative occupations. " The inventor," it has well been said, "the man of science, is the great disturber of existing conditions. He renders worthless great masses of capital which had been valuable ; he takes away the hereditary occupa- tion of vast numbers of laborers who may be capable of doing no other kind of work." Thus the spin- ning-wheel disappeared before the jenny and the mule, and the power -loom destroyed the hand- loom. The railway has supplanted the turnpike, and forced the canals to become free water-ways. The packets have disappeared. When coal supplanted charcoal in the smelting of iron, England took from us the brief advantage we had enjoyed in the great forests that covered our acres. The discovery of natural gas in the vicinity of Pittsburgh, and its economy as compared with coal, threatened seriously to affect the iron industry elsewhere, and in some places prompted measures that provoked hatred and revolt among the operatives. The substitution of electricity for steam and gas, for motor and illuminat- ing purposes, which may be looked for in the near future, seems likely to unsettle and render useless many existing and flourishing industries. Many of these inventions involve large plants to make them operative, and compel the concentration of great amounts of capital. They make corporations and joint-stock companies a necessity. Shall we then place an embargo on inventions ? Besides, it is not always true that the new drives the old out. It was feared at one time that the locomotive would make 160 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. the horse useless, but horses have managed to live and find owners. The telegraph has not crippled the mail -bag, and the telephone has not made either obso- lete. That there have been hardships consequent upon improved machinery, and the changes in indus- trial production it has made necessary, is undoubtedly true ; but the disturbances have been local and tran- sient, disappearing as soon as producers have brought themselves into harmony with the new economic environment. The trouble is that man cannot change his aptitudes as rapidly as the new arts demand, though ultimately each improvement becomes a blessing to him. The great lesson to be learned, as Mr. Atkin- son says, is that " the only accumulation which has any permanent value consists in that experience and versatility, in that habit and capacity of applying brains and hand alike to any kind of work which is waiting to be done, whereby men are enabled to pros- per under any and all conditions. The only capital of any importance which can be transmitted from one generation to another is this power of applying brain and hand together to useful work, whatever may be the changing conditions under which the work of each generation must be done." * In More's Utopia, all drudgery was done by slaves and criminals. It may be that the more exhausting forms of manual labor, as in the mines, will be made wholly needless by mechanical inventions, and that the industries of the future will be so organized as to require no long apprenticeships from the great body of laborers. Such is certainly the present tendency. And though it may be said that man is becoming the 1 " The Distribution of Products," p. 84. THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF WEALTH. 161 adjunct and attendant of machinery, he is gaining in versatility of possible employment, in the ease with which he can transfer brain and hand from one task to another ; and this increasing mobility of labor is an immense and permanent advantage. So far then as associated capital is indispensable to the introduction and efficiency of industrial inventions, the hostility of the laboring classes against it would seem to be un- founded. They are sure, ultimately, to reap the largest benefits, in cheapening production and in the growing ease with which they can secure employ- ment. Still, the jealousy of corporations is not wholly groundless. They constitute an imperium in imperio, a wheel within a wheel, and the secrecy of their oper- ations has in it an element of danger. They can defy competition from individual producers, they can break down nascent opposition, and as a last resort they can buy up their enemies. They may thus prescribe their own terms to the public, and repeat, in a small way, the infamous history of the East India Company. The power of a corporation is in its impersonality. It lives while men die. Its capital is not divided and scattered once every generation. Its treasury is always full. It is an artificial product of modern civ- ilization, a creature of law ; and therefore it should be held amenable to law. Its charter should be defi- nite and subject to revision, and its transactions should be open to governmental inspection. The propriety of such supervision and control is already acknowl- edged as applied to banks, and insurance companies, and railway corporations ; what is needed is its firm, fearless, and impartial application to all associations created by law. The holders of public franchises 11 162 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. should be held to strict account in the management of their trusts. Especially imperative is the obligation of vigilance when the franchises involve large and valuable public gifts and guarantees, as in the construction of great railways. These, in our own country, represent an ag- gregate capital of about seven thousand million dollars, with a mileage of over a hundred and twenty-five thou- sand. They give employment to nearly half a million men, of whom 20,000 are engineers, 13,000 are con- ductors, 23,000 are machinists, 23,000 are carpenters, 64,000 are station men, 3,500 are general officers, 9,000 are clerks, 92,000 are brakemeii, baggage-men, and shop-men, and 125,000 are track-men. They form a great, compact, thoroughly disciplined industrial army, intelligent, brave, and faithful above the average. The late Mr. Yanderbilt has been quoted as saying that no greater compliment could be paid to any man than his election to the presidency of the New York Cen- tral. Over twenty hundred million tons of merchan- dise are annually moved one mile on this line alone, at charges amounting to twenty million dollars, ex- clusive of passenger traffic. All these railways enjoy valuable public franchises, in rights of way, in ter- minal facilities, in wide tracts of public lands. They constitute a gigantic monopoly in the means of trans- portation, whose free, cheap, and uninterrupted oper- ation is as essential to industrial peace and pros- perity, as is a sound arterial system to the human body. It goes without proving that such corporations cannot be left to purely private management. They are great public trusts, made possible only by public consent and public gifts, and their responsibility is THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF WEALTH. 163 not confined to caring for the interests of stockholders. There are some who urge the necessity of converting them into national property. Bismarck is understood to favor such a policy, though the military character of the German empire suggests the possible reason of his advocacy. In England the proposition has not met with wide acceptance, though the telegraph lines have recently passed into the hands of the govern- ment, and to very general satisfaction. Telegraphy, however, is a means of communication closely allied to the mail system, and there are cogent reasons for uniting the two, which would not apply to the nation- alization of railways. The latter constitute a far more gigantic enterprise, and their purchase and manage- ment by government would be an undertaking dwarf- ing all previous ventures. They demand a high grade of trained service, which should be kept wholly free from party intervention ; and the elimination of per- sonal responsibility through national control might seriously imperil safety. Certainly, until the general government can show greater efficiency in the eco- nomical administration of its present trusts, it will be wise not to encourage an addition to its burdens, that would open wide the doors to unexampled jobbery and party deals. It is no disparagement of public officers to say that the brains of the nation are not in the heads of the politicians. They are frequently the most helpless of men when a national election vacates their places. Business men, as a rule, are not eager to go to Congress, nor do they scramble for Cabinet honors ; and it is a safe rule to insist that they shall be left to conduct their own enterprises. It may be doubted whether the great railways of 164 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY the country could be administered more economically and efficiently than they are at present ; and such im- provements as are needed can easily be secured through additional legislation. They have no right to complain against the constant challenge of an enlightened public judgment, demanding that there shall be no secrecy in their management, that their accounts shall be open to public inspection, and that the excess of profits, after paying expenses and the market rate of interest to holders of bonds and stocks, shall be applied to a re- duction in the rates of transportation. As I write, New York Central stock is quoted at 101^ to 103, certainly not an extravagant figure, which would seem, to indicate that this road has reached the limit of economical management. Other railway stocks find purchasers only at prices that indicate grave embar- rassment, and impending bankruptcy. A few com- mand prices ranging from 120 to 137, and here it would seem as if rates might be reduced without in- justice to the companies. It is the sober judgment of one who has given special attention to the subject, and who handles without gloves the " almost measure- less villainy, fraud, and breach of trust" that have disgraced the railway service, through the votes of men of " notoriously bad reputation, who have stolen the property of their stockholders, corrupted the courts, and rendered themselves unfit to hold any place of trust," that we have reached " the end of speculative building, and of the issue of two, three, or four dollars of security for one dollar actually paid, and are now entering upon a period of railway adjust- ment, of earnings limited to a moderate rate of possi- ble dividend on what the needed portion of the pres- THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF WEALTH. 165 ent railroad mileage would cost at the present actual prices of labor and materials"; and that the main security of the public against the continuation and repetition of frauds, is in the greater enforced publicity of the accounts rendered, with perhaps the creation of a national commission, through whom public opinion may be brought to bear upon railway corporations. 1 And such publicity should be exacted at the hands of all associations created and defended by public statute. The privacy that belongs to the individual as his inde- feasible right, cannot be claimed by those whose very charter of existence bears the seal of the state. The question of corporations, as one of the ruling forms of modern capitalistic industry, suggests the related one of monopolies. The natural right of an inventor is extremely limited. His control is abso- lute so long as he keeps his discovery a secret ; but the moment he exhibits his machine and explains its operation, he must make a contract for his protection. The value of his invention depends on its general adoption, and he cannot therefore claim the right to impose his own terms for an indefinite period. If he attempts the dog in the manger policy, he is sure to be outwitted. Thus England succeeded for a long while in retaining control of Arkwright's improve- ments in cotton-spinning, "by making it a penal offence to carry drawings or models to any other coun- try." But England could not prevent brains from importing them, and Samuel Slater succeeded in building the needed machinery from memory, a procedure that was probably denounced as piracy, but which was only the overthrow of tyranny. Interna- 1 Atkinson, " The Railway, the Farmer, and the Public." 166 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. tional courtesy does not compel international syco- phancy or slavery. The world must be free, and they who thrive upon the public must give that pub- lic an equal place in their councils. The great for- tunes that have been accumulated through the secur- ing and purchasing of patents, creating a monopoly in production or use, indicate the necessity of a careful and thorough revision in our legislation. It might be well to limit the net profits that shall accrue to the in- ventor and his associates, making generous allowance for risks and invested capital, and insisting upon the utmost publicity of accounts. It never should be possible for millions of stock to be given outright for real or prospective legal services, where not one dollar has been paid for the purchase. This is robbery, pure and simple ; and no eulogy on inventive skill can make it anything else. For the inventor has no gain so long as his discovery is under lock and key, nor could he reap any advantage from publicity, so long as every observer is free to reproduce his work. The public, by legal statute, opens for him the path to fortune ; and the public has a right to insist that the gains shall not become extravagant, and such right- eous limitation involves the obligation of publicity. The enacted legislation must be complemented by the liberal and compulsory use of the press, and impartial- ly enforced by an independent judiciary. Such re- strictions are reasonable and righteous, and they prob- ably indicate the limit of practicable supervision. It is probable, also, that the rights of testamentary bequest should be more carefully defined and restricted by legal statute. There are few things that appeal more strongly to human ambition than the desire to THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF WEALTH. 167 found a family, to transmit to successive generations of lineal descendants the honors with which personal ability has been rewarded. The man whose sword carved for him a kingdom has assumed the right to control the throne indefinitely. But nature has always refused to ratify the royal decree, as if a dead hand could control the pulses of a living world. The judgment has sometimes been long delayed, but in the end the insignia of power have been stripped from the feeble, and committed to the hands of those who had the ability to rule. Hereditary kingship has always dug its own grave by the very care it has taken not to be con- taminated by plebeian blood, and to preserve a race of princes. The breeding in-and-in policy has made the name of Bourbon the synonymn of empty pretension, mental imbecility, and moral obtuseness. Aristocracy has not suffered to the same degree as royalty, because it has had a larger field of choice in matrimonial al- liances, and because the path has always been free to any who had the ability and the patience to conquer its steeps. Still, the House of Lords has long ceased to represent the best English statesmanship. The real leaders are not the scions of noble families, but the children of a sturdier and more democratic race. The aristocracy of blood has always been anxious to draw them into its net, and the latter have sometimes fallen into the snare, as when Pitt, the " great commoner," accepted the peerage to the loss of his popularity, and when D'Israeli consented to be called Lord Beacons- field. William Gladstone has been wise enough to de- cline the empty honor. Statesmanship has never been known to run in the blood for more than two or three generations. The Pitts, father and son, in Eng- 168 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. land, and the Adamses in the early history of the United States, father and son, are notable as exceptions, and so point the general law. The fact is, nature seems to be unalterably hostile to aristocratic preten- sions, and takes her own quiet way to discredit them, by consigning their claimants to a life of elegant leisure, or compelling their children to begin anew at the bottom of the hill. There is where every man ought to begin, to carve his own way to place and power, the reward of personal service, not of inherited fortune. There is no greater curse than a landed aris- tocracy, whose estates are so protected as to give scope to idleness and profligacy, through centuries of time, without abatement of original inheritance. The idle and the vicious ought to go to the bottom, for that is the only way to cure them, and such is the demand of God's eternal righteousness. Thrones and titles, as prizes to be retained by half a dozen or half a hundred families, are doomed. Christian democracy is under- mining and discrediting these pagan claims, not from hatred of those who make them, but from inherent hostility to the principle upon which the pretensions are based. The only nobility it recognizes and honors is the nobility of personal manhood, the aristocracy of intelligence and virtue. It wages no war against dec- orations and titles, against palaces and thrones, if only these represent the fitting rewards of marked and genuine worth. The most vulgar form in which the discredited principle could return, under forms of law, and the only one possible in a democracy, is that of inherited wealth. A plutocracy of blood, made possible by an enormous fortune, so disposed of and tied up by sue- THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF WEALTH. 169 cessive testamentary bequests, as to create a privileged class of rich idlers for centuries of time, would become an agency of wide-spread moral corruption. Wealth created by its owner is an index of his personal power, and the manhood necessary to the accumulation saves it from being contemptible, while it preserves the pos- sessor from degrading vices. But when the personal energy is lacking in the descendants, while the millions of the dead man remain to gratify their vanity, the early and homely virtues will be swamped in a flood of artificial excitement and unnatural vices. The American hostility to the law of entail is thoroughly sound and just. If property be, as Schaeffle affirms, "the apparatus of personal life," the economic or- ganism created by the industrial energy of the indi- vidual, as his body is fashioned by the energy of life, no limit may be assigned to legitimate accumulation ; but the right of exclusive administration ceases at death. The withdrawal of the man demands the dis- integration of his fortune ; its speedy return to the vast industrial territory from which it was gathered, is as much a law of nature, as the burial of the body when the spirit has departed. The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead. The family is, indeed, an extension of the personality of its head, and may therefore rightly claim primary recognition in the set- tlement of the estate ; but the law has always held that the power of bequest has its limitations and may not be exercised to conflict with the permanent inter- ests of the human race. A bequest, for instance, set- ting apart a large sum of money to be used for the dissemination of vicious literature, or for the purpose of war with a neighboring or distant people, would 1YO SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. certainly be declared null and void. The question, therefore, what shall be the limitations in the power of bequest, is entirely legitimate. It is much more difficult to indicate the reasonable limits, and to state the principles by which they should be determined. A probate tax increasing in relative amount according to the testator's wealth, has been advocated by many. John Stuart Mill suggests the restriction to be placed not on what any one might bequeath, but on what any one should be permitted to acquire by bequest or inheritance ; thus leaving the testator to dispose of his entire property, but prohibiting him from giving by will to any one more than a certain amount. The result, he thinks, would be, that great fortunes would no longer be employed in enriching a few, but would be more frequently devoted to objects of public use- fulness, or distributed among a larger number. 1 He confesses, however, that any law would be premature, until public sentiment is prepared to sanction it, and he refers to the United States as encouraging the policy " of munificent bequests, and donations for public pur- poses, whether charitable or educational," while Eng- land would regard such legacies as evidences of insan- ity ; and he declares that our ideas and practice in the matter of inheritance " seem to be unusually rational and beneficial." We come here upon the New Testa- ment idea of stewardship, that men are not their own, and that they should so use the mammon of unright- eousness as to promote the kingdom of God. Eich men should be made to see that only very limited amounts are necessary to shield their children from want, and even to support them in ease ; that great 1 "Principles of Political Economy," Vol. 1, pp. 281-291- THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF WEALTH. fortunes have frequently proved to be the ruin of those who were thereby placed forever beyond the need of exertion, while public institutions wisely founded, and liberally endowed, are channels of health and healing for all time to come. The millionaire is a man of too much force and independence to be scolded or frightened into surrendering what belongs to him, nor would I have him yield to clamor ; but he is a man and can be moved by manly appeal to his better instincts. Bring him face to face with the un- speakable gift of God, and teach him plainly and patiently the great lesson that he is the noblest man who makes Jesus Christ his model. Consecrated wealth will come, when consecrated manhood is king. The discussion might properly rest here ; but there are two other evils of modern civilization that have sorely aggravated the misery of the poor, while they have opened new paths to ill-gotten wealth, and they may not be omitted from our enumeration. These are national debts, and standing armies. They are not felt as fetters upon our own industry, perhaps ; but they are iron yokes upon the necks of the Euro- pean millions. The Napoleonic wars brought the continent to the very verge of ruin, whose terrible effects have not yet been outgrown. They lasted for twenty-five years ; they saddled heavy burdens on every nation ; they paralyzed trade ; they created the bitterest animosities ; and they " spread misery like a pall over the land. There was work for nobody, and nearly everybody, therefore, was starving." * Mr. J. R. Green, referring to this period says: "The war enriched the landowner, the capitalist, the manufac- 1 Schoenhof, " The Industrial Situation," p. 136. 172 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. turer, the farmer ; but it impoverished the poor. It is, indeed, from the fatal years which lie between the Peace of Amiens and Waterloo that we must date that war of classes, that social severance between rich and poor, between employers and employed, which still forms the great difficulty of English politics." 1 And Professor Rogers, whose judicial temper is dis- played in every line traced by his careful pen, de- clares that the distress of the laboring classes, while aggravated by the practices of employers, and inten- sified by the harsh partiality of the law, had its deeper cause in the ruinous wars of the present century. " Thousands of homes were starved in order to find the means for the great war, the cost of which was really supported by the labor of those who toiled on and earned the wealth which was lavished freely, and at good interest for the lenders, by the government. The enormous taxation and the gigantic loans came from the store of accumulated capital, which the em- ployers wrung from the poor wages of labor, or the landlords extracted from the growing gains of their tenants. To outward appearance, the strife was waged by armies and generals; in reality the re- sources on which the struggle was based, and without which it would have speedily collapsed, were the stint and the starvation of labor, the overtaxed and under- fed toils of childhood, the underpaid and uncertain employment of men. Wages were mulcted in order to provide for the waste of war, and the profits of commerce and manufacture. It is no wonder that workingmen have no great trust in government by party, for the two great historical parties have 1 Traut, " Trade Unions," p. 34. THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF WEALTH. 173 fleeced and ground them down with impartial persist- ence." ' That war cost Great Britain alone, 3,000 million dollars, increasing the national debt to nearly 4,000 million dollars, and for seven-twentieths of this im- mense sum the nation received no equivalent ; 1,400 million dollars being paid as premiums to bankers, purchasers of bonds, and contractors. A hundred and forty million dollars are paid annually as interest on this debt ; and the blood tax has now been paid for nearly seventy-five years, amounting to 10,220 million dollars, a sum in excess of the entire debt by a hundred and fifty per cent. Elsewhere, the burden is even greater, for England is the wealthiest of na- tions. France is crippled by a debt of 4,Y50 million dollars ; Germany by one of nearly 1,400 millions ; Austria by one of nearly 2,000 millions ; Spain and Portugal by one of the same amount; the debt of Spain was " converted " in 1881 from one of 2,600,- 000,000 to one of 1,290,000,000 dollars ; Italy is 2,200 million dollars in debt ; Russia 3,400 million ; Belgium 340 million ; and the extent of Turkey's indebtedness is not published by the Ottoman court, but is estima- ted at 540 million dollars, having been " reduced " to that amount from 1,300 million dollars in 1881. The aggregate debt of Europe, contracted mainly since the beginning of the present century, is not less than 20,000 million dollars, whose interest absorbs a large share of the annual revenues. This means a perpet- ual mortgage of sixty dollars on each man, woman, and child, of 180 dollars on each laborer, and of 300 dollars on each family of five. The average annual 1 " Work and Wages," p. 505. SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. tax on each laborer is 27 dollars, 45 dollars on each family of five. In Italy it is 50 dollars on each such family, in Belgium the same, in England 62 dollars, and in France 65 dollars. The consequence is that work is scarce and wages are low. The taxes are de- stroying the industries, and only the strongest can bear the tremendous strain. Spain, Italy, and Turkey are already bankrupt ; their revenues are insufficient to meet their expenses. Austria and Russia barely manage to pull through, and a great war would ruin them both. France, Germany, and England pay their annual bills with comparative ease ; but another con- tinental quarrel would involve them all in the most serious financial straits. And where are these 20,000 millions of money? Lying idle in the coffers of the rich, so much capital withdrawn from productive industry, and constituting the heaviest single item of taxation. Austerlitz, "Waterloo, Sebastopol, Sedan, these are the things for which every family in Europe is compelled to pay twenty dollars a year. How long can such a tax be paid ? How long ought it to be paid ? Who is there that would honor the bonds of Nebuchadnezzar, of Alexander, of Caesar, or even of David ? Is there any equity in a national debt that cripples for all coming tune the energies of a people ? May the dead hand of Napoleon forever grind Europe's poor? The Mosaic legislation enacted that no debt should have a longer lease than fifty years, and we only followed the same principle when we issued bonds redeemable within 5 and 10 years, and not running longer than 20 or 40 years. Every man must pay his own debts, and when he dies the creditors can get no more than the THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF WEALTH. 175 estate will bring ; they cannot compel his children to make good the deficiency. Moses seems to have thought that each generation should make its contracts in the same way ; and that nations, like men, should pay as they go. Thomas Chalmers favored the plan of a direct tax, even in years of war, equivalent to the exceptional expenditure ; and it is certainly the grav- est of wrongs to involve the future in hopeless bank- ruptcy. The question is one that cannot be evaded much longer. Governments will be forced into liqui- dation, and creditors will have to take what they can get ; or popular revolutions will make an end of reign- ing dynasties, and cancel the debts which the latter have incurred. Nor will it be easy, in any large view of the problem, to show that such a course is necessarily dis- honest. I am bound to pay my own debts, but not those which another has presumed to contract for me by the unauthorized use of my name. By whom were the vast war debts of Europe contracted ? Certainly, as a rule, not by the people, nor by their representa- tives. The producers were not consulted ; they were simply expected to pay. The day may come when they will call their masters to account ; and the prob- lem will be one of the most complicated with which practical ethics has ever been called upon to deal. The incubus must be removed, and each generation must learn the homely lesson of paying its own debts. That will be genuine progress, and in this moral evolution Moses will once more be the lawgiver of the world. The financial embarrassments of industry, and the consequent bondage of the laborer, however, are not the most mischievous consequences of national debts. Had they been incurred under a policy of extensive 176 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. internal improvement, they would represent no actual loss, and they might be useful in promoting and cementing domestic peace. Such a use of the money would only amount to a change in the form of profit- able investment ; and a community might be all the richer for being in debt. For so long as a man can bor- row at five per cent., and by the added facilities in pro- duction increase his profits to ten per cent., the mort- gage on his industry is not an evil. The case is wholly altered, if in a fit of extravagance or insanity he should make a bonfire of his borrowed money. Europe has nothing to show for the expenditure of 20,000 million dollars in three-quarters of a century. That amount of hard-earned wealth was simply and forever wasted, and a perpetual mortgage placed upon lands impoverished by fire and sword. At the same time the ranks of the producers were fearfully deci- mated. Only the strongest can endure the fatigues of the camp and the march, so that perpetual war drains the nation of its hardiest sons. The feebler men are left at home, and the result is increasing physical degeneracy, as may be plainly seen in the present peasantry and operative classes of France, the land that suffered most from the incessant and ruthless conscriptions, because her armies were pitted against a European coalition. Besides, the long and fierce quarrels have excited animosities that only smoulder in times of peace. The ashes are always hot, and the live coals are only covered, not extinguished. Every state has its grievance. Germany is determined to keep both banks of the Rhine ; France wants Alsace and Lorraine ; Spain sulks within its contracted bor- ders; Turkey writhes in impotent anger; Russia is THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF WEALTH. 177 knocking at the gates of the Bosphorus, and crowds its way to the passes of India ; while England is deter- mined to check the ambitious designs of the White Czar. The nations are at peace with hands upon the sword-hilts. They hate each other with all their might, and their compacts are broken upon the slight- est provocation. They dare not disband their armies, and yet they cannot afford to maintain their over- grown military establishments. The result is, that in Germany, for example, whose national debt is by far the smallest of any great European power, " one man in every twenty is a soldier in camp or barracks, and one man in every other twenty must be employed in sustaining the idle soldier, while every man wastes a considerable part of his life in preparation for war and is liable to be called away from productive work at a moment's notice. Under such conditions as these it follows that neither the poverty of Germany, France, Austria, Italy, nor any other country, can be attributed to any real antagonism between labor and capital, but must be assigned in part to the poverty of the soil, in part to artificial systems in the division of the land which are enforced by statute, and in part to privileges and to the burdens of standing armies." 1 In times of peace Europe has nearly four million able-bodied men under arms (3,700,000), and seven and a half millions can be commanded at a month's notice, fourteen million men constituting the war footing of European military establishments; while the soldier is everywhere the man of most commanding stature and of the finest physical energy. France has a stand 1 Atkinson, " The Distribution of Products," p. 18. 12 ITS SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. ing army of 529,000 ; Kussia one of T80,000 ; Ger- many of 450,000; Italy of T50,000; Austria of nearly 300,000 ; Spain of 150,000 ; and isolated Eng- land has a military establishment of 180,000 men, ex- clusive of its navy, with nearly 60,000 more, which probably represents the minimum compatible with safety. Greece, with a population of less than two millions, less than that of New York City and Brook- lyn combined, has an army, in time of peace, of over 29,000 men, nearly 3,000 more than the United States. On the basis of the continental policy, the United States would have a standing army of 600,000 men, to be maintained at an annual cost of six hundred million dollars, with an additional reserve force of not less than 900,000 ; while the more moderate policy of Great Britain would increase our army to 200,000, our navy to over 80,000, and our war expenditures to over two hundred million dollars, on the basis of British estimates ; to over five hundred million dollars according to our pay-roll. The cost to Europe, in a year of peace, of its military camps, is not far from one thousand million dollars. The annual loss to its productive income from this enforced idleness is at least three times as much more; and the whole amounts to a yearly tax of over ten dollars on each man, woman, and child, of thirty dollars on every laborer not under military duty, of fifty dollars on every family of five persons. Nor are there, at present, any very encouraging signs of improvement. The fever seems to be mount- ing. The last ten years have greatly increased the burden. England's army and navy expenditure has grown nearly twenty per cent.; Austria has nearly THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF WEALTH. 179 doubled its military appropriations ; France has in- creased its army by fifty thousand men, and its outlay for the same by a hundred per cent.; Germany has increased its military tax by fifteen million dollars a year ; Russia spends nearly as much money on its army as France, an increase of sixty-five per cent, since 1870 ; and beggared Italy has more than doubled its military expenditure since 1873. The latest figures give 145 million dollars for England, 70 million dol- lars for Austria, 180 million dollars for France, 100 million dollars for Germany, nearly 200 million dol- lars for Italy, and 170 million dollars for Russia ; a total waste of 865 million dollars annually in six states, whose united population is not quite 270 mill- ions. Taking these states in the above order, and it appears that taxation has increased over 75 per cent, since 1870, the year before the Franco-Prussian war. In England the increase has been from 375 to 435 million dollars ; in Austria from 275 to 470 million dollars ; in France from 425 to 710 million dollars ; in Germany from 270 to 560 million dollars ; in Italy from 200 to 305 million dollars ; and in Russia from 330 to 570 million dollars : a total increase, in fourteen years, from 1,725 to 3,060 million dollars annually. 1 Meanwhile, the monster fattens on the blood of the poor. Beggary fills the fairest and the most fruitful lands of Central and Southern Europe, while only in Norway and Sweden is there relative and general comfort. The winters of the North are not so cruel as the muskets of Austria, Italy, and Spain. These gigantic armaments are the cause of increasing pauper- ism in many states, and of chronic discontent. The 1 A. R. Wallace, " Bad Times," p. 29 seq. 180 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. nihilist has been created by this condition of affairs, for he is simply a man whom hunger and military despot- ism have made wild. It is a sad, sad picture ; and God only knows how deliverance can come without an up- heaval unparalleled in history. Think of one man out of every twenty standing guard with loaded rifle and fixed bayonet over the other nineteen, whose industry must support the twenty, a perpetual embargo of ten per cent, on the nation's annual production of wealth ! The American jealousy of standing armies is to be commended and encouraged. They are the most ter- rible enginery of enslavement and impoverishment the world has ever seen. We have shown it to be possible for a nation of 50 millions, composed of the most heterogeneous elements, and scattered over a territory nearly as great as Europe, to maintain secur- ity under a simple police system, and yet be prepared to crush a domestic rebellion of gigantic proportions, while at its close an army of more than a million men stacked their guns, and quietly fell back into the in- dustrial ranks. The consequence is that the memories of 1861-1865 are already faint, and every year they are losing their vividness. The animosities of those terrible days are not kept alive by great numbers of men who find in war their occupation. The United States soldier is little more than a frontier policeman, and "West Point an aristocratic school where bright young men can receive a good education at govern- ment expense. It is true that no adjacent government dares to meddle with us, and the broad Atlantic se- cures us against European interference ; but the brief military occupation of the Southern States, and the subsequent attempts to hold them in political subjec- THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF WEALTH. 181 tion, have shown clearly that an appeal to the good sense of defeated men, and a noble confidence in the power of time to dull the edge of hatred, are mightier means for compacting a nation, than uniforms and bayonets. A standing army is the creation of fear, and the in- strument of oppression. It is a confession of distrust between neighbors ; and a man who holds a dagger in one hand, and a spade in the other, cannot do even half a day's work well. The camps must give place to factories and farms ; the swords must be beaten into plowshares, and the spears into pruning-hooks, and the sweet spirit of confiding childhood pervade the nations, before the economic millennium can come. The rifles barricade its path, and retard its advent. International law must declare war to be a capital crime, conspiracy against the peace of the world, to be crushed out like any other insurrection ; and arbi- tration must displace the appeal to force in the dis- putes of nations. Duelling has already passed under the sharp condemnation of an enlightened civilization, and the carrying of concealed weapons is a crime un- der the statute ; it is the indefensible and criminal anomaly of our time that nations act upon a policy that is severely punished in individual combatants. War may sometimes be unavoidable, as homicide may be justifiable ; but it should be the awful exception, in which the assailant is left without support; and the organization of nations for purposes of war is as wicked as it is ruinous. The days of peace ! the weary- world waits for them ; and the cry of the poor is that the dogs of war be consigned to the bottomless pit. Even so, come, Lord Jesus, thou Prince of Righteous- ness and Peace ! VII. THE PERSONAL AND SOCIAL CAUSES OF PAUPERISM. THE Grordian knot of industrial life is the problem of pauperism. It is an evil of many firmly twisted strands, whose tough fibres have momentarily relaxed under determined handling, only to fly into closer al- liance and to offer a more determined resistance. No sword has been able to cut it, no skill has succeeded in unravelling it. Many, indeed, following Malthus, have come to the conclusion that the evil is of our own making, and that the only way of curing it is to cease meddling with it. It is claimed that we have been engaged in the futile attempt of abrogating the laws of nature, of shielding men from the consequences of their own folly, of saving the indolent, and the im- provident, and the imbecile, at the expense of the in- dustrious, thrifty, and energetic. Nature, we are told, is wiser than we are, and our charity has been the sug- gestion of folly. Natural law forces the weak to the wall, builds no hospitals, asylums, friendly retreats, provides no medical dispensaries, opens no soup-houses and wood-yards, enacts no sanitary legislation, leaves epidemics to slaughter at will, answers with eternal silence the bitterest cry of pain. What Malthus calls the preventive checks against over-population, what Darwin calls by the gentler name of struggle for ex- istence, is nature's short and simple remedy for pau- perism. They who thus speak do not advocate the (182) CA USES OF PA UPERISM. 183 abandonment of the unfortunate, but the limitation of all relief to private charity, and the elimination, from the statute, of the state's responsibility for any of the evils of industrial poverty and misfortune. They agree with the Dutchman, who on the floor of the parliament of Holland protested against calling that charity which gave the poor man a right to put his hand into his neighbor's pocket. That was highway robbery, under sanction of law. Modern socialism, on the other hand, affirms that it is the business of the state so to regulate industry, that no man shall be compelled to beg for work, nor to labor for simply the necessaries of subsistence, nor be haunted by the fear of future want. It would levy a tax sufficiently heavy to make hunger needless, and to sweep every hovel from the face of the earth, com- pelling every man to work, and guaranteeing him against every form of suffering. The socialist affirms that poverty is a crime, not of the individual, but of the state; that pauperism is the artificial and cruel creation of capitalistic organization, and that with the overthrow of the latter the former would disappear. Herbert Spencer regards governmental interference as indefensible and unjust ; the school of Marx demands it as an inherent and indefeasible right. The former divests the state of all responsibility, the latter places the government in " loco parentis " to every man. The r former would have every man bear his own burden, the latter would compel somebody else to bear it for him. Christianity commands us so to bear each other's burdens, that every man shall be able and willing to bear his own. But what is pauperism ? An invisible line separates 184 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. it from poverty. The latter lias been called the great industrial crime, the parent of ignorance and vice, the social hell engulfing more victims than pestilence and war. And such utterances appear in a pamphlet whose title-page contains the quotation from " Jesus, the Carpenter's Son," " the foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests ; but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head." The text does not fit the indictment; one of the two must be surrendered. For the prizes of life were within the Nazarene's reach ; the path to wealth and power was open to him as to no other born of woman. He was deaf to the solicitations of carnal ambition. He toiled with his own hands to earn bread for himself, and his widowed mother, and through his exacting public ministry he never ceased to care for her. He never asked alms of any one, but encouraged his disciples in pursuing their ordinary callings, and carefully to husband their united incomes, that they might be chargeable to none. There is not an intimation from his lips warranting the claim that the state is any man's industrial debtor. The rapacity of the rich is denounced in scathing terms, but the extirpation of poverty does not appear as a part of his mission. He summoned to faith in God, who clothes the lilies and feeds the sparrows, deprecated the brooding anxiety that gave the fore- most place to food and raiment, and exhorted men to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, to labor not for the meat that perisheth, but for the meat which endureth unto everlasting life. And as he taught, so acted his disciples. After his resur- rection they went back to their boats and nets. Paul labored with his own hands, though he did not refuse CA USES OF PA UPERISM. 185 occasional gifts from the churches whom he had served, and to the idle throngs of his day he said, " If any would not work, neither should he eat," com- manding all to work with quietness and so to eat their own bread. The communism of the early church was purely voluntary, and seems to have never been trans- planted from Jerusalem, where it came to a very speedy end, while charity was never urged as a right- eous claim of the poor. To the lame man at the temple gate Peter gave something infinitely better than alms, the ability to walk, leap, and earn his own living. The elimination of poverty never has been, and is not now, one of the Utopian schemes of Chris- tianity ; it does urge to self-reliance, industry, thrift, and contentment. But while Jesus and his disciples were poor men, they were not paupers. They did not ask other people to support them. They maintained their independence, and themselves gave alms according to their ability. Here is the invisible line that separates pauperism from poverty, a line that is also an impas- sable gulf. The pauper and the poor man stand at opposite poles; the whole diameter of manhood stretches between them. Pauperism is the state of voluntary want, and must be treated as such. The pauper is really a drone and a thief, who wants to li ve by the industry of others; and from this view the social problem resolves itself into this : " What shall we do with the lazy?" And the lazy, where are they ? Not only in hovels and cellars, but in palaces. Not only in rags, but beneath broadcloth and velvet. Every man has the poison of pauperism in him who wants something for which he has not given a fair 186 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. equivalent, who wants an easy and genteel place, with good pay, who asks other hands than his own to clear the path for him. There are paupers in ceiled houses, in government offices, in the pulpit. Thomas More denounced the idleness of princes no less than the vio- lence of thieves, and the vagrancy of the indolent poor. He discerned in the former one of the most potent encouragements of the latter. The poison at the head embittered the whole stream ; and the only remedy was the heroic one of compelling every man to work. For so long as wealth is regarded as enabling some men to live without productive toil, others will study to secure places where the demands are least exacting, and others still will be content to be always idle so long as they can satisfy their hunger and cover their nakedness. It is not the millionaire who makes the tramp ; but the idleness which the rich man en- courages in his home reappears in the beggar of the street. It is not poverty, but laziness, that calls for a war of extermination. Edmund Burke refused to call any man poor simply because he was compelled to do manual labor for his support, and he declared that such men constituted the bone and sinew of the state. To pity them on that account was to pity them because God had made them men. And hence he regarded all plans for the relief of poverty " a puling jargon," more foolish than innocent. In the same spirit it has been con- cisely said : " Indigence may be provided for, men- dicity may be extirpated, but all attempts to extirpate poverty can have no effects but bad ones." 1 The dis- tinction here suggested between poverty, indigence, 1 T, W. Fowle, "The Poor Law," p. 3. CA USES OF PA UPERISM. 187 and pauperism, is one that demands clear and constant insistance. Poverty cannot be argued down, nor can it be legislated out of existence. Every man is born poor, and every man dies poor. Naked he comes into the world, and naked he goes out of it. He is the most helpless of all creatures, for whom nature does vastly less than she does for the beasts of the field. He finds neither food, nor shelter, nor raiment pro- vided for him, except as other human hands have wrested these from soil and forest. If there is one thing that he is forced to do, it is to work for his living. The law is universal and inexorable ; it admits of no ex- ceptions, and it is a false charity that shields any one from its operation. No man has a claim upon society for support ; for if one man has such a right, all men have, and there will be no one against whom it can be enforced. So that the universal right would, amount to nothing and compel an immediate retreat to the policy of each man relying upon his own exertions. It cannot even be said that a man has a right to live, if by that is meant a claim upon society to see to it that his natural term of life is not burdened with suffering nor abridged by premature death. Life is a charge of the gravest responsibility, an opportunity to be im- proved, a treasure to be jealously guarded and care- fully invested, not a draft that society is bound to honor. The utmost that justice can do is to secure to every man his own, to leave every man free to choose his own work, and to reap the fruit of his own labor. From the necessity of caring for himself and for those dependent upon him, no man should expect nor en- joy the slightest exemption. And so long as that law remains in force, there will be poverty, absolute and 188 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. relative ; absolute poverty, because many will be unable to do more than earn the necessaries of life, for them- selves and their children, and for their maintenance in sickness and old age; relative poverty, because wants increase as civilization advances, and increasing prosperity only makes self-denial more exacting. The poverty, therefore, which manages, by industry, econ- omy, and prudence, to maintain a healthy indepen- dence, is not to be discouraged and demoralized. It is the broad, hidden base upon which industrial pros- perity must rest, and whose disintegration would work speedy and hopeless ruin. An impartial, rigid enforcement of this law that every man who can shall take care of himself, that able-bodied poverty is not an object either of legisla- tion or of private charity, and that every worker shall be left to make his own place, will not make benevolence needless. Indigence will remain, the state of involuntary and blameless dependence. There are bodily and mental infirmities that incapacitate men for the struggle for existence. We insist that those who can fight shall be put to their mettle, but they who cannot wield the sword are not to be crowded into the field. The blind, the crippled, the imbecile, the insane, the aged left without friends to care for them, the children abandoned by unnatural and unknown parents, and the orphaned, may have no claim on the ground of economic justice, but humanity and Christi- anity plead their cause on the ground that their suffer- ing is a calamity for which they are not responsible, and which they are not competent to remove. It may seem, at first thought, as if the restriction of relief to indigence, to the victims of involuntary want, would CA USES OF PA UPERISM. 189 diminish but slightly the tax upon charity. But statistics show that these are greatly in the minority, and that the able-bodied poor who are willing to re- ceive alms and who clamor for outdoor relief, and who would support themselves if they were compelled to choose between starvation and the workhouse, are vastly in the majority. In England one out of every 140 in the entire population belongs to the indigent class, while the number of outdoor poor receiving alms at the nation's hands is three and a half times larger ; and if the latter could be thrown upon their own re- sources, a saving of twenty million dollars a year would be effected. 1 Nor can there be any doubt that there would be at the same time a gradual decrease in the ranks of the indigent. For involuntary poverty is frequently the result of early improvidence, and the suffering which is the penalty of indifference to the future needs to be as wisely and firmly dealt with as that which flows from indolence. It is every man's duty to provide against the day of sickness, and the infirmities of age ; and there are no better agencies for improving the condition of the poor than the penny and dime savings banks. There is room too, for enforcing the law of parental responsibility, so that children may not be needlessly thrown upon the hands of public or private charity. Careful investi- gation brings to light many cases in which the unfor- tunate have been heartlessly abandoned by their own kindred, or where their suffering has been occasioned while serving others, and in such instances it would seem only fair to demand that the state shall not so in- terpose as to relieve those upon whom the burden 1 Fowle, " The Poor Law," p. 157. 190 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. naturally falls. Charity should not be a premium upon laziness, nor upon improvidence, nor upon in- humanity. The saving in money would be the least of the resultant benefits. Self reliance would be stim- ulated, forethought encouraged, the domestic affec- tions widened and deepened, and the employer's hu- manity brought into play. We should have better men, and more of them, fewer vagrant children to swell the army of criminals, less occasion to blush for the cruel selfishness that sometimes goes unrebuked, because it is unknown. Meanwhile, the cripple should disappear from the street, to be cared for in suitable retreats, and the beggary of imposture be made forever impossible. For, after all, it is not indigence that is the burden under which charity groans. It is the able-bodied beggar who is the vampire of society ; the drunkard who spends his earnings in the dram-shop while his children are clothed by the church benevolent associa- tions ; the tramp who steals when he cannot beg ; the basket beggars who call for cold pieces at the kitchen doors ; impostors with their letters of introduction from leading clergymen ; street-musicians with organ, harp, and monkey, and borrowed babies in the arms of attendant women ; a great army which makes it a business to prey upon the innocent and tender-hearted. A blind man was arrested in New York City last year, who when seized was so drunk that he stood propped against an elevated railroad pillar, and had to be carried to the station house. He had a tin sign hung around his neck, with the words : " Blind and lame, by an explosion ; Charity is the noblest work of man ; Our hope is in Thee." CA USES OF PA UPERISM. 191 He was a successful beggar, spending his money in the company of lewd women. Forty young and healthy tramps were traced to Mulberry Street, where they had their headquarters, from which they sallied forth every morning on their different routes, and to which they returned in the evening. Neighborhoods have been found in New York City where families herded together in vicious idleness, supported by basket-beggars, and paying their rents from moneys collected on various false pretences. A society in the city of Brooklyn possesses thirty-one manuscript vol- umes, carefully indexed, filled with the names of ap- plicants for help, the vast majority of whom have been found to be wholly undeserving. Competent judges declare that fully 95 per cent, of street- begging is of this description, and that " the cold food so freely given at house-doors, goes very largely to the maintenance of the vilest sinks of vice in the city, and to the support, in criminal idleness, of thousands who otherwise would be forced to work for their bread." Children, three and seven years old, are pressed into this debasing service. This is the pauperism of our great cities, generated by idleness, and suckled by indiscriminate and thoughtless alms- giving. Thirty years ago London waked up to deal with the ugly problem, and our American cities are beginning to inquire how the growing evil shall be remedied. It is an ugly problem, of which it has been said that " prevention must be the cure. After human beings have sunk into degraded lif e, and are not only so destitute as to beg for alms, but so lost in character that begging no longer shames them nor the almshouse repels them, they are paupers in spirit as 192 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. in means, and there is almost no hope for regenera- tion. Paupers they will die in spite of all efforts. To prevent such human degradation, to prevent any young persons sinking so low, needs more effort and wiser ef- fort than any land has yet given to this great subject." Poverty is honorable, indigence appeals to humanity, but pauperism must be smitten with the hot bolts of righteous indignation, and exterminated root and branch. And there is only one way in which that can be done, voluntary poverty must be made a burn- ing disgrace, and every man must be made to under- stand that there is no bread to be had unless he works for it. When men come to realize that life is a struggle, and that this is a Divine law, so that they become " fonder of struggle than of mere help," and not until then, will pauperism disappear from the face of the earth. Thus far attention has been called only to the pri- mary and purely personal causes of pauperism, idle- ness and improvidence. These are by far the most serious, and the most difficult to deal with. But they are in close alliance with others for whose existence society must be regarded as at least partially respon- sible, and the failure of whose removal is a social crime. Public justice is not charged with the duty of feeding men, nor of providing work for them ; but it cannot escape the responsibility of clearing for every man the path of honest endeavor, and of pro- tecting him against the selfish greed of those who make gain of his misery. Children may grow up amid such surroundings as to make it physically im- possible for them to be anything but paupers, un- gchooled, undisciplined, hardened from infancy to a CA USES OF PA UPERISM. 193 life of beggary and shame ; and others may become the early victims of avaricious men who lie in wait to rob the industrious of their scanty earnings, and who are intent upon crowding them into the lowest depths of degradation. Careful scrutiny- shows that the ranks of pauperism are recruited from those classes in whom the basic qualities of personal manhood, in- telligence, self-respect, and self-control, are insuffi- ciently developed to cope with organized and legalized forms of social demoralization. Ten years ago the almshouses of the State of New York were carefully inspected, and nearly ten thousand of their inmates personally interviewed. The result was a clear refu- tation of the prevailing notion that the poorhouses shelter many persons who "through misfortune in business or otherwise, have fallen from high estate." Few were found who had ever owned real estate or any other property, the vast majority confessing " to idle and shiftless habits in early life with little or no thought regarding the future." Thirty-two per cent, could neither read nor write ; fifteen per cent, could only read ; twenty-four per cent, could read and write ; and only thirty per cent, had received a fair common school education. Twenty-one per cent, had been laborers; thirty per cent, domestics; only six per cent, farmers ; fourteen per cent, mechanics ; two per cent, had been engaged in mercantile, and one per cent, in professional pursuits. Eighty-five per cent, of the men had been intemperate ; forty-two per cent, among the women ; an average of 62 J per cent. Of the fathers of these ten thousand inmates 55J per cent, were found to have been intemperate, and of the mothers over 82 per cent. ; suggesting that in- 13 194: SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. temperance in women is more ruinous in its heredi- tary effects than the same vice in men. Over three per cent, were the descendants of pauper fathers, and nearly eleven per cent, were the children of pauper mothers. Nearly twenty-two per cent, of the chil- dren of the inmates were public dependents either as paupers or criminals ; and more than sixteen per cent, of the inmates themselves had begun their career of voluntary dependence as homeless and abandoned children. 1 Pauperism is thus seen to thrive and grow within definite lines, the chief of which are illiter- acy, intemperance, and domestic infidelity. These are personal vices ; but the State cannot plead inno- cence in view of the alarming extent to which they have increased. It may be impossible wholly to ex- terminate them ; but they can be greatly reduced, and the edict of expulsion can be enacted and enforced against those whose traffic depends upon the perpet- uation and growth of the pauper classes. It would seem to be incredible that inhumanity could go to such lengths as deliberately to -coin gold out of human wretchedness and woe, to perpetuate these and widen their sweep for purposes of gain ; but the fact is in- disputable, the tyranny is legalized and defiant, organ- ized and unblushing, and public opinion utters only an occasional and feeble protest. Pauperism will not disappear until every child receives an education of practical value, until every dram-shop is closed by process of law, until every unsanitary and overcrowd- ed tenement-house in our cities is swept out of exist- ence, and until the home regains its divine and inviolable sanctity. Illiteracy, intemperance, over- J Dr. Charles Hoyt, "Pauperism." CA USES OF PA UPERISM. 195 crowding, and the looseness of the marriage tie, these are the four social causes of pauperism ; personal vices in their inception, but grown to their present alarming proportions by public indifference and com- plicity; and society must throttle them, or perish under their growing fangs. Fortunately for us, the common school is one of our great national institutions. The theory of our govern- ment has always been that universal suffrage must be entrenched in universal education, and the conviction has gathered strength with every recurring election. It certainly is a mockery and a farce that any man should cast a ballot who cannot read, and so is wholly debarred from the means of framing an independent judgment. An educational test has frequently been advocated ; but the policy of a hundred years is not likely to be reversed ; and our only remedy is to make the law of the school-room as universal and binding as is the right of suffrage. The political safeguard is no less an economic protection. No man can make the most of himself unless he knows something of the world in which he is to act his part. Ignorance fetters him with ball and chain, inevitably compelling him to fall behind in the race. The improvement in the condition of the poor in England, and the gradual decrease of pauperism, date from the introduction of an enlarged educational policy. Not until 18YO did Great Britain adopt an effective national system of education, " which by compelling the establishment of schools in every district proportionate to population, and by making attendance at school, where possible, compulsory, brought education fairly within reach of the working classes. And the result has been that, 196 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. whereas in 1857 the average number of children in attendance in primary schools in Great Britain was 531,000, in 1883 it increased to 3,560,000." ' The results have been so cheering that the opposition, or hesitancy, of such men as Mill, Spencer, and Fawcett, has abated in severity of tone, and failed to secure any very wide support. With us, the public school has never been the bone of political contention. It has not been opposed as interfering with personal or domestic liberty, nor as involving a surrender to communistic ideas. Ele- mentary education is the dictate of justice, securing to every child the indispensable equipment for self-sup- port, and for honorable and safe citizenship. It should, therefore, be made universal, compulsory, and ade- quate. Our schools have been open, but they have been crowded, and we have been both unwilling and unable to compel attendance. The greed for party spoils has blocked the way for such an enlargement of our edu- cational system as to provide a place where every child may learn to read and write. Some States are either unwilling or unable to grapple with the prob- lem of illiteracy, and national aid appears to some the only adequate solution. Some of our Northern cities have no truant law, cannot get one, and would not know what to do if one should be passed. Other States and cities have the needed legislation, but it is not adequately enforced, for the simple reason that the school-houses are already overcrowded. There are a few localities in our country where the proportion of illiteracy is under five per cent., as in Maine, New 1 Leone Levi; Fawcett, "Manual o* Political Economy, " p. 233. CA USES OF PA UPERISM. 197 Hampshire, Vermont, Eastern Massachusetts, Western Connecticut, Western New York, Northern Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa ; but there are vast districts where it averages from 10 to 40 per cent., and in some it is over 60 per cent. Nearly five millions of our entire population, over ten years of age, cannot read, and over six millions cannot write. In Alabama nearly half the population is illiterate ; in Arkansas, 30 per cent. ; in Georgia, 40 per cent. ; in Virginia, 35 per cent. ; in Kentucky, 25 per cent. ; in Louisiana, 45 per cent. ; in Mississippi and North Carolina, 40 per cent. ; in South Carolina, nearly 50 per cent. ; in Texas, 25 per cent. ; in Maine, 3 j- per cent. ; in New Hampshire, 4 per cent. ; in Vermont and Massachusetts, 5 per cent. ; in Connecticut, 4 per cent. ; in New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois, 4 per cent. ; in Indiana, 5 per cent. ; in Rhode Island, 7 per cent. ; in Delaware, 15 per cent. ; in Maryland, the same ; in California, 7 per cent. ; in Kan- sas, and Nebraska, and Iowa, from 2 to 3 per cent. 1 But compulsory education grapples with only one part of the difficult problem. The education must also be practical and adequate. It must train the eye and the hand, as well as discipline the reason and strengthen the memory. Our common school cur- riculum is loaded down with useless studies. Rules and diagrams have almost made grammar a nuisance. The higher mathematics, the physical sciences, and the ancient languages have been introduced to the neglect of more practical training. We have tried to make our elementary education comprehensive and ex- haustive, laying the foundations in the primary school, 1 "American Almanac for 1885." 198 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. and its capstone in the state university. The scheme is an excellent one, if teaching for its own sake is one of the functions of government. But if the state em- ploys the school only as a means of its own preserva- tion, and as the agent of simple justice, intent upon providing for every child such knowledge as shall stimulate it to self-respect and self-support, it must be content with a much narrower curriculum in the pub- lic school, and it must teach a few things with greater thoroughness. Increasing numbers of young men drop out of school before the age of sixteen, weary of study, and eager for active life; and the education which they take with them is fragmentary and un- satisfactory. Within the last ten years the subject of manual training has commanded wide-spread attention, and in 1885 the city of Philadelphia introduced it into its public schools. This movement points the way to a reorganization of our national system, resulting at one and the same time in its simplification and in the enlargement of its practical scope. It aims to make boys practically acquainted with the uses of machinery, and expert in the use of tools, the course of instruc- tion in Philadelphia comprising " drawing, modelling, wood-carving, and certain exercises in carpentry and joinery and metal work." It makes sewing part of every girl's school curriculum. The increasing part that machinery plays in modern production makes such training invaluable. Its economic effects can- not fail to be beneficent, when it is remembered that nearly 60 per cent, of the almshouse population, and over 80 per cent, of the criminal classes, are repre- sented by persons who never had any training in the mechanical arts. The high estimate placed upon man- CA USES OF PA UPERISM. 199 ual dexterity by the Rabbis is well known. " Whoso- ever does not teach his son a trade is as if he brought him up to be a robber " passed into a proverb. The great Hillel was a wood-cutter ; Shammai, his rival, was a carpenter ; and other Rabbis were shoemakers, tailors, and smiths. The boy who knows how to use a ham- mer and saw, and handle an engine, and the girl who has learned the art of the needle, will be helped far along the path of honorable and remunerative indus- try. The superintendent of the public schools of Philadelphia, with the ardor of a just enthusiasm, writes: "The new system is the realization of the dream of every great thinker and reformer in educa- tion, from Comenius, Locke, and Rousseau, to Pesta- lozzi, Froebel, and Spencer. My conviction and ac- tion in connection with this movement are based upon what, in my judgment, should constitute an education designed to prepare a human being for the social con- ditions of to-day, and not merely for the industrial de- mands of our time. And this must be realized in the public schools, or they will fail in accomplishing the ends for which they were instituted and are main- tained." ' Fruitful of evil as illiteracy is, intemperance holds the citadel of pauperism. From eighty to eighty-five out of every hundred, including the insane, that find their way to the poorhouse and the prison, are the graduates of the saloon. It is needless to multiply statistics. I need not paint the picture of want and woe in the drunkard's home : the squalor, the brutal- ity, the sullen temper, the sure and swift descent to 1 See an article on Manual Training in Harper's Monthly for February, 1886. 200 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. ruin. The facts are too plain, no one challenges either their reality or their import. Intemperance is the great curse of our time, the monster within whose tightening folds society struggles for its very life. Its horrible cave is full of the bones of its victims. Its scales have grown thick and hard, so that our swords have only roused its fury where we sought to pierce its vitals. It is busy when all the world besides sleeps. It seizes the corners of our streets, and flaunts its signs beneath the windows of our homes. It creeps near the school-house to entrap the young. It clamors for special legislation, that it may be free to slaughter at will, while the church-bells summon men to pray. The dram-shop is the recruiting-station of pauperism. No argument is needed to prove that it is the heaviest burden under which our industrial civilization staggers. None but sober men are wanted in steamers and rail- ways, and Cardinal Manning has affirmed that Eng- land is losing her industrial supremacy, because gen- erations of drunkenness have demoralized her artisans. It is not an evil that hides itself, and retreats before aggressive action. It fights. It controls parties. It subdues politicians. It buys up legislatures. It com- mands a traffic of nearly a thousand million dollars a year in this country alone, an average of nearly twenty dollars ahead, and of a hundred dollars for each average family. It boasts an army over 200,000 strong, vigi- lant, aggressive, and compactly organized. The grocer must keep his liquors or lose his customers. The hotel must have its bar-room, or be deserted. The restaurant must have its wine-list, or remain without remunera- tive patronage. Alcohol is king, with its hands upon the purse-strings, and the law-makers at its feet, a gi- CA USES OF PA UPERISM. 201 gantic corporation and conspiracy for pauperizing the nation. It is a monstrous anomaly, and as surely as slavery was smitten by the bolt of judgment, will the fire of God's wrath leap upon this greater tyrant. But how shall the evil be met ? What shall be the line of battle ? Here, alas, we meet confusion and controversy ; masterly inactivity on the part of some, Utopian schemes on the part of others. Some will do nothing, others will help you only if they can have their way. The advocates of license and of prohibition are pitted against each other. Some strike at the saloon, others at the distillery and brewery. Some demand that a distinction shall be made between distilled liquors and heavy wines on the one hand, and malt liquors and light wines on the other. Some would break up sales by the glass, others prohibit all purchase. Some believe only in moral suasion, others in regeneration by process of law. And while we are discussing the plan of battle, the enemy laughs at us, and lays waste the land. There is need of concentrating the moral sentiment of the community. I believe it to be in favor of effectual restriction and control. It will not undertake to say what a man shall eat and drink. It will not permit a guard to be placed in his dining- room. It will not tolerate offensive personal inquisi- tion. But it will insist that personal liberty shall not be so exercised as to become a public menace, and a source of moral corruption by its publicity. There is a notable drift at present toward high license and local option, a restriction of the number of saloons in proportion to the population, their location at consid- erable distances from schools, churches, and factories, the prevention of their establishment in localities 202 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. where residents protest against them, the removal of all screens, the liability to official inspection, and the more vigorous enforcement of the laws against sales on Sunday, to minors, confirmed inebriates, and any in whose behalf a protest is formally lodged by hus- band, wife, parent, child, guardian, or ward. Many who have laughed at prohibition by state enactment, or by constitutional amendment, have winced and shown great uneasiness under the discussion of this more moderate programme of high license, strict su- pervision, and local option, especially in view of the fact that it has commanded a growing and earnest support. The element of local option opens the way for the ultimate success of virtual prohibition, at least so far as the open sale of liquors to be drunk on the premises is concerned. The fact that the appetite for alcoholic stimulants is a personal infirmity and vice, which becomes un- controllable in the presence of temptation, but which exists independently of the latter, the appetite having created the traffic, and the traffic stimulating the ap- petite, makes necessary the union of personal and legal measures, and compels every community to fight the evil at close quarters. No State can look to the nation for relief ; it must work out its own salvation. No county should depend upon the State, no town- ship upon the county ; each should be left free, and compelled to deal with the problem in its own way. The city should not look to the rural districts ; for no reform can be permanent that is not rooted in the public sentiment of the locality where it is attempted. No massing of the rural temperance constituency of the State of New York could touch the dram-shops of CA USES OF PA UPERISM. 203 its great city ; but when the citizens of the metropolis shall agree in demanding certain reforms, their claim will be heard and heeded. We have tried the plan of governing cities by commissions and acts of legisla- tures, and the result has been unbounded corruption, until we have fallen back upon the principle of local responsibility. Let each city settle its own municipal policy, and hold its own officers to strict account. This is at once the simplest, the soundest, and the safest political economy. It is the best plan of battle against intemperance. Let the question be relegated to townships, and voting districts, or to localities con- taining a certain number of inhabitants. Fighting the enemy in detail, insisting that each community ought to assume the responsibility of permitting or of forbidding the traffic, we shall be able soonest to secure a wide and substantial victory. Overcrowding is first lieutenant in the army of paupers and criminals, whose captaincy belongs to in- temperance. The two are so closely related that there is room for hesitancy in deciding the question of pri- ority. Intemperance compels its victims to herd to- gether in cheap, scanty, unwholesome quarters, and their quarrelsome temper drives them from neigh- borhoods of sobriety and peace. On the other hand, the foul air, the dark passage-ways, the cheerless and crowded chambers, encourage the free use of stimu- lants for the sake of the stupor which they produce. The poorest and most overcrowded districts contain the greatest number of dram-shops, selling stale beer and the vilest liquors. The three districts in the city of Birmingham, England, that are most notorious for their unsanitary condition, were found in 1884 204 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. to contain 370 public-houses, whose united trade amounted to over sixteen hundred thousand dollars annually. ~No city in the world suffers so deeply from this evil as New York. Twenty-two thousand dwellings are supposed to shelter over one-third of its popula- tion, and from these crowded stalls come over 53 per cent, of the city's dead ; 70 per cent, if their share of deaths in the hospitals are included, and 90 per cent, of its criminals. 1 The greatest density of population in London is at the rate of 176,000 per square mile, while there are wards in New York where the rate is 185,000, and even 242,000. In the 4th ward the density was 160,000 per square mile in 1875 ; in the 14th ward it was 176,000 ; in the 17th ward it was 195,000 ; in the 13th ward it was 203,000 ; in the llth ward it was 208,000 : and in the 10th ward it was 243,000. Two-thirds of the area in the last three wards named was covered with tenements, and the number of square yards to each inmate was 15, 14, and 12 in the order given, the average for the entire city, exclusive of streets, parks, and buildings devoted to business purposes, being 107 square yards ; so that with a density according to the average of the 10th ward, New York would have a population of over five million souls, more than are to be found in the entire State; while a space covering less than thirty acres has been found in the Fourth "Ward, 1 This estimate, it should be said, however, includes the " flats " and " apartment-houses " erected in recent years, as the legal definition of a tenement-house applies to all buildings that shelter more than three families, or that provide for two families on a single floor. CA USES OF PA UPERISM. 205 whose tenant - house and cellar inmates numbered 17,611, making the unparalleled rate of 370,000 per square mile, or 290,000 if allowance be made for the necessary streets. With this average density, the city would have 6J million souls. Think of a plot of ground two hundred feet square providing a perma- nent home for nearly six hundred persons, giving to each a space of eight feet by nine! But even so scanty a provision is palatial when the facts are more closely examined. Sixteen families, composed of eighty persons, in a single twenty-five foot front dwell- ing, are common. One hundred souls in a single tenement of this description is nothing unusual, and in some cases this number is doubled. The law re- quires 600 cubic feet for every inmate, and the pro- visions of the sanitary code are excellent, twenty years in advance of continental legislation, but political in- fluences paralyze their enforcement. In a room, 12 by 8, and 5 feet high, inspected in 1879, it was found that nine persons slept and prepared their food ; less than 60 cubic feet for each inmate. In another room, located in a dark cellar, without screens or partitions, were huddled together, two men with their wives and a girl of fourteen, two single men and a boy of seven- teen, two women, and four boys nine, ten, eleven, and fifteen years old, -fourteen persons in all. Lon- don has seven inhabitants per house ; New York has twelve, and thirty in its tenement district. The worst overcrowding is among the Italians, and the Jews of Russia and Poland, of whom as many as two hun- dred have been found packed in sixteen apartments of two rooms each. Ninety per cent, of the chil- 206 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. dren born in these places are the victims of an early death. 1 " Here," to quote the words of a legislative report, " infantile life unfolds its bud, but perishes before its first anniversary. Here youth is ugly with loathsome diseases, and the deformities which follow physical degeneracy. Here the decrepitude of age is found at thirty. The poor themselves have a very expressive term for the slow process of decay which they suffer, viz., * Tenant-House Rot.' The great majority are, indeed, undergoing a slow decomposition, a true erema- causis, as the chemists term it. Yice, crime, drunken- ness, lust, disease, and death here hold sway, in spite of the most powerful moral and religious influences. In London, some of the city missionaries have entirely abandoned the tenant-house class. There is undoubt- edly a depraved physical condition which explains the moral deterioration of this people, and which can never be overcome until we surround them with the conditions of sound health." 2 Another, who speaks from thirty years' personal observation and philan- thropic endeavor, declares : " In many quarters of the city, family life and the feeling of home are al- most unknown. In many rooms privacy and purity are unattainable, and young girls grow up accus- tomed to immodesty from their earliest years. Boys herd together in gangs, and learn the practices of crime and vice before they are out of childhood. The workman spends his leisure hours in the grog- 1 New York Health Department Report for 1875. Eeports of N. Y. Association for improving the condition of the poor, 1878-1883. 9 Dr. Stephen Smith. CAUSES OF PAUPERISM. 20Y shops or at the corner groceries. The general effect of the system is the existence of a proletaire class who have no interest in the permanent well-being of a community, who have no sense of home, and who live without any deep root in the soil, the mere tools of demagogues and designing men." ' A recent report states that in the city of Berlin, 94, 000 families, comprising nearly 400,000 individ- uals, have to live, sleep, and often work in a single room for each household; that in 3,000 of these rooms there is neither stove nor fire-place ; and that 25,000 families live in cellars under sanitary condi- tions that are characterized as absolutely shocking. Berlin has at present about the same population as New York. The account may be exaggerated ; but there can be no doubt that the evils of overcrowding are frightful in all great cities of our time, and that there exists in them no greater source of disease and danger than the cellar tenantry. In a single year Liverpool compelled 20,000 persons to abandon its cellars, and some years ago New York drove 25,000 from their underground and poisonous lodging-places, but the great army surged back to its old camps as soon as vigilance was relaxed. It is al- most impossible to delineate the physical, mental, and moral degeneracy that festers in well-nigh hopeless corruption in such a city as London, where we face a pauperism two thousand years old. It seems as if such sentences as the following must describe the con- dition of a past age, or photograph the social life of an infernal planet : " Few have any conception of what these pestilential rookeries are, where tens of 1 C. L. Brace, " Dangerous Classes of New York." 208 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. thousands are crowded together amidst horrors which call to mind what we have heard of the middle pas- sage of the slave-ship. You have to ascend rotten staircases, grope your way along dark and filthy pas- sages swarming with vermin. Eight feet square! That is about the average size of very many of these rooms. Walls and ceilings are black with the accre- tions of filth which have gathered upon them through long years of neglect. Every room in these rotten and reeking tenements houses a family, often two. In one cellar, a sanitary inspector reports a father, mother, three children, and four pigs. Here are seven peo- ple living in one underground kitchen, and a little dead child lying in the same room. In another apartment, nine brothers and sisters, from twenty- nine years of age downwards, live, eat, and sleep to- gether. Here is a mother who turns her children into the street early in the evening, because she lets her room for immoral purposes until long after midnight, when the poor little wretches creep back again; if they have not found some miserable shelter elsewhere. There are men and women who live and die, day by day, in their wretched single room, sharing all the family trouble, enduring the hunger and the cold, and waiting without hope, without a single ray of com- fort, until God curtains their staring eyes with the merciful film of death." ! These are but hints of a story written in tears and blood, whose minute and faithful reproduction by some gifted pen would startle us out of our self-com- placency, and create a storm of moral wrath unknown to our generation. It is not an attractive theme, and 1 " The Bitter Cry of Outcast London." CA USES OF PA UPERISM. we shade our eyes as the gaunt spectre sweeps by us, but in these unknown and hidden dens it is that the gravest perils of our social order find their fitting nursery. The memorable riots in New York of 1863 emptied these refuges of beggary, drunkenness, lewd- ness, and crime of their occupants, and they who wit- nessed the outpouring will never forget the amazement and alarm of the hour. Such men and women had never before been seen on the great and crowded thoroughfares. But they had long been an element in the municipal life, an underground city, and they are there still. I do not mean to say that all tene- ment dwellings, excepting from this class the flats and apartment-houses, harbor such a population. Hun- dreds of thousands of the inmates are industrious and thrifty, stemming the tide with heroic courage and Christian patience. Competent observers judge that ten per cent, of the tenement-houses are in good con- dition, and that only five per cent, are so bad that they ought to be razed, while eighty-five per cent, range between the two extremes. It is the five per cent, that constitute the line of stolid resistance to moral impact, and the recruiting ground of pauper- ism and crime. The first requirement is adequate sanitary legislation, giving to each room its own light and ventilation, limiting the number of its occupants, and preventing more than one family from living in a single apartment, the vacation of all cellars, except for purposes of labor and storage, and the rigid en- forcement of all tenant-house laws by regular and frequent official inspection. This will require earnest- ness, method, and perseverance ; for not only are two hundred million dollars represented by tenement in- 14 210 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. vestments in the single city of New York, whose owners in many cases are unknown and diflicult of discovery, organized, able and willing to spend money in opposing any reform that touches their pockets, possessed of considerable political influence and with their representatives in the legislature ; but the inmates themselves are so ignorant and deadened in sensibility that they resist and resent all improvements, and fre- quently destroy in pure wantonness the means provided for their increased privacy and comfort. As far as pos- sible they must be scattered, though it must be confessed that the means thus far employed have not had any very marked success, facilities of cheap transporta- tion into the open and outlying districts not having diminished perceptibly the overcrowding in the worst districts. There can be no doubt that the diffusion of the proletariat would be of the greatest economic ad- vantage ; but without an interference with personal liberty that public sentiment would not sustain, we must accept great density of population as one of the conditions under which needed reforms must be attained. Three plans have been suggested and tried. The first makes improvement in housing the poor a de- partment of philanthropic intervention, and has found in George Peabody its most ardent advocate and rep- resentative. Private munificence builds the improved dwellings, and fixes the rental at such prices as suffices only for the preservation and care of the property. The movement has been a failure; its beneficent effects having been very limited, and not securing any marked endorsement from thoughtful students, who claim that "philanthropic agency in building CA USES OF PA UPERISM. 211 dwellings for the poor, means the supply of one of the chief necessaries of life, viz., lodging, below its market value. Were such a practice to be extensively or indiscriminately sanctioned, not only would the profits of commercial investment be impaired, but the principle of self-dependence would be attacked, habits of self-indulgence would be encouraged, and even the wages of unskilled labor might be reduced." Even the proletariat may not be released from the law which demands that a man shall pay for what he enjoys, and enjoy only what he pays for. This is the principle of the "Waterlow" plan, adopted in the erection of thousands of model dwell- ings by the London Improved Industrial Dwellings Company, and followed to some extent in a few of our larger cities. It has been found practicable to secure a return of six and seven per cent, on the in- vested capital, after providing for insurance, oversight, and necessary repairs. The plan has worked admi- rably, and it has paved the way for the substitution of a vastly better class of buildings in the place of those where now so many of the city poor are com- pelled to live. It has been found practicable to pro- vide families with three rooms at rentals from six to eight dollars a month, and with four rooms for eight to eleven dollars a month, netting seven and a half per cent, on the invested capital. But these model houses have not solved the problem of low rents* They have not touched the class who pay from three to five dollars a month for their apartments, and who cannot be made or induced to pay more. Shall these be abandoned ? Here comes in the third method, inaugurated by 212 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. Miss Octavia Hill, of London, intended to supplement, not to supplant, the preceding plans. Its ruling idea is to obtain control of the lowest tenement-houses by purchase, to put them into good sanitary condition, to have the rents collected promptly by the owner, or by some interested representative, whose frequent pres- ence and oversight shall stimulate the inmates to im- prove their condition. Personal supervision, generous sympathy, and wise advice are relied upon to secure reformation in habits of living, without making the poor objects of charity or removing them from the dwellings into which they have drifted. The proletariat is to be faced and broken up on its own chosen ground, by the patient dissemination of knowledge, by stimu- lating self-respect, by suggesting little improvements, by insisting upon cleanliness and orderly behavior, without any help in money, or food, or clothing, or abatement of rents. Wherever the plan has been faithfully tried, it has been attended with encouraging results, though its novelty has aroused the suspicion of those whom it is intended to reach, and it has been for a time hindered by their sullen obstinacy. Some will prove to be hopelessly incorrigible. The remedy in such cases is to save the children. These will be found condemned to early vagrancy and beg- gary, abandoned by unnatural fathers and mothers, or fleeing from a tyranny and squalor that have become unendurable. Thousands of boys, every year, leave these dens of infamy in disgust, preferring the " barges on the breezy docks, and the boxes on the side-walk " for their shelter, whence they are " eventually drawn into the neat and comfortable boys' lodging-houses, imperceptibly changed into decency and honesty." CA USES OF PA UPERISM. 213 The Children's Aid Societies represent one of the no- blest and most beneficent philanthropic movements of our day. They have greatly decreased juvenile beggary and crime. They have opened paths of honorable industry to thousands by removing them from their degrading associations. Taking New York alone, the last report shows that in thirty-two years over 300,000 homeless boys and girls have been attracted to the lodging-houses, where they have been taught cleanli- ness, to work for their own support, to save their earnings, to be honest, faithful, and true ; and of these over 77,000 have found homes in the country, a very large proportion of whom have become good and use- ful citizens. A gleam of light falls upon this gloomy theme when such a sentence as this comes from the pen of the honored secretary of the New York soci- ety, whose name is a synonym of intelligent Christian philanthropy : " No homeless boy in the city need at this time be without a shelter where he can get a clean bed and a nourishing meal, nor without mental and moral training if he will take it, nor long without a good permanent home if he is worthy of it; no poor and hungry little girl need rove the streets and beg or peddle, but that shelter, food, and industrial education are ready for each, and, if homeless, a kind family waiting to receive her." ] The aim is not to support in idleness, to herd in great institutions of charity, or to provide free boarding-houses, but to in- vite, encourage, and stimulate to honest endeavor; not to pauperize the children, but to make them self- respecting and self-dependent. The colleges are call- ing for millions, and they are worthy of increased 1 C. L. Brace, Report for 1885. 214 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. bequests ; but I know of no enterprise so hopeful for the future as that whose ministries touch the children of the lowest tenement population, and there could not possibly be a better use to which some great New York millionaire could put his wealth than to make the Children's Aid Society of the city the peer in financial strength of Trinity Church corporation, to provide for it, by gift or testament, an endowment of five million dollars, whose annual income should be used to dry up the sources of pauperism and crime by scattering the children before their blood has been hopelessly poisoned. '' One great cause," says the au- thor already quoted, " of the final extreme corruption and extinction of ancient pagan society was the ex- istence of large classes of unfortunate beings, whom no social movement of renovation ever reached, the slaves, the gladiators, the barbarian strangers, and the outcast children. To all these deep strata of mis- ery and crime Christianity gradually penetrated, and brought life and light, and finally an almost entire metamorphosis. As criminal and unfortunate classes, they have, with the exception only of the children, ceased to exist under modern civilization. We have no longer at the basis of modern society the dangers of a multitude of ignorant slaves, or of disaffected barbarous foreigners, or of a profession of gladiators brutal, brutalizing ; but we do still have masses of un- fortunate youth, whose condition, though immensely improved and lightened by the influences of Christi- anity, is still one of the most threatening and painful phenomena of modern society in nearly all civilized countries." ' 1 Brace, "Dangerous Classes," p. 21. CA USES OF PA UPERISM. 215 Just here, however, another danger confronts the thoughtful philanthropist. Neither the state, nor or- ganized charity, can afford to offer a premium upon parental neglect. The abandonment of children must not be encouraged. One of the gravest evils of the lowest classes is the weakness of the marriage tie. Home can hardly be said to exist. Husbands are vicious and cruel, wives are dissipated and faithless. Promiscuous sexual intercourse is more nearly the rule than the exception. Incest and unnatural vices are common. 1 No reform can be radical and perma- nent that does not include the creation and mainte- nance of conjugal and parental responsibility. The crimes against the family must be visited with swift and adequate penalty. Legitimate and illegitimate children, wherever possible, must become chargeable upon the father. The woman must not be left to bear botli the shame and the burden of her criminal alliance ; for the man is at least equally guilty, and in most cases he is the most selfish in the criminal part- nership. Nor can there be any reformation in the slums, until it begins in the palaces. Our divorce laws are a disgrace to our boasted enlightenment, and in many States have reduced marriage to voluntary and legalized concubinage. Living in glass houses ourselves, we are at our wits' end to know how we can deal with Mormonism. There is one thing the minister of Jesus Christ can do : emphatically to refuse becoming a party to the current demoralization, de- clining to sanction marriage between parties, either of whom has been divorced on any other ground than that of adultery. Separation may be allowable on 1 " Bitter Cry of Outcast London." 216 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. other grounds, but not with the right of renewed wedlock ; and in no case may the father be absolved from the full discharge of the duties which parentage entails. Malthus may have written many hard and heartless things, but he was both clear-headed and Christian when he said : " Can the most fertile imag- ination conceive a restraint at once so natural, so just, so consonant to the laws of God, and the best laws framed by the most enlightened men, as that each in- dividual should be responsible for the maintenance of his own children ; that is, that he should be subjected to the natural inconveniences and difficulties arising from the indulgence of his inclinations ? " The aban- doned children must not be permitted to suffer, but the abandonment must be reduced to the narrowest limits by laws guarding conjugal and parental respon- sibility to the utmost, and these laws musf be enforced at the call of a public sentiment that will not permit the domestic sanctities to be trifled with. vm. THE HISTORICAL CAUSES OF PAUPERISM, AND ITS REMEDY. IDLENESS and improvidence are the primary and purely personal causes of pauperism, and these find most active helpers in the social causes which have been passed under review, illiteracy, intemperance, overcrowding, and the absence of a true domestic life. But this analysis is not exhaustive. No study of this painful and perplexing problem can be complete which overlooks the law of heredity, both in its nar- rower, and in its wider, influence. The pauperism of our time is the inheritance of a distant past. Thou- sands of years have been busy in the brutalizing task, and in digging the horrible pit yawning at our feet. Pauperism has its genealogical tree, and its ancestral history, whose examination suggests important lessons of practical wisdom. For if we can discover the gen- esis of the evil, and the conditions under which its in- crease has been encouraged, we shall be able to avoid serious mistakes, and husband our resources to the best advantage. The proletariat can be broken up, but there must be no blunders in our economic strate- gy. Before touching upon the historical causes of pauperism, however, it may be well to consider two popular and plausible explanations, whose validity may be fairly challenged. The first makes the city responsible for its existence, (217) 218 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. and looks to the encouragement of agriculture as the main check upon its further growth. " To see human beings in the most abject, the most helpless and hope- less condition," we are told, " you must go, not to the unfenced prairies and the log-cabins of new clearings in the backwoods, where man single-handed is com- mencing the struggle with nature, and land is yet worth nothing, but to the great cities, where the own- ership of a little patch of ground is a fortune." 1 It is the relative mass of misery, however, with which we must deal, not with exceptional and extreme cases, in forming an impartial judgment. The outlook, certain- ly, is discouraging enough, if pauperism is necessarily associated with density of population, and if the modern gravitation to cities is an economic evil. There may be density of population, however, without dangerous overcrowding, and there may be vicious overcrowding where the neighborhood is sparsely settled. There are houses in village communities, and in rural districts, whose associations are as corrupting as any that can be found in the slums of a city. An examination of the English tables for 1880 shows that the outdoor pauper- ism of Great Britain is greatest in the rural districts ; London appearing in the list with one to 62 1 of its in- habitants, or 1} per cent, of its population, while in the Welsh district the ratio was one to 23 J-, or over 4J per cent., and the comparative cost was more than three times as great in "Wales as in the metropolis. 8 The cities seem to have the heaviest burden of indoor pauperism, while outdoor pauperism appears relative- ly greatest in the country. There are not so many in- 1 Henry George, "Progress and Poverty," p. 201. 2 Fowle, " The Poor Law," p. 159, HISTORICAL CAUSES OF PAUPERISM. 219 sane, blind, and crippled in the country as in the city, but the indolent and the improvident are relatively more numerous in the country. There is something in the city that urges to industry, and the opportunities of saving are numerous and widely improved. An average of thirty dollars per head is invested in the savings banks of Brooklyn. In a run upon the Bleecker Street Savings Bank, of New York, some years since, the streets were crowded with Italians who elbowed their way to the doors to withdraw their deposits. The English Poor Law Report for 1842, contained nothing more harrowing than its de- scription of the cottages of a manufacturing village, and of the homes inhabited by the peasantry of Dur- ham. 1 Nowhere on the continent of Europe is the condition of labor more abject than in Silesia and Thuringia, where the house-industries, the theme of so many idyllic praises, still prevail, and of whose toil- ers it has been said that their destitution and poverty and mode of living is such as would hardly be credited among American readers. 2 A report of 1879 contains the description of an Irish peasant's dwelling, consist- ing of one apartment, which contained husband and wife, brothers and sisters, with an infant in the cradle, the grandmother, a horse, two cows, and two goats; and it was said that this picture fitted many peasant houses in Cork, Erris, and Tyrawley. 3 In one respect the city appears to decided advantage, in its comparative freedom from inherited pauperism 1 Walker, " The Wages Question," p. 62. a Schoenhof, " The Industrial Situation," p. 11. * N. Y. Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, report for 1879, 220 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. and crime. The fever-nests are in a constant state of disintegration and dispersion. Their inmates are al- ways moving ; in the country they hold their ground for successive generations. It is the frequently ex- pressed judgment of Mr. Charles L. Brace, that as compared with the villages, there is in large cities " a greater tendency in breaking up vicious families," and he gives it as the result of careful observation for thirty years, that of the great numbers of degraded families in New York, " exceedingly few of them have trans- mitted new generations of pauperism, criminals, or vagrants. The incessant change of our people, es- pecially in cities, the separation of children from par- ents, of brothers from sisters, and of all from their former localities, destroy that continuity of influence which bad parents and grandparents exert, and do away with those neighborhoods of crime and pauper- ism where vice concentrates and transmits itself with ever-increasing power. The fact that tenants must forever be ' moving' in New York, is a preventive of some of the worst evils among the lower poor. The mill of American life, which grinds up so many delicate and fragile things, has its uses, when it is turned on the vicious fragments of the lower strata of society. Villages, which are more stable and con- servative, and tend to keep families together in the same neighborhoods, show more instances of inherited and concentrated wickedness and idleness. In New York the families are constantly broken up ; some members improve, some die out, but they do not transmit a progeny of crime. There is little inherited criminality and pauperism." ] The rural districts pro- 1 " Dangerous Classes," pp. 44-47, HISTORICAL CA USES OF PA UPERISM. 221 duce greater fixedness, both of vice and of virtue. Their pauperism is more inveterate and self -perpetu- ating. The now famous tract, by K. L. Dugdale, tracing the genealogical history of the " Jukes " fam- ily, beginning with one " Margaret," a criminal and pauper, in Ulster County, New York, a hundred years ago, strikingly confirms this conclusion. Their descendants lived " in crumbling shanties and in holes burrowed under the rocks," and their abode became the rendezvous of vagabonds and prostitutes, who preyed upon the neighboring towns and infested the highways, BO that they were shunned as the plague. To that one woman, born between 1755 and 1760, who was a har- lot before marriage, never had any property, and died a pauper, 709 descendants were traced, of whom 280 became pauperized adults, receiving nearly 60,000 dollars in relief ; 140 became criminals, 60 were habit- ual thieves, 50 were prostitutes, 300 died prematurely, while the total cost to the State, in arrests, trials, im- prisonment, relief, property stolen and destroyed, and loss in productive energy, was found to have been over a million and a quarter of dollars. Yet during all these years no attempt was made to break up this hideous nest of disease, insanity, idiocy, pauperism, and crime, its foul streams polluting the county for over a hundred years. Such a thing would have been impossible in a great city, and nothing to match it can be found in the annals of municipal history. The city has sins enough to answer for, but they are the sins of universal human nature, and pauperism is certainly not one of its peculiar vices. The second explanation makes pauperism the symp- tom of that industrial disturbance which substituted SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. the factory for the " house -industry " plan, congre- gating the workmen and introducing machinery. The charge was made nearly sixty years ago by Robert Southey, who declared the factory system to be " more tyrannical than that of the feudal ages, a system of actual servitude, a system which destroys the bodies and degrades the minds of those who are engaged in it "; 1 and the indictment has been repeated so often that many are disposed to give an easy credence to it. But the facts prove the very reverse. Macaulay traversed the argument of the Poet-Laureate, and ex- posed its sophistry. He showed that the poor-rates were lowest in the manufacturing districts, that the diminution in the rate of mortality was greatest in the same localities, and that the improvements in machin- ery had lowered the price of manufactured articles, and so greatly improved the operative's grade of liv- ing. Mr. Pidgeon, whose name has been mentioned in an earlier chapter, and whose comparison brings us to the year 1884, brings out the contrast in these forcible sentences : " If there was something idyllic about a picture of the old English weaver working at his loom, with his family around him carding and spinning wool or cotton for his use, that home of in- dustry was very different in fact and fiction. Hud- dled together in a hut, whose living and sleeping ac- commodations were curtailed, by the tools of his trade, to limits which left little room for decency, the weav- er's family lived and worked without comfort, conven- ience, good food, or good air. The children became toilers from their earliest youth and grew up quite ignorant, no one having yet conceived of education " Macaulay's Essays," Vol. 2, p. 45. HISTORICAL CAUSES OF PAUPERISM. 223 except as a luxury of the rich. Theft of materials and drunkenness made almost every cottage a scene of crime, want, and disorder. The grossest supersti- tions took the place of intelligence ; health was impos- sible in the absence of cleanliness and pure air ; and such was the moral atmosphere, that if some family, with more virtue than common, tried to conduct themselves so as to save their self-respect, they were abused and ostracised by their neighbors. It was un- der this system that there arose in England that pau- per class, the reproach of civilization, which, once created, continued to grow until a fourth of the na- tional income scarcely sufficed to support the nation's poor. Against the spread of pauperism, indeed, legis- lation and philanthropy seemed alike powerless, and the evil was only, at last, checked by the rise of those manufacturing industries which followed upon the inventions of Arkwright, Hargreaves, and Crompton, and the enterprise of men like Wedgewood. The in- fluence of the newly-born factory system alone pre- vented England from being overrun, during the latter half of the eighteenth century, by the most ignorant and depraved of men, and it was only in the factory districts that the demoralizing agency of pauperism could be effectually resisted." 1 Our present indus- trial system undoubtedly has its faults, and is capable of improvement, but it is not the tyrant and the fiend some would have us believe it to be. It has been the friend, not the foe, of the poor ; and it has made pau- perism a crime, where a hundred years ago it was a calamity. Passing now to the historical causes that have pro- Old World Questions and New World Answers," p. 254. 224 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. duced the pauperism of the present, they may be re- duced to four, the pagan degradation of labor, the mediaeval canonization of poverty, the frequent and destructive wars of modern Europe, and the mischiev- ous, though well-meaning, public policy of England in dealing with the poor. The first three may be grouped together, and con- sidered in close and rapid continuity. Classical antiq- uity was pervaded by a profound and universal con- tempt for labor. Agriculture, the mechanic arts, and commerce were the occupations of slaves or foreign- ers. The citizens lived in idleness, or cultivated the art of war, the graces of art and literature, and the duties of statesmanship. Thousands of them were the hangers-on of political aspirants, and were maintained at their expense. It is estimated that in Cicero's time twelve per cent, of the population of Eome was sup. ported at public expense, and 70 B.C. this proportion is said to have increased to 33 per cent. Caesar is re- ported to have found 320,000 names on the public rolls, entitling each one of them to 56 pounds of bread per month. Augustus reduced the recipients to two hundred thousand. Septimius Severus added a ration of oil. Yalentinian the Elder ordered the distribution of white bread ; and in his reign 80,000 modii, or 896,000 pounds, are said to have been given out daily in Constantinople, which Constans increased by over 50 per cent. The figures seem almost in- credible. Meanwhile the provinces were systematic- ally stripped of their wealth, while pestilence and famine were frequent and wide-spread ; " vast masses of proletaires were gathered in the cities, especially in the imperial capital ; and poverty, orphanage, aban- HISTORICAL CAUSES OF PAUPERISM. 225 donment of children, and wide-spread pauperism pre- vailed, as they have scarcely ever been known in the history of the world." ' There may not have been, as Uhlhorn is inclined to believe, such painful and hopeless forms of misery and want as now burden our ciyilization, but the numbers of those who were in- competent to care for themselves, and who were nec- essarily and permanently dependent, was relatively vastly greater ; while the Christian churches at a very early day made it their special task, as the Pauline epistles already show, to grapple with the misery of the time. The imperial attempt to feed the clamor- ous thousands bankrupted the state, and when the Goth planted his foot on the Tiber's banks, the wretchedness had become extreme. The disorder, confusion, and poverty that followed have never been adequately described, and are probably, as has been said, " difficult to estimate." Amid the universal industrial chaos, the church is the heroic figure of the time, with hands always open to the hungry and the naked. The churches and monasteries welcomed and sheltered all who came, and there was never lack of gifts. In Chrysostom's day the church of Antioch supported three thousand settled poor, besides caring for many sick and prison- ers, strangers, lepers, and the daily suppliants, " to all of whom the church gave food and clothing." In Alexandria the rolls contained 7,500 names. "To these were added in ever-increasing swarms the wan- dering mendicants, who crowded into the towns, and besieged the churches. Gregory of Nyssa describes how they assembled in troops, and sought to excite 1 " Gesta Christi," p. 97. 15 226 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. compassion. One would stretch out a withered hand, another would show his swollen stomach, a third his cancerous leg. Chrysostom speaks of the crowds of beggars he used to meet in going to church. Ambrose represents them as pressing and crying out aloud, while the most deserving and needy waited silently till something was given to them. So, too, does Augus- tine, for there is not a preacher of the time in whose sermons we do not find an echo of the tremendous distress which surrounds him " But the evil grew by the very means that were used to relieve it, and it speedily became chronic. Almsgiving became indiscriminate, and was declared to possess the power of extinguishing and expiating sin. It was not the recipient whose benefit was sought in the gifts of charity, but the spiritual and eternal good of the giver. Almsgiving became selfish in its impulse and motive. Uhlhorn declares, what is plain to the most cursory reader, that " the doctrine of purgatory, and of the influence which almsgiving exercises even upon souls in purgatory, determined more than any thing else the charity of the entire mediaeval period." The beggar held the keys of sal- vation in his shrunken hands, and the prayer from his withered lips voiced the benediction of God. Poverty was canonized. It was no longer pitied, nor held in contempt. It became the badge of sainthood. The vow of poverty was universal in the religious or- ders. The mendicant friars were everywhere received with honor. Beggary not only ceased to be a disgrace, it was crowned and sceptred, and kings were sum- moned to render it obeisance. The result has been 1 Uhlhorn, " Christian Charity in the Ancient Church," p. 249. HISTORICAL CA USES OF PA UPERISM. 227 sketched in a few powerful sentences, by Dr. M. B. Anderson: "When European society gradually set- tled down into a coherent organization, when labor was better protected and rewarded, and the means of subsistence were put within the reach of the laboring classes, the habits generated in the preceding centu- ries, of receiving relief through the channels of be- nevolence, remained. The ignorant, the idle, the vi- cious, were only too ready to live upon the public bounty after it had ceased to be necessary ; and a great pauper class was formed throughout Europe from the residuum of ancient and mediaeval servitude." And not only was this great class willing to live upon the public bounty ; its representatives demanded it as their right, a right recognized by the church, and sanctioned by immemorial usage. It had been taught from a thousand pulpits, and through succes- sive centuries that no man had a right to more than sufficed for his necessary wants ; that the superfluous was the birthright of the needy ; that the only right use of wealth was to give it away ; that the poor man begs for his own ; that poverty was the higher moral condition ; that Christians should labor, by gifts, and grants, and alms, to restore and make permanent the original equality ; that alms are the wings of repent- ance and atone for sin ; that benevolence was only a form of justice, and that almsgiving had sacramental power to temper the disciplinary pains of the inter- mediate state. 1 The pauperism that had been created by the degradation of labor at the hands of paganism, was confirmed and made institutional by the canoniza- tion of poverty and the mediaeval theology of alms- 1 Uhlhorn, " Christian Charity," pp. 274-322. 228 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. giving. The wonder is, that under such a regime, continued through two thousand years, the masses were not hopelessly beggared, and the revival of an earnest industrial life made forever impossible. The effects have not yet been outgrown on European soil, where the idea still lingers that the support of the poor is the duty of the state, and they are specially noticeable in the lands where the mediaeval doctrine is still supreme. A competent authority, 1 speaking of the destitution among the peasants and artisans of Italy, where there are nearly a million and a half of dependent poor, for whose relief no legal provision exists, declares that the charitable institutions, which are regarded as " the life and soul " of the land, its peculiar pride and glory, are the nurseries of pauper- ism, and one of the principal causes of the spread of mendicity, which he declares to be " an imposture, and not produced by real destitution." Italy, with its licensed beggary, is only a miniature picture of a state of society that eight hundred years ago was general throughout Catholic Europe. The tramp, as he is now called, was a privileged member of the community, regarded with superstitious reverence, whom to turn away empty-handed was judged to be an omen of evil, and who was often enriched by the gifts of those who were much poorer than himself. The mendicant orders consecrated beggary, and the monasteries were the almshouses of the middle ages. " The stigma," to quote from Lecky, " which it is the highest interest of society to attach to mendicancy, it became a main object of theologians to remove. In all Catholic countries where ecclesiastical influences 1 Fano. HISTORICAL CAUSES OF PAUPERISM. 229 have been permitted to develop unmolested, the mon- astic organizations have proved a deadly canker, cor- roding the prosperity of the nation. Withdrawing multitudes from all production, encouraging a blind and pernicious almsgiving, diffusing habits of im- providence through the poorer classes, fostering an ignorant admiration for saintly poverty, and an equally ignorant antipathy to the habits and aims of an in- dustrial civilization, they have paralyzed all energy and proved an insuperable barrier to material prog- ress." l It is not charged that pauperism was deliber- ately encouraged. The monasteries have been called the nurseries of free labor, where the dignity and the duty of toil were rescued from the contempt to which slavery had consigned them. But the drift was in the reverse direction. The beggar was not compelled to work for the bread he asked. There was no sound philosophy of charity. It was indiscriminate and profuse. One is amazed at the vast sums that were freely expended, and the multifarious forms of organ- ized relief whose network covered mediaeval Christen- dom. No class of sufferers was overlooked. Every- where this tender treatment of the poor tempered the fanaticism and the ferocity of the period, " blending strangely with every excess of violence and every outburst of persecution." The Crusades disclose an unexampled prevalence of cruelty and licentiousness, but they are also the golden age of Catholic charity. The fiercest spirits felt its check and rendered it hom- age, as when it is said of Shane O'lSTeale, one of the most ferocious of Irish chieftains, whose life was a catalogue of horrible crimes, that "sitting at meat, 1 "History of European Morals," Vol. 2, pp. 90-106. 230 SOCIALISM AND , CHRISTIANITY. before he put one morsel into his mouth he used to slice a portion above the daily alms, and send it to some beggar at his gate, saying it was meet to serve Christ first." That very saying lays bare the root of the evil. The beggar was supposed to represent Christ, and His name was ignorantly invoked as a sanction of want and wretchedness. The leper's form, in the legends of the time, vanished to give place to the radiant face of the Son of Mary. It was not the man, but his mendicancy, his emaciated face, his tat- tered garments, his leprous and repulsive form, that was made the object of pious and profuse attention, and the result was that poverty was increased and made chronic by the very means adopted to relieve it ; and the judgment of the historian cannot be im- peached that while the noble heroism of those who have devoted themselves to charity, in the ranks of the Catholic Church, has never been surpassed, nor the perfection of its organization been equalled, the mediaeval Christianity " created more misery than it cured." The hopeless pauperism of our time still suffers from the poison of this mistaken and mis- chievous policy. When at last a brighter day dawned, and Europe entered upon the new era of political and economic reconstruction, breaking the chains of mediaeval ser- vitude, the dogs of war were let loose upon the struggling nations. Of the thirty years' war it has been said that it sealed Germany's doom, leaving it an economic waste, three hundred years behind the time. The campaigns of Frederick the Great, and of Na- poleon Bonaparte, ravaged the continent from the sea to the mountains, and the echoes of one battle have HISTORICAL CA USES OF PA UPERISM. 231 been succeeded by the thunders of another. In the 15th century Germany was rich and prosperous. Her laboring classes had abundance of food, with meat every day, and twelve times as much in quantity as in 1802. Silk, velvet, ornaments in gold and silver, were not unknown to them. Now there is only an apology of meat on Sundays and holidays, while the main articles of food are potatoes, chicory coffee, and rye bread. 1 And the reason of the sad change is that five hundred petty princes began to build palaces, and draft armies, and impose ruinous taxes, and surrender the people to the cruel sport of battle. England alone, by her comparative isolation, was saved from the general fate of Europe, and the sceptre of industrial prosperity easily passed into her hands. But England had her curse of mendicancy, and when she came to grapple with it, the alternate cruelty and laxity of her policy brought her to the brink of ruin. The " Poor Law " has been called England's " plague spot," and her pauperism has been the perplexity of her statesmen for nearly three hundred years.' Until the year 1601, two years before the death of Elizabeth, the golden age of English literature, the days of Shakespeare and Milton, there had been no earnest girding for solving the problem. The stamping-out process had been pursued, but the evil defied all penal measures. For two hundred and fifty years previous to the beginning of the seventeenth century, laws 1 Schoenhof, "The Industrial Situation," pp. 134^136. 2 Henry Fawcett, "Pauperism." T. W. Fowle, "The Poor Law." Encyclopedia Britannica, Art. "Poor Law." Prof. Ro- gers, "Work and Wages." Mill, "Principles of Political Economy." 232 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. were enacted to reduce the laborer to the condition of compulsory and permanent servitude. His wages were regulated, and he was fixed to the place of his birth. At the same time, mendicancy was made a crime, and visited with the severest penalties. He who gave alms to a beggar was made liable to a fine amounting to ten times the value of his charity. For the first offence, it was ordered by the law of Richard the Second, the sturdy beggar was to be whipped ; for the second, one of his ears was to be cropped ; and for the third, he was to be hung as an enemy of the com- monwealth. Elsewhere the same rigor prevailed. In England, France, Spain, and Germany, beggars were punished by whipping, branding, the pillory, imprison- ment, and death, the inventory of penalties compris- ing, it has been said, "almost all severities, except scalping." But the heroic measures failed, encounter- ing as they did a most stolid popular resistance ; the masses regarding the entire policy as one of heartless persecution, and the pauper defied the king. The law of 1601, " the foundation and text-book of English Poor Law," marks the advent of a more en- lightened and humane spirit ; and so excellent were its provisions, that the famous report of 1834 advocated an impartial and patient enforcement of its enact- ments as sufficient in dealing with the evils of mendi- cancy. The Act of Elizabeth recognized two, and only two, classes as entitled to public relief, "the idle, who will not, and the impotent, who cannot, work." The latter only were to be regularly and generously cared for ; the former were to be left to the criminal law, which imposed the labor-test, and in case of the applicant's refusal to comply committed HISTORICAL CAUSES OF PAUPERISM. 233 Mm to prison ; but " the industrious poor " for whom public alms were subsequently provided, were not in- cluded in the scope of the law of 1601. The methods may have been vague and inadequate, and the vicious theory that the poor have a claim upon the state was retained, but the principle of dealing with the painful problem was " essentially true," and for a hundred and sixty years its operation is said to have been " fairly successful." Workhouses were established, and it was enacted that " no poor who refused to be lodged and kept in such houses should be entitled to ask or receive parochial relief." The expenditure diminished from four million dollars in 1698 to three millions in 1750, though the population had increased in the meantime. The law, however, was regarded as cruelly stringent ; its provisions were more and more widely ignored and evaded ; the almshouses were regarded with aversion, as hotbeds of pauperism and vice, where young and old of both sexes were huddled together indiscriminately, and the workhouse test be- came increasingly unpopular, until in 1795 it was abolished, and the parish officers were called upon to relieve the poor in their own homes. Outdoor was substituted for indoor relief. This was followed by legislation fixing the minimum of wages to which a laborer should be entitled, and providing that the de- ficiency should be made good out of the poor-rates, while the birth of each child entitled the pauper household to an additional allowance. The well- meant philanthropy proved a greater enemy to honest toil than the preceding repressive and enslaving meas- ures had been. Employers took advantage of it to force down wages, leaving the parish to make up 234 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. what was lacking, and the idle evaded the necessity of labor to the utmost of their ability. Early marriages multiplied, a numerous family brought an increasing annual pension, and even immorality was encouraged by the statute, which provided that an illegitimate child should receive a more liberal allowance than a legitimate child was entitled to. Pauperism became a remunerative employment. The honest worker was laughed at as a fool. Wives reproached their hus- bands for refusing to become chargeable to the parish. Average wages were only three dollars a week, while the working pauper received four dollars. It passed into a proverb, " Poor is the diet of the pauper, poorer is the diet of the small rate-payer, poorest is the diet of the independent laborer." The rates be- came so excessive that they could not be collected, and entire industries were paralyzed and driven away by the taxation. In one parish the land was offered to the paupers, but they declined to accept the offer, on the ground that they preferred the existing ar- rangement. One rector is named who became charge- able with a sum amounting to twice the gross income of his benefice. A farm of five hundred acres, whose rental was a pound per acre, was assessed to the sum of two hundred and fifty pounds. It seemed as if the government regarded pauperism as its glory and crown. The public funds were disbursed as if they constituted a regular part of the maintenance of the laboring people engaged in agriculture. The free laborer was converted into a slave. The able-bodied pauper was obliged to live where the law of settlement placed him, to receive the income which the neigh- boring magistrates thought sufficient, to work for the HISTORICAL CAUSES OF PAUPERISM. 235 master and in the way the parish authorities pre- scribed, and very often to marry the wife they found for him. He has been called " a work of art, and not the natural offspring of the English race." The workhouse test was abolished in 1795. In 1750 the outlay had been three million dollars ; in 1776 it had grown to seven and a half million dollars ; in 1785 it was eight and a half million dollars ; after which it steadily increased until it reached the enormous aggre- gate of nearly forty million dollars in 1817, when the population was about eleven millions. In the year 1871, when the population had doubled, it reached once more the same figure, and then it included the maintenance of all the asylums, hospitals, and district schools; and in 1880, when the population had in- creased from eleven to nearly twenty-six millions, the expenditure amounted only to 700,000 dollars more, while of the 808,000 recipients, nearly 116,000 were classed as able-bodied paupers, and over 627,000 re- ceived outdoor relief, which the Reform Act of 1834 aimed gradually to abolish. Fifty years ago England stood upon the brink of threatened national bank- ruptcy. The poor-rates amounted to a confiscation of the soil, which threatened to consume in a few years its entire market value. In recent years the national- ization of land, and its taxation to the full amount of its competitive rental, have been advocated as the only adequate cure of pauperism, "Take for the benefit of the whole community that fund which the growth of the community creates, and want and the fear of want would be gone. Men would no more worry about finding employment than they worry about finding air to breathe ; they need have no more 236 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. care about physical necessities than do the lilies of the field." ' A very pretty picture, but its perspective is not that of sober history. England virtually tried the com- munistic plan, and has not yet succeeded in breaking away from its mischievous implications and effects. The " fear of want " is not an evil ; it is the main in- centive to industry and thrift. A policy that relieves men of "worry," and converts them into "lilies of the field," only degrades, pauperizes, and brutalizes them. The debate has passed beyond the region of theory and experiment. The policy stands condemned in the highest court of political economy, at the bar of history. The creation of a fund, by taxation, upon which the poor man has a legal claim, has resulted in eliminating shame in the receipt of alms, in the deterioration of labor, in the increase of chronic and in- corrigible idleness, in the encouragement of intemper- ance, in the discouragement of independent and hon- orable industry, in the increase of imprudent mar- riages and the consequent growth of hereditary pau- perism, in weakening the domestic affections, encour- aging illegitimacy and abandonment, and in creating restlessness and lawlessness among the recipients of public alms. They have not been grateful for what has been given, and they have growled because more was not provided, passing from scowls to threats and even arson. England was compelled, in sheer self- defence, to revise her charitable policy, a revision that amounted to a revolution in the principles of practical administration, though it was only a return to the older law of Elizabeth. 1 Henry George, "Progress and Poverty," p. 414. REMED Y FOR PA UPERISM. 237 The year 1834 is memorable in the annals of Eng- lish legislation in behalf of the dependent poor. The Act, based upon an able, minute, and exhaustive par- liamentary report, was adopted on the 9th of May, in that year, by a vote of 299 to 20 in the House of Commons, and in the House of Lords, where it was championed by the Duke of "Wellington, against a minority of thirteen. Its aim is clearly set forth in the report of 1839, in terms that leave nothing to be added on the philosophy of the question : " The fun damental principle with respect to the legal relief of the poor is, that the condition of the pauper ought to be, on the whole, less eligible than that of the inde- pendent laborer. The equity and expediency of the principle are equally obvious. Unless the condition of the pauper is, on the whole, less eligible than that of the independent laborer, the law destroys the strongest motives to good conduct, steady industry, providence, and frugality among the laboring classes, and induces persons, by idleness or imposture, to throw themselves upon the poor-rates for support. But if the independent laborer sees that a recurrence to the poor-rates will, while it protects him against des- titution, place him in a less eligible position than that which he can attain to by his own industry, he is left to the undisturbed influence of all those motives which prompt mankind to exertion, forethought, and self- denial. On the other hand, the pauper has no just ground of complaint if at the same time that his phys- ical wants are amply provided for, his condition should be less eligible than that of the poorest class who contribute to his support." That is to say, the destitute are to be relieved, but in such a way that 238 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. their condition shall be worse than if they had taken pains to support themselves. Justice is a mockery, and philanthropy an economic blunder, when, as the report of 1834 says, "the diet of the workhouse ex- ceeds that of the cottage, and the diet of the jail is more profuse than even that of the workhouse." Under such a regime the pauper and the criminal belong to the privileged classes. The commissioners recom- mended the immediate and total abolition of out- door relief, because " to permit it as an exception is to permit it as a rule." Neither money nor goods were to be given, to be spent or consumed, by the poor in their own homes. It was to be the almshouse, the jail, or nothing. But the measure was altogether too drastic, and to this day its radical reforms have failed to be embodied in adequate legislation, while public opinion lags a long way behind enlightened statesman- ship. The surgery seems barbarous, and so the policy of compromise continues. The law of settlement and the allowance system have been abolished. But the right to public relief remains in theory, though there is no legal machinery for its enforcement. The law makes an exception of all who are over sixty years of age, however able-bodied, and of such as suf- fer from sickness and accident in themselves or in their families. These may receive relief in their homes, and these constitute at present the vast major- ity of England's 270,000 adult, but not legally " able- bodied " paupers. The inmates o the almshouse have not been increased, but the poor have been encour- aged in improvidence, living literally from hand to mouth, because they know that after sixty they are entitled to an annual pension. Friendly Societies have REMED Y FOR PA UPERISM. 239 failed to secure a footing in certain districts when it was found that membership would involve a loss of parish relief. In spite, however, of these defects, due to a hesitating policy, the improvement has been marked, and popular sentiment is gradually rising in favor of more stringent measures. The poor-rates dropped from 31 million dollars in 1834, to 23 mill- ion dollars in 1841, while the population had in- creased more than a million and a half ; and though the expenditure was 40 million dollars in 1880, it would have been 77 millions on the basis of 1834, and 97i millions on the basis of 1817, a decrease in the order of the years named of 50 and 60 per cent. The district of Atcham in Shropshire has succeeded in reducing outdoor relief to 196 persons in a population of over 45,000 ; and the same care in administration would rid England of more than half a million of its pauper class, involving a saving of eleven million dol- lars annually, and adding two hundred thousand men to the ranks of honest industry. If England's long and painful experience teaches anything, it is the expediency and the imperative ne- cessity of abandoning all outdoor relief. Experiments in American cities, notably in Brooklyn and Philadel- phia, show that this can be done, without entailing suffering. 1 No coal should be given, no rents be paid, no food be provided, out of funds levied by general taxation. Let the State care for the indoor dependent poor, in almshouses, and hospitals, and asylums, and relegate all the rest to organized private charity. Let 1 Report of Conference of Charities and Correction for 1881. Mrs. J. S. Lowell, " Public Relief and Private Charity." D. O. Kellogg, "The Pauper Question." 240 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. the pool-houses be the refuge of the helpless, where the sexes are separated, and to which neither children nor idle vagrants are welcomed, the latter to be sent to workhouses, where the labor shall be hard enough and the fare scanty enough to compel the choice of independent industry. Eemit the care of all other forms of want, temporary and exceptional in their character, to organized private charity in each county, township, city, and ward. Indiscriminate charity must be avoided. There must be regularity and method in dealing with the deserving and suffering poor. Belief must be prompt, adequate, and with- drawn as speedily as possible. That will require organization, registry, personal and persistent visita- tion. There is no help for it, pauperism can only be exterminated by the method of intelligent and indi- vidual treatment. In France, the pauper has no legal claim to relief, nor is he permitted to make his appeal to private charity. The gifts of the rich and well-to-do are re- ceived and distributed by the public authorities. Each applicant is subjected to a searching inquisition, and placed under police supervision, while his allowance is promptly carried to him. In Germany the manage- ment is relegated to voluntary societies, legally incorpo- rated. Thus, in Elberfeld and in Leipzig, the recipient of alms is closely questioned as to his family, what property he has, the work he has done and can do. He may not keep a dog, nor attend a place of public entertainment. He loses his civic rights. He must take the work that is offered him. He is visited every two weeks, and his allowance brought to him, when he is gently and firmly advised and encouraged. Un- REMED Y FOR PA UPERISM. 241 der this system Elberfeld reduced its pauperism from 4,000 in a population of 50,000, in the year 1852, to 1,863 in a population of 71,000 in the year 1873 an improvement of over 67 per cent, in twenty-one years. The mischief in our American cities has been the ab- sence, until comparatively recent years, of co-operation of churches and charitable societies through some cen- tral organization, a clearing-house of private charity, where the claims of applicants may be subjected to careful examination, imposture be prevented, and the needy poor be visited in their homes. More than enough is given every year promptly and fully to meet all legitimate demands, but the givers work apart and act impulsively, while the undeserving thrive up- on the bounty. It is cheering to be able to add that since 1877, with the city of Buffalo as the pioneer, following the example of the cities of England, where Liverpool led the way in 1863, co-operative benevo- lence has been introduced in New Haven, Boston, Philadelphia, Brooklyn, New York, Cleveland, De- troit, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Springfield, Mass., Syracuse, Portland, Newport, and many other cities. The newcomer has been regarded with suspicion, and churches especially have been found exceedingly con- servative ; but the more the principle is understood, the more rapid will be its incorporation into our policy of benevolence, and it is destined to bring into order, compactness, and thorough-going efficiency, our pre- vailing habits of helping the poor. The " Associated Charities" of London represents an organization of 1,342 churches. The system aims at registry, person- al visitation, the search for relatives who are disposed to evade their obligations, relief with a view to work, 16 242 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. and constant supervision, with firm and gentle advice', in a word, to make every township and ward an Elberfeld, where intelligent men and women shall be- come personally acquainted with the suffering poor whom they seek to help. Society must touch the leper, if he is to be healed. IX. THE TREATMENT OF THE CRIMINAL CLASSES. 1 PAUPERISM and Crime are twin-born. The pauper is not necessarily a criminal ; he is only too often good-naturedly indolent and inoffensive, sometimes physically or mentally incapable of exertion, and morally paralyzed ; nor is the law-breaker always stimulated to his crime by the gnawings of hunger. Pauperism is mainly a passive evil, a dead weight hanging upon the skirts of industrial progress, de- manding remedial rather than penal measures ; Crime is an active and settled antagonism, a guerilla warfare against social order, a positive and aggressive resist- ance. The beggar and the thief, the tramp and the murderer, are not to be confounded ; and if in many cases both appear in the same man, the explanation is not that poverty is the cause of crime, or crime the cause of poverty, but that the two evils have a com- mon source and often intermingle. Idleness and improvidence are the primary, per- sonal causes inciting to crime, as they are creative of pauperism. It appears, from an analysis of the com- 1 Reports of Elmira Reformatory, 1880-1885 ; Reports of Eastern Penitentiary, Penn., 1883-1884 ; Richard Vaux, " Short Talks," Brief Sketch of Eastern Penitentiary ; Report of N. Y. Prison Association for 1870, containing many valuable papers ; National Conference of Charities and Correction, 1881, 1883, and 1884 ; Prisons and Reformatories, Conference at Chicago, 1884 ; American Cyclopedia, Article " Prison Discipline." (243) SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. mitments to the Elmira Keformatory during the last eight years, a penal institution solely for males who have been guilty of the first criminal offence, that 94: T % per cent, of those sentenced had committed of- fences against property, and only 5 r 3 T per cent, offences against persons. The criminal appears first as a beg- gar, plus the disposition of violence, taking what he wants without asking consent. Illiteracy does not appear as prominent in the records of crime as in the history of pauperism. Less than 20 per cent, of the Elmira prisoners belonged to the illiterate class. A similar examination of the statistical tables of the Eastern Pennsylvania penitentiary for 1875 to 1884, inclusive, shows that of its 2,127 prisoners, only 452 had never attended school, a little over 21 per cent. It is fair to assume that four criminals out of every five have enjoyed some advantages of education. The criminal, as a rule, is of higher mental grade than the pauper ; and there are some crimes that require unu- sual alertness, skill, and vigilance. The same tables show, however, that the criminal classes are lacking in previous industrial training. Thus of the 1,759 Elmira inmates only l&ft- per cent, had ever been en- gaged in mechanical work, while 78 T 4 per cent, had been common laborers, servants, and clerks, though the ancestral history revealed the fact that 41 T V per cent, had come from the homes of mechanics. The disclosures of the Philadelphia prison tables are even more startling. Of the 2,127 inmates, 1,939 were found never to have been apprenticed ; 75 were ap- prenticed, but left before their terms of service had expired, and only 113 had learned a trade a little more than 5 per cent, of the entire number. Uliter- TREA TMENT OF CRIMINAL CLASSES. 24S acy was represented by only 20 per cent., lack of in- dustrial training by an average of over 86 per cent, in both grades of prisons, and by nearly 95 per cent, in the higher criminal grade. The common school does not act as a marked repressive measure, and here the contrast in its relation to pauperism is significant ; but the ranks of crime are mainly recruited from those who never had any mechanical training, over 40 per cent, of them the children of mechanics who neglected to teach their boys a trade. Our penitentiaries second the admonition that comes from the almshouses in- troduce manual training into the public schools even at the sacrifice of grammar and the cube root. The double effect of overcrowding has already been referred to, as promoting both pauperism and crime. The " slums " are the resort of beggars, and the ren- dezvous of thieves and murderers. Equally operative in the encouragement of crime is the absence of chas- tity, and the looseness of the domestic life. The El- mira tables show that nearly 64 per cent, had lived at home up to the commission of the first crime, and that only four per cent, had left the parental roof before they were ten years of age, 25 per cent, soon after they were fourteen years old, the vast majority demoral- ized at home ; while of those who were homeless more than 53 per cent, were rovers and tramps. There is a frightful suggestiveness as to the domestic lif e that nur- tures the criminal, in the medical reports of the Phila- delphia penitentiary for 1882, 1883, and 1884, which reveal the fact that nearly 50 per cent, were afflicted with venereal diseases, and nearly 40 per cent, were the children of parents from whom they had inherited tendencies to consumption, insanity, and epilepsy. 246 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. And, finally, intemperance is equally fertile in pro- moting crime as in producing pauperism. The tables show that 80 per cent, of our criminals have come from the liquor-saloon. The judgment of Sir Matthew Hale is as true now as it was more than two hundred years ago : " If the murders and manslaughters, the burglaries and robberies, the riots and tumults, the adulteries, fornications, rapes, and other enormities that have happened in my time, were divided into five classes, four of them would be seen to have been the issue and product of excessive drinking of tavern and ale-house drinking." This is a thoroughly safe and moderate estimate. The proportion is greatly ex- ceeded in many quarters, rising as high as 90 per cent., but nowhere falling below 80. Murder is rarely com- mitted except under the insane fury that drunkenness induces, and it was officially stated that during Father Matthew's marvelous influence in Ireland, when drunk- enness was stamped out by voluntary pledges in large districts of the island, the crimes of murder, aggrava- ted assaults, cutting and maiming, decreased in two years from 12,096 to 1,097. Yineland, New Jersey, with a population of ten thousand, and without a single saloon, has passed an entire year without one criminal arrest. Greeley, Colorado, with three thou- sand inhabitants and without a dram-shop, "has no use for a police force or a criminal magistrate." And of Bavaria, Illinois, similarly situated, with three thou- sand population, it is said that it has managed to live "without a drunkard, without a pauper, and with- out a crime." ' Intemperance is the great pauper- mill and criminal factory; and almshouses and pen- 1 Homiletic Review for Jan., 1885. TREATMENT OF CRIMINAL CLASSES. 247 itentiaries will remain crowded so long as an easy- going community does not drop its shameful inactivity and internecine warfare, to gird itself for a long and determined campaign against the bar-room. The Teutonic love of personal liberty will tolerate no sumptuary laws, nor sanction interference by govern- mental act with the channels of trade ; but if pauper- ism is to be materially reduced, and any effective breach is to be made in the criminal lines, the shot and shell of moral and legal attack must sweep away th saloon. Paupers there probably always will be, nor will drunkenness ever wholly cease, nor peniten- tiaries become needless ; but we cannot evade the sol- emn responsibility of crowding these social evils with- in their narrowest lines. This raises the second question, what shall be our philosophy of criminal treatment ? It is only recently that such an inquiry has received patient and intelli- gent consideration, and to most readers " penology " is a strange word, and a stranger science. Until nearly the close of the last century, penal discipline was simply brutal and barbarous. Blackstone's com- mentaries, published in 1765, contain the almost in- credible statement that a hundred and sixty crimes had been declared " by act of Parliament to be felonies without benefit of clergy ; or, in other words, to be worthy of instant death "; and for the great body of minor offences the punishment was " incarceration in a common jail ; both sexes and all colors, ages, and conditions, convicted and accused, were congregated in almost hopeless misery." John Howard and Eliz- abeth Fry found the prisons of their day to be " tor- ture-houses, slaughter-houses, pest-houses, both phys- 248 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. ically and morally," and men looked aghast when the evils were laid bare. Newgate has become invested with eternal infamy, as the incarnation of diabolical cruelty. From indifference men swung to the extreme of sentimental kindness. The criminal was pitied. The protest against inhumanity endangered the idea and authority of justice. The improvements that followed consisted mainly in bettering the sanitary condition of the prisons, in protecting their inmates from irrespon- sible and brutal treatment, and in greatly increasing their personal comfort. The consequence was that re- actions were frequent, the advance was slow and uncer- tain, and there were many who doubted the wisdom of the new departure, and who advocated a return to sterner methods. The old system dealt only with the crime, affixing to the offence a definite penal valuation, which it mercilessly inflicted upon the criminal without any regard to his antecedents, or mental and moral infirmi- ties. The new system was touched by the spirit of humanity ; it looked at the man instead of his crime ; it saw, or thought it saw, a man who had been brutal- ized by the treatment to which society, in the name of justice, had subjected him, and the advanced advo- cates soon proclaimed the principle that all crime is the result of bad organization, of ancestral inheritance and unfavorable environment. It was, and is, the old debate between free will and fate, in the department of penology. Neither philosophy is exact and exhaustive. Every man is a personal moral unit, and an involuntary par- ticipant in the world's antecedent and contemporane- ous life. Heredity is a potent factor in the natural TREATMENT OF CRIMINAL CLASSES. 249 history of crime. Vicious surroundings provide the most powerful encouragements and stimulants to law- lessness, and criminal statistics show a regularity of recurrence in all forms of criminal offences that indi- cates the presence and operation of some occult social law, whose discovery would make penology nearly as exact a science of prophecy as meteorology ; but not one of these causes, nor all of them combined, can eliminate the personal factor in crime. It still re- mains true that in the personal will are focused all the inherited tendencies, and environing associations, and social stimulants. These are the inflammable mate- rials, whose igniting fire is in the responsible will of the criminal ; and penal discipline must therefore do something more than deal with his present and pros- pective environments. Its sovereign tone must be one of sharp condemnation and of severe admonition, the sharpness and severity, not of cruelty, but of can- dor and truth. The door of hope must not be closed against any man, nor the opportunity of repentance be denied him ; but the duty of a genuine repentance is one upon which society must insist, and that can be done only under a discipline that makes the convict feel the full weight of his personal responsibility. There has been greater progress in removing the abuses of the retributive system than in reconstruct- ing our entire penal discipline upon a sound philo- sophical basis. The death penalty is much more spar- ingly resorted to, mainly reserved for cases of wilful and premeditated murder, and there is a growing dis- position to abolish it altogether. Transportation to penal colonies was practiced by Great Britain until 186?, for a period of nearly 250 years ; and still holds 250 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. its place in the penal codes of France, Spain, Portu- gal, Italy, and Russia. Branding and maiming are not permitted. Corporal punishment is permissible by statute, but in some prisons is rarely resorted to, and in others it is forbidden ; the dark cell, with re- duced rations, being the ordinary form of correction. Public whipping still exists in Delaware, and the ball and chain may still be seen in the streets of our Southern cities. Prison discipline is the last problem to which enlightened Christian philanthropy has ad- dressed itself, and the inherent difficulties attending its solution have been greatly increased by the prevailing public demand that the prisons shall be self -sustaining. Still, the new science of penology is assuming con- sistent form, and there is no country that excels our own in the clear apprehension and experimental illus- tration of what prison discipline ought to be. In fact, prison reform may, with great plausibility, be said to have originated in Philadelphia in the year 17T6, a year before Howard's first book on the English prisons appeared ; and the three leading systems of prison dis- cipline are known, the world over, as the Philadelphia, the Auburn, and the Elmira plans. The Philadelphia plan is that of solitary or separate confinement, or as its advocates prefer to call it, of individual treatment. The cell is the convict's home, by day and by night. In it Ke sleeps, and eats, and works, care being taken that it is sufficiently roomy. The only outdoor exer- cise he has is in the individual yard attached to his cell. He is seen and known by none except the offi- cers, and he goes out of prison with face covered. He does not even see the chaplain who preaches to him, only hearing what he may say. The Philadelphia TREA TMENT OF CRIMINAL CLASSES. 251 penitentiary is the only one of its kind in the United States, though in some European states, notably in Belgium and Holland, the cellular prison is regarded as the only one that answers the requirements of scientific and successful prison discipline. Its deter- minating principle is the doctrine that every crime is to be studied and treated in its "crime-cause," the " inchoate conditions of intention, and will," and the secret, constitutional, and inherited tendencies that have crowded these into criminal expression. Each convict thus becomes a separate problem of discipline, and this individual treatment compels separate incar- ceration as its necessary condition, though it is not properly a part of the true penal sentence. Every prisoner is compelled to work, not because labor is a part of the punishment for crime, but because under no circumstances has a man any right to support un- less he works for what he gets. The true penalty is regarded as consisting in the searching, severe, unre- mitting personal discipline by which it is sought to eradicate and supplant the criminal propensities in their most secret causes. The Auburn, or congregate system, established in 1816, and which has been adopted in all other prisons of the Union, is a modification of the cellular plan, so far as to bring all the convicts together for meals, for work during the day, and for religious services. The advantages claimed for this system are that it reduces the size of the prisons, as cells occupied only at night, when the Auburn plan separates the convicts, need not be so spacious as they must be when men must work in them, that a perfect sanitary condition ia more easily maintained, and that the social instinct ig 252 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. too deeply-rooted and influential to be repressed with safety, or to be overlooked in reformatory discipline. The Elmira .Reformatory is really as much a State prison as those of Auburn and Sing Sing, but it marks an advance in the classification of criminals, and in varying the ordinary methods of treatment. It was established in 1877, is intended only for male criminals who have committed their first offence, and whose term of sentence is indeterminate. The con- vict decides for himself how soon he shall be released. It depends upon his conduct in workshop, school, and cell. The discipline is firm, constant, and exacting. Release is only upon parole, and employment secured through relatives and friends, or the prison manage- ment, and the release becomes unconditional only after a successful six months' probation. The tables show that of the 1,748 convicts received during eight years, of whom 576 were then in custody, society was reasonably protected from 92.3 per cent., and that of the 1,055 who had been absolutely and conditionally released, 80 per cent, had "probably returned to community without resuming criminal conduct, and this with an average imprisonment for those dis- charged, of 20.2 months, and for those remaining not yet discharged, an average detention of 15.7 months." In his last annual report (for 1884), the enlightened and earnest superintendent, Mr. Z. R. Brockway, whose words are weighted with prison discipline ex- perience of thirty years, speaks on this wise of the Elmira experiment : " Thirty-eight per cent, of the 1,055 men paroled responded at once on admission to the call for improvement, going steadily on to their release in nearly the minimum of time under the TREATMENT OF CRIMINAL CLASSES. 253 rules, that is to say, in not more than fifteen months from the date of their committal ; while another thirty-eight per cent, did not readily respond, hesitat- ing or wavering until various periods, none exceeding, however, twenty-four months, were consumed in the necessary preparation for release ; while twenty-four per cent, were so fastened in evil ways, so feeble in their first endeavor, or so faltering afterwards, as to require from two and a half to three years to fit them to go out. Of the number now remaining in confine- ment, there are perhaps ten per cent, that cannot in the time and with the means at command be resolved into reasonably safe citizens. If thirty-eight per cent, readily and of themselves respond to the established means of reformation, and ten per cent, are incorrigi- ble, we have a remainder of fifty-two per cent., for whose awakening and training special and personal effort must be made." What is known as the Irish or Crofton system, which in the main is the penal discipline at present in Great Britain, attempts a combination of the three methods mentioned, beginning with solitary confine- ment for eight or nine months, during three months of which time the convict does the least agreeable work, as picking oakum, and living on reduced fare, and without meat for four months ; passing thence into another prison, with solitary confinement at night, and congregate labor during the day ; landing finally in a third prison, where the restraints are re- duced to a minimum, where there are neither walls, nor bars, nor armed watchmen, nor physical restraint, nor prison garb, nor check on conversation, but whence the unruly may be sent back to solitary in- 254: SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. carceration where, in a word, the convict is gradually prepared for his full liberation. This last feature ex- ists only in Ireland, but many high authorities regard it as the necessary complement of a perfect penal system. This review sketches the present penal system at its best. Only a very few of the prisons are conducted under such broad and enlightened management. Three principles enter into its practical philosophy: first, that the design of punishment is the protection of so- ciety ; second, that society can be protected only by the elimination of the criminal ; and third, that the criminal can be eliminated only by reforming him, necessitating his indefinite incarceration until his reformation is reasonably sure. It has been said that the really well conducted prisons in the United States can be counted on one's fingers, while the great ma- jority of them suffer from political meddling, and competent authorities are agreed that the county jails, used for prisoners awaiting trial, witnesses and persons guilty of minor offences, and in few of which any work is provided or demanded, are the hotbeds of vice and the schools of crime. Young and old, the innocent and the hardened, are kept for weeks and months in enforced idleness, congregated together by day and by night. There are 2,500 such places of temporary confinement in the Union. There was tremendous excitement in St. Louis, during the meet- ings of the Prison Conference in 1883, when Mr. W. M. F. Eound, Secretary of the New York Prison Association, exclaimed : " Out upon our boast of philo- sophic enterprise, when nearly every county in the land has its moral plague-spot, its pest-house of iniq- uity, under the very eaves of the churches, where TREATMENT OF CRIMINAL CLASSES. 255 men are perishing while we are at our prayers ! My blood boils with indignation when I think of this spot of vantage that we yield to Satan, with hardly a word of protest. It is high time that all who are battling for right against wrong, for heaven against hell, should realize that there is no duty lying nearer them than to rise up in the power of a combined protest, and destroy this well-fortified outpost of hell! Let us ring it on a thousand changes, in the name of pub- lic economy, in the name of humanity, in the name of Christian charity and duty, in the name of God, down, down with the old-fashioned county jail ! " Men held their breath as they listened to this scath- ing indictment. The paper was not published in the proceedings, the author asking leave to withdraw it ; but in the Conference at Detroit, only a year later, the statement that there was no greater iniquity in the world than the county jail system of the United States was accepted without criticism ; and he who doubts it needs only to read the New York Prison Association Reports for the years 1879 and 1883. Of the sixty-five county jails in the State, only five were found whose buildings were fairly good, half of them being " very defective as to light, air, and drainage "; only in fifteen of them was there any separation of the accused and the convicted ; in only ten of them was there any separation of minors and adults, boyp six and eight years old herding with hardened crimi- nals ; only in twenty-six of them were the sexes effect- ively kept apart, while in the remainder the separation was insufficient and the means of wide-spread moral corruption. And the reason why this system retains its place was forcibly and plainly stated at Detroit in 256 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 1884 : " The county jail is the centre of the little, mean, contemptible political system of every county. That is the reason why it cannot be abolished. Until we can create such a public sentiment as will lift our prisons above the atmosphere of low politics, we cannot expect to abolish it. I hope to see the day when, with the help of public sentiment and the press, we can take our penal system entirely from politics, and put it on different grounds, where no politician can touch it for his own use." There may be some encouragement in saying that it was only in 1877 that England finally succeeded in getting rid of her borough jails, and in placing all her prisons under the control of the central government. The reforms now demanded by the best practical prison managers are, the complete severance of prison discipline from politics ; the centralization of all prisons under State control, involving the abolition of the county jails ; houses of detention for those accused of crime and awaiting trial, built on the cellular plan, and with the privilege of work ; the separation of all children under twelve years of age from penal in- stitutions ; juvenile reformatories for minors ; work- houses for all convicted of minor offences; special prisons for women, and also for those adults who have been guilty of first offences; the substitution of in- definite for definite sentences ; and the universal intro- duction of industrial labor, not as a part of the judi- cial penalty, but as demanded by the law of nature which requires every man to earn his own bread, and from which crime cannot release him, and as indis- pensable for purposes of reformatory discipline. In twelve States of the Union the barbarous convict lease TREATMENT OF CRIMINAL CLASSES. 257 system still prevails ; in most States the contract sys- tem has held its place ; though at present the drift is decidedly in favor of what is called the " piece-price " plan, as best adapted to make convict labor an instru- ment of criminal reformation. In England, where the army and the navy require vast appropriations, the government employs the convicts ; but the system does not seem to fit our national temper, and has been a ruinous experiment where it has been attempted. But work the convict should, from the moment the prison gates close upon him ; and that independent of the question whether the prisons can be made self- supporting. They must first of all be made efficient in protecting society, reducing crime, and reforming as far as possible the criminal. Nor is this a small matter. The army of criminals in confinement, in our country, is 70,000 strong ; and as only one-fifth are supposed to be under arrest at any one time, the criminal population is 350,000, with a total constituency of those dependent on them of 490,000 more, making an aggregate of 840,000. Of these, nearly one-fifth are in the State of New York ; and as it is estimated that society pays on the average 1,800 dollars a year for each criminal, for his " sus- tenance, police surveillance, expenses of trial, etc.," the Empire State loses over. 115 million dollars an- nually, and the country 630 million dollars a year, through the lawlessness of the vicious classes. The economic problem is not an inconsiderable one, how this enormous waste can be diminished and stopped ; but the overshadowing question is how to confine this moral plague within the narrowest limits and to re- strict to the utmost the area of its influence. 17 X. MODERN SOCIALISM, RELIGION, AND THE FAMILY. DURING the recent disturbances in London, profess- edly in the name and on behalf of unemployed and starving workingmen, Trafalgar Square was the scene of a two-fold agitation. The spirit of the one was peaceful, that of the other revolutionary. Around the column of Nelson were gathered thousands who asked only that an opportunity of honestly earning their own living might be given them. They did not ask for alms, nor did they indulge in threats of vio- lence. They appealed to the government as true and loyal citizens, stated their grievances and distress, and then quietly went home. We may deem them to have been mistaken in their philosophy of governmental functions, but we cannot help sympathizing with them in their bitter struggle, and honoring them for their commendable and heroic self-restraint. On the broad steps of the National Gallery a very different assemblage gathered its forces. It was domi- nated by the spirit and the creed of what is known as the Social Democratic Federation, an organization of which H. M. Hyndman is a leading and influential representative. He is a man of little literary ability, but of a certain rude force of thought, making up in intensity what he lacks in breadth ; a pronounced dis- ciple of Karl Marx, whose two main ideas of labor as (258) SOCIALISM, RELIGION, AND FAMILY. 259 the only source of wealth, and of the workingman's consequent right to own all the land and all the in- struments of production, constitute his stock in trade. His recent address, which was followed by the plunder of shops, was based upon these assumptions of the new political economy. He denounced the men who asked for work as cowards, and called for a crusade in which all laborers should stand together against the plundering classes, represented by the fashionable clubs of Pall Mall. He insisted that not charity, but justice, was the remedy for the existing distress ; and justice, he declared, demanded that the land and the machinery of England should be seized by the work- ingmen, because their labor alone had made it valu- able. Another speaker declared that "hanging was too good for landlords and capitalists," and the con- clusion can hardly be discredited if the economic prin- ciples of modern socialism cannot be successfully challenged. If labor is the only source of wealth ; if capital is not the product of skill and thrift, but the fruit of petty, wide-spread, incessant spoliation ; if pri- vate property in land and machinery is iniquitous ; the reigning industrial system stands indicted as the most gigantic and satanic robbery ever perpetrated in the name of liberty, and compromise is the suggestion of dishonesty and cowardice. There must be no terms with brigands ; they must be captured, dead or alive. It is this moral appeal that gives to modern social- ism its strength. The clubs of the London police dis- persed the " roughs and ruffians " who are said to have constituted the great majority of the social reformers ; but neither clubs nor rifles can carry the socialistic cit- adel. That lies beyond the range of shot and shell ; and 260 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. it will continue to remain the menace of modern civiliz- ation until its strategic points have been carried by a superior logical advance. The true socialist scorns the language of philanthropy, and resents your advocacy of reforms for the protection of the poor, as if a thief should offer to restore a miserable pittance if you will only leave him undisturbed in the enjoyment of his stolen goods. It cannot be stated too often and too strongly that measures looking to the reduction of the hours of labor, the increase of wages, the protection of women and children, and the like, are as futile to satisfy the demands of modern socialism, as husks can quiet the cravings of a hungry and starving man, or the lengthening of his chain can tame a lion. The ground thus gained will be held only that the battle may be more vigorously pushed. The needed reforms are many and pressing ; they have been delayed too long, and they are granted with an unmanly reluctance ; but unless we are prepared to hail a radical revolution in industrial society as heralding the millennium, we must accept the gauge of battle against the fundament- al articles of the socialistic creed, against its material- istic philosophy, its theory of wealth, and its hostility to private property in land and machinery. So long as these doctrines are not discredited by a severe and merciless logic, we are busy only in erecting our own scaffolds, and digging our own graves. Severity here is the dictate of enlightened sympathy and of Chris- tian philanthropy, for the guides are men of disordered heads, however genuine we may suppose their in- tentions to be. It is not mere lawlessness that con- fronts us in the disorders of our time ; it is a logic, whose premises seem extremely plausible, and which SOCIALISM, RELIGION, AND FAMIL Y. 261 have provoked no adequately earnest dissent, and that invests rebellion, slaughter, and ruin, with the charac- ter of a righteous revolt. Imprison its prophets and they will defy you ; hang them, and they will be the martyrs of their sect ; you must cut the sinews of their power by the keen edge of sober reason. You must show the people whose cause they champion, that they are blind guides, that they have mistaken the way, that they are false prophets, who are radically at fault in their exposition of human nature and of society. For myself, I have faith in human nature, and greater faith in the Providence of God. I believe that the warp and woof of .history are shot with the golden thread of a Divine thought, and that they will never be so rent as seriously to break the process of the mystic weaving. The shuttles in the loom of time fly at the touch of an unseen hand, unravelling each tangle with supernal and infallible skill. It is safe, therefore, always to speak the plain truth ; it is never politic even to utter anything else. Truth is the august figure, beneath whose tread, and at whose bidding, the winds and the waves will sing themselves away into a great calm. And truth compels the charge that modern socialism, in its ruling temper and basic principles, is the enemy of religion and of the family, and so the enemy of man. I am aware that this charge will be repudiated by many as the utterance of blind bigotry ; and that, as falling from the pen of a Christian minister, it will be read with a derisive sneer by others. I can only reply, that the more carefully I have read the utterances of the socialistic leaders, and the more diligently I have endeavored to master their philosophy, by so much the more irresistibly has 262 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. the conclusion been forced upon me that the suprem- acy of the socialistic political economy involves the elimination of religion and the overthrow of the fam- ily. Nor is this a cry of alarm, but of encouragement and hope. The disappearance of Christianity is the last thing of wliich there need be any fear. The dis- integration of the Christian family is a calamity of which there need be no serious apprehension. Assail- ants of God and of Home there will be, but these are among the foundation-stones of human society against which no artillery can succeed. Human nature is structurally religious and domestic. The moral law is graven on the heart, disclosing and emphasizing every man's personal relation to his Maker. Mother- hood has an unconquerable energy of its own ; it is a Divine force which refuses to be absorbed in the com- munal instinct. The right of every man to himself, and his duty to depend on himself alone, are pro- claimed and guaranteed by religion ; while the condi- tions and limitations of these rights may be discovered in the unwritten law of the household. These are the two centres around which history sweeps its mighty ellipse, and no institutions can be either help- ful or permanent which in spirit and by implication are anti-religious and anti-domestic, or even non-re- ligious and non-domestic. Religion and home can neither be successfully antagonized, nor be safely ig- nored. It would, perhaps, be more exact to say that the de- cay of religion is provocative of socialistic discontent, than to charge socialism with originating and propa- gating hostility against religion. The ancient civiliz- ation was held together by force, and great classes SOCIALISM, RELIGION, AND FAMIL V. 263 were regarded as possessing no rights under the law. Christianity gave practical emphasis and supremacy to, if it did not first suggest, the idea of human equality, independent of race, sex, or condition. But the equal- ity it proclaimed was religious in its origin and nature ; it was the equality of moral opportunity and spiritual dignity ; and its recognition, while stimulating to honor, able ambition, qualified the authority of wealth, and made the poor lovers of peace. So long as the rich and the poor meet together, recognizing the Lord as their common Maker, and so long as this temper controls their industrial relations, both parties equally sensitive of trespassing upon each other's rights, there will be no serious danger of conflict. But when religion loses its vitality ; when its authority is resented in secular affairs ; when the almighty dollar is worshipped, and wealth is sought without reference to the means of its attainment ; when a fortune is regarded as providing the opportunity for personal indulgence, luxury, and display ; the heartlessness and materialism of the rich will stir the hearts of the poor with a sense of degra- dation and the spirit of cruel envy. In Roscher's masterly and celebrated summary of the underlying causes of socialistic disturbance, he gives the last and most powerful place to the " general decay of religion and morality in the people. When every one regards wealth as a sacred trust or office, coming from God, and poverty as a divine dispensa- tion, intended to educate and develop those afflicted thereby, and considers all men as brothers, and this earthly life only as a preparation for eternity, even ex- treme differences of property lose their irritating and demoralizing power. On the other hand, the atheist 264 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. and materialist becomes only too readily a mammon- ist, and the poor mammonist falls only too easily into that despair which would gladly kindle a universal conflagration, in order either to plunder or lose his own life. The maxim of the materialist, sunk in pov- erty and despair, is, ' Give me pleasure, enjoyment in this life, or let me die in my misery.' The rich mam- monist aggravates this sad condition of things when he casts suspicion on all wealth by the immorality of the means he takes to acquire it, and the sinfulness of his enjoyments." 1 These are solemn and weighty words. They remind us that the discontent of our day cannot be cast out by preaching economy and sub- mission to the poor. If the rich ignore the universal fatherhood of God, and exclude the law of morality from the affairs of secular industry, the poor may be expected to follow their example, cursing the folly which had so long enslaved them. They will disdain the promise of a coming heaven, when their masters are supremely anxious to secure and enjoy earthly treasure. They will cease to cultivate the homely virtues of industry, honesty, and thrift, when they discover that the higher ethics of trade encourage de- ception, fraud, and extravagance. The taproot of practical atheism must be cut in the upper classes, if the proletariat is to be eliminated. "Wealth must come to be regarded as imposing the responsibilities of a Divine stewardship, whose accumulation may not be stained with injustice, and whose use must obey the dictates of righteousness and of intelligent philan- thropy. One of the most harrowing pages in the little tract, 1 Ely, "French and German Socialism," p. 234. SOCIALISM, RELIGION, AND FAMIL Y. 265 " The Bitter Cry of Outcast London," is that in which the wages of the poor are spoken of. The child that can easily gain two dollars and a half a week by petty thieving, can only earn half as much by making match-boxes, out of which he must pay for his own fire, paste, and string. Women by working seventeen hours a day can make twenty-five cents, out of which sum the thread must be paid for ; " she eats her crust, and drinks a little tea, as she works, making in very truth, with her needle and thread, not her living only, but her shroud." An old tailor and his wife, working from six in the morning until ten at night, making policemen's overcoats, and finding their own thread, could just manage to finish one in two days, for which they received sixty cents. The articles thus manu- factured brought in enormous profits to the heartless employers. Five dollars were charged where seventy- five cents had been paid for the making. For a pair of fishing-boots, sold for three guineas or over fifteen dollars, the workman received a dollar and a quarter if made to order, or eighteen cents less if made for stock. These instances are not exceptional ; " page after page," the account records, "might be filled with these dreary details, but they would become sadly monotonous, for it is the same everywhere." And this industrial cruelty is aggravated by the ra- pacity of the landlords, whose charges for rent are so exorbitant that the rack-renting of Ireland is declared to be " merciful by comparison," so that owners re- ceive an annual income of from 50 to 60 per cent, on their investment. Such facts as these lead even the stoical John Stuart Mill, who is a pronounced advo- cate of the regime of industrial freedom, to cry out : 266 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. " If the choice were to be made between Communism with all its chances, and the present state of society with all its sufferings and injustices ; if the institution of private property necessarily carried with it as a consequence that the produce of labor should be ap- portioned as we now see it, almost in an inverse ratio to the labor, the largest portions to those who have never worked at all, the next largest to those whose work is almost nominal, and so in a descending scale, the remuneration dwindles as the work grows harder and more disagreeable, until the most fatiguing and exhausting bodily labor cannot count with certainty on being able to earn even the necessaries of life ; if this, or Communism, were the alternative, all the dif- ficulties, great or small, of Communism would be but as dust in the balance." 1 Of course, Mr. Mill claims that the principle of private property has never yet had a fair trial in any country, that the distribution of wealth is still largely determined by conquest and violence, that the tendency of legislation has been to favor the concentration rather than the diffusion of wealth. But this is only saying that justice is fla- grantly violated and ignored in industrial contracts, that the laborer is treated as a commodity to be se- cured at the lowest price, whose helplessness is made the occasion of oppression and extortion, and that there is no public opinion limiting the scale of profits which an unprincipled employer may coin from the labor of the poor. Mr. Taine, in his Essay on Stuart Mill's Philosophy, explains the fact that England is poor in metaphysical ability as compared with Germany, having " learned J " Principles of Political Economy," Vol. 1, p. 267. SOCIALISM, RELIGION, AND FAMIL Y. 267 men, but no thinkers," by the dominance of the re- ligious element in the national character : " Your God impedes you. He is the Supreme Cause, and you dare not reason on causes, out of respect for Him." ] The atheism which the critic did not find in the liter- ature of England, he might have discovered in many of the accepted maxims of political economy, and in the utter secularity of its industrial life. The Manchester school has been dominant for a hundred years. Adam Smith, Malthus, and Ricardo have been its prophets and apostles. It has divorced political economy from ethics. It has proclaimed the sufficiency of natural law for the regulation of manufactures and commerce, and has yielded reluctantly to factory and sanitary legislation, and has bitterly opposed the right of the laborers to combine for purposes of protection. Busi- ness has been declared to be business, and religion, religion ; each wholly independent of the other. The most devoted husbands, the most considerate fathers, the most liberal-handed, the most devout, could be the most heartless masters. Could the poor be expected to keep their religion when their employers wore it only as a holiday garment when for them it was only a badge of social respectability ? Socialism only insists that the divorce shall be complete and final. If the employing classes have the right to get all they can, if violence is the only law of trade, then the em- ployed are justified in getting all they can, and crowd- ing the masters to the wall. This, it seems to me, is the explanation of the anti-religious spirit of modern socialism. The laborer has caught the philosophy of his employer. He will have nothing to do with a 1 " English Literature," p. 479. 268 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. God whose law is ignored in factories, and mines, and ships. He too will fight on the same arena, and with the same weapons. He has made up his mind to rel- egate religion to the region of personal sentiment, and in secular affairs to act as an atheist and a mate- rialist. " Right is an empty word," he cries ; " might decides everything. We have heard enough of your promised heavenly joys. We will cash no more of these bills upon another world ; it is in this world that we wish to have happiness. We are the most numer- ous, and if we can come to an understanding among ourselves we shall be the strongest, and thus we shall be in the right. Royalty, magistracies, creeds, armies, parliaments all these institutions were created by our masters in order to enslave and exploit us. Every- thing must be overthrown, even by fire and sword, if needful, in order that we may taste these pleasures in which capitalists, enriched with our spoils, have too long rioted." l Men like Lassalle and Marx have fre- quently been charged with an unfeeling inconsistency because they lived in luxury, while they professed to plead the cause of starving men and women ; but their constant insistance was that all men might have what they enjoyed, if they would only combine to secure their rights. They were held back by scruples which their employers had long since outgrown. In saying, therefore, that the temper of modern so- cialism is anti-religious, it is not meant that socialists are the deliberate propagandists of atheistic material- ism, but that the prevalence of the latter as a domi- nating force in modern industrialism has created the revolutionary socialist. The latter has seemed to have 1 Laveleye, " Socialism of To-Day," p. 125. SOCIALISM, RELIGION, AND FAMILY. 269 waked from a long and horrible nightmare. The idea of God has stood in his way, and now he will have no more of the creed that has forged his chains. " The Social Democracy," exclaimed Herr Most, in Berlin, in the presence of the representatives of the church, " will not recede ; it will pursue its course and accom- plish its designs, even though all priestdom (das ge- sammte Pfaffenihum) should rise against it, like a cloud of locusts, thick enough to darken the sun. The Social Democracy knows that the days of Christianity are numbered, and that the time is not far distant when we shall say to the priests, ' Settle your account with heaven, for your hour is come.' ' : The same bold and defiant language was heard from the lips of women. " My religion," said Madame Hahn, " is so- cialism, and it alone is truth, morality, justice, and brotherhood. Down with the priests of every robe and hue ! The first reform to be accomplished is to change all churches into good habitations for working- men." Atheism was glorified, and the workingmen were summoned formally, and in a body, to renounce the church. 1 Marx, it is confessed by Schaeffle, who deprecates the charge that socialism is inimical to religion, was a " bitter opponent of the ministers of religion," and the latter writer is forced to add, " the socialism of to-day is, through and through, irreligious and hostile to the church." Marx's own language is, " The evident proof of the radicalism of the German theory, and thus of its radical energy, is its starting- point from the decisive, positive abolition of religion." Boruttau defined socialism as "a new view of the world, which, in the department of religion, express- 1 Laveleye, " Socialism of To-Day," pp. 107, 108. 270 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. es itself as atheism ; in that of politics, as republi- canism; in that of economy, as communism. The hope of a satisfying success of the socialistic revolu- tion is a visionary Utopia, as long as we neglect to root out the superstition in a God, by a general and thorough enlightenment of the people." 1 Dupont, general secretary of the International, said at the con- gress of Brussels in 1868, " We want no governments any longer, for governments oppress us by taxes ; we want no armies any longer, for armies butcher and murder us; we want no religion any longer, for re- ligions stifle the understanding." a " God is the evil Dieu c'est le mal," was one of Proudhon's fierce ut- terances. Malon says, " "We have rejected all religious regenerations, whether they are called New Catholic, New Christian, pantheistic, or theo-humanitarian ; and we seek in a terrestrial future the ideal which is at the basis of every human nature." ' The Alliance, of which Bakunin, the representative of Nihilism, was the leading spirit, declared in its programme at Berne, in 1869, that it was " atheistic. It desires the final and complete abolition of classes, and the political, econom- ical, and social equalization of the two sexes." 4 And Schedo Ferroti represents Russian Nihilism as intent upon " dissolving state, commune, church, and family. It will own no superior, and brook no restraint. The nihilist seeks to be his own god, king, father." 6 These quotations represent both wings of modern 1 Woolsey, "Communism and Socialism," p. 347. 1 Ib., p. 144. 3 Ely, "French and German Socialism," pp. 128, 154. 4 Laveleye, " Socialism of To-Day," p. 198. 5 Rae, " Contemporary Socialism," p. 273. SOCIALISM, RELIGION, AND FAMIL Y. 271 socialism, the conservative and the radical parties, the prophets of historical evolution and of universal an- archy, and they make it plain that hostility to religion is not incidental to the system, but deeply rooted and characteristic. It is the natural and inevitable out- come of its materialistic philosophy of human nature and of human history. Feuerbach may be regarded as representing the logical process by which the He- gelian transcendentalism passed into the cruder creed of socialism. Hegel had eliminated the ideas of a per- sonal God, and of personal immortality, leaving in their place the world of impersonal reason. Mind was real, of which all else were only shadows and pro- cesses. The leap was easily made, that mind too was an illusion, and that in man there was nothing real save the " concrete flesh and blood." The senses were declared to be the only sources of knowledge, and the body was affirmed to be " not only part of man's be- ing, but its totality and essence in short, man is what he eats." l The economic environment is therefore the Alpha and Omega of political economy. Here is the explanation of the contempt with which modern socialism regards the new German school of political economy, ably headed by Adolf Wagner, of Berlin, and seconded by such men as Schmoller, Held, Roscher, and Brentano. They are derisively called "sweet- water" socialists, or socialists of the chair, because they are not " iron and blood " theorists, and because they are university professors. Their main doctrine is that political economy is an ethical science, that the state is a moral person, " the grandest moral institu- tion for the education and the development of the hu- 1 Bae, " Contemporary Socialism," p. 114. 272 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. man race." They criticise the old school of econo- mists for regarding man merely as a productive ma- chine, ignoring "his destiny and his obligations as a moral and intelligent being." Nor have they been content with speculation. To their active and earnest propagandism is "due the abolition of the greater number of restrictive regulations in Germany, and, consequently, the establishment of freedom as to pro- fessions, domicil, loans at interest, and the subdivision of properties." The new school is only a dozen years old. Its advocates agree in breaking with the Man- chester party, who resent governmental interference, and demand a regime of unchecked competition ; they confess and deplore the evils that have grown out of the modern system of industrialism ; but they claim that the solution of the problem must be sought for in profounder philosophical and historical studies, and in the application of the principles of justice and of Christian charity. 1 Whatever may be thought of their specific sugges- tions, there can be no doubt that the introduction of the moral element into the controversy is a new de- parture of great promise. Revolutionary socialism is the last word of a political economy that identifies justice with the law of supply and demand, and which preaches the gospel of free contract. Indus- trial competition must be brought under the check of an enlightened moral sense. It must become a crime and a disgrace so to reap advantage from the products of labor, as to involve the degradation of the toiler, 1 Ely, "French and German Socialism, "pp. 235-244; Laveleye, " Socialism of To-Day," pp. 265-283 ; Rae, " Contemporary So- cialism," pp. 193-221. SOCIALISM, RELIGION, AND FAMlL Y. 273 and his reduction to the practical slavery which con- stant dread of impending want involves. There are hundreds of honorably-minded employers now, and their number is increasing, men who despise mean- ness and carry a Christian humanity into their indus- trial affairs ; but they have been and are embarrassed by greater numbers unreached by public opinion, and defiant of the same, whose lack of moral principle in dealing with their employes enables them to cheapen the cost of production, and so to undersell humane employers in the markets of the world. Combina- tions of workingmen, and even governmental regula- tion may be needed to maintain the righteous balance, but the primary need is the revival and sovereignty o^ righteousness. If the decay of religion has created the socialist, he can be eliminated only by restoring religion to its lawful place. And religion must regain/ its rights where they were first ignored. "We have preached the Gospel to the poor. We have had mucn to say about the neglected classes. "We need to preach the law of God to the rich, to remind them that as men sow so shall they reap, and that their own safety depends on their justice and humanity. The " neg- lected classes " live in palaces, as well as in hovels, and both need to be taught that the kingdom of God, man's true dignity and highest felicity, is not " meat and drink, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost." The hod-carrier is a man, and the millionaire is no more ; both are under equal obliga- tion, in every contract between them, to render hom- age to the dignity of manhood. Neither must ask, nor want, more than a fair and honest equivalent for mutual services ; the fear of the Lord, which makes 18 274 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. the conscience quick and sensitive, must become the life-breath of modern commerce. Modern socialism is more sensitive to the charge that it is hostile to the family, than it is to the indict- ment of atheism. And here, as in the former case, it is not so much socialism that has created a revolt against the Christian doctrine of marriage, as it is the prevalence of low views of wedded life and the facil- ity of divorce that have promoted socialistic theories of the relation between the sexes. The philosophy of domestic life, like that of industrialism, has been practically atheistic. Repudiating its sacramental character, as taught by the Roman Catholic commun- ion, indissoluble for any cause, terminable only at death, modern society has swung to the opposite ex- treme in regarding it only as a civil contract, termina- ble upon the deliberate and decided option of the contracting parties, or on such grounds as the state might see fit to indicate. The moderate view of the Reformers, permitting divorce only for adultery and wilful desertion, has been left a long way behind in Germany, where marriages may be dissolved for a great variety of causes, including mutual consent under certain conditions ; the same looseness exists in France, where divorce legislation has passed through every possible phase, resulting in an utter demor- alization of the popular conscience ; in Austria the law is strict for Roman Catholics, and exceedingly lax for Protestants ; England's attitude is perhaps most nearly in harmony with the Christian idea of marriage; while our own legislation is multifarious and contradictory, utterly wanting in any determin- ing principle, at the mercy of each local legislature, SOCIALISM, RELIGION, AND FAMILY. 275 without the least attempt at national uniformity, rang- ing from the strictness of New York to the abomin- able sanction of polygamy in Utah. 1 The secularism of modern industrialism has invaded the domain of home, and its treatment of the latter has been as atheistic as that of the former. Every- where it has substituted the idea of contract for that of moral law, and has looked upon social institutions as the creations of purely voluntary agreement. One needs only to read the pages of Spencer and Mill to see that the outcome of this philosophy of individual- ism is a doctrine of marriage, grounded wholly on the consent of the contracting parties, and which is right- fully dependent for its continuance only on mutual agreement. The latter has only the feeblest personal protest against polygamy, but no condemnation of it on any principle of justice, so long as the parties to the same have not been forced into compliance. 8 The individual is regarded as the unit of society, while complete and equal freedom is demanded for each separate constituent. Discriminating legislation, based upon difference of sex, is declared to be degrading and tyrannical. 8 Or, if we take counsel of the opposite school of political economy, according to whose advo- cates the individual is subordinate to the state, we discover once more the emergence of Plato's doctrine that marriage should be wholly under the sanction and supervision of the state; and this again conducts to indefinite facility of divorce. Under both theories, home loses its moral basis and its religious sanction. 1 Woolsey, "Divorce and Divorce Legislation," pp. 126-233. 8 "Mill on Liberty," p. 176. MiU, " Principles of Political Economy," Vol. 2, p. 580. SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. Hence Mr. Mill's sneer against the domestic life of New England, as coarse as it is expressive of the tem- per of his philosophy : " They have the six points of Chartism, and they have no poverty ; and all that these advantages seem to have yet done for them is that the life of the whole of one sex is devoted to dollar-hunt- ing, and of the other to breeding of dollar-hunters." ' Marriage is spoken of as "the only actual bondage known to our law." Its adoption is declared not to have been the result of deliberation, or forethought, or any notion whatever of what conduced to the ben- efit of humanity or the good order of society, but solely of physical force, made fixed by laws and sys- tems of polity; and the thesis of the needed reform is stated in these words : " The principle which regu- lates the existing social relations between the two sexes the legal subordination of one sex to the other is wrong in itself, and is now one of the chief hin- drances to human improvement, and ought to be re- placed by a principle of perfect equality, admitting no power or privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other." 2 The political millennium is repre- sented as being wholly free from all factory legislation that prevents or regulates the employment of women, and as one which invests them with an " absolute con- trol over their own persons and their own patrimony or acquisitions." 3 Suffrage is demanded on the dis- tinct ground that marriage is only a partnership con- tract, and it has been affirmed that there is " no more reason why the woman should take her husband's 'Mill, "Principles of Political Economy," Vol. 2, p. 337. 8 MiU, " Subjection of Women," pp. 5, 11, 137. 3 MiU, " Principles of Political Economy," Vol. 2, p. 580. SOCIALISM, RELIGION, AND FAMIL Y. 2Y7 name in marriage than why he should take hers." 1 It amounts to this, that there is no more legal and social significance in sexual difference than there is in varieties of color or of culture. Public opinion deals only with individuals, and its enactment of domestic statutes is an unwarrantable and pernicious interfer- ence. This depreciation of the family, making it synonymous with social tyranny, when tinged with the pessimistic philosophy, breaks out in the language of contempt, as when Alexander Yon Humboldt writes : " I regard marriage as a sin, and the propaga- tion of children as a crime. It is my conviction also that he is a fool, and still more a sinner, who takes upon himself the yoke of marriage. I despise human- ity in all its strata. The whole of life is the greatest insanity ; and the greatest good luck is that of being born a flathead." * It is the prevalence of such a phi- losophy that has reinstated the practice of infanticide, and that secures an easy and rapid fortune to those who are skilful masters of the secrets of abortion. Modern socialism is only drifting on this wider cur- rent, which prides itself not only on being philosophi- cal, but also historical. For it is boldly maintained that originally the relation between the sexes was that of indiscriminate intercourse ; that polygamy and monogamy have been its successive modifications, and that its final form must be the original liberty, under such restrictions as an enlightened reason or public policy may dictate. The indictment is not against the abuses that have grown up under marriage and monogamy, but against the idea of the family as 1 Horace Bushnell, "Women's Suffrage," p. 152. 5 Bowen, " Gleanings," p. 376. 278 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. Divinely constituted, and as providing the primary basis of all social institutions, having an independent, permanent, and sovereign sanctity of its own. Social- ism deifies either the individual or the state, and be- tween these two millstones domestic life is crushed in its self-centred life. Robert Owen denounced mar- riage as one of the three curses of modern society. 1 Fourier is confessed by the most cautious critics to have advocated the abolition of marriage. 1 Attention has already been called to the fact that Nihilism demands the " equalization of the sexes," and the dissolution of the family. The Havre programme calls for the sup- port of all children at public cost, a claim that cuts the root of all parental authority and responsibility. Another manifesto declares that " woman ought to be the companion of man, not a slave or an instrument of pleasure. Love ought to be free, and relieved from all codes and rituals." Hasenclever, in a gathering of socialists at Berlin, protested against the tyranny by which woman is " legally chained to one man," and a subsequent speaker more openly affirmed that " a maiden who disposed freely of her love was no pros- titute she was the free wife of the future. Between the married wife and the so-called prostitute there is only a quantitative difference." 4 Gronlund, whose book possesses no special merit, except that it speaks out in a certain rude way where others have veiled their thought, or left it to be reached by inference, and who only professes to have given in English form 'Kaufmann, " Socialism," p. 102. 8 Ely, "French and German Socialism," p. 100. 8 Laveleye, " Socialism of To-Day," p. 229. 4 Woolsey, " Communism and Socialism," p. 257. SOCIALISM, RELIGION, AND FAMIL Y. 279 the main tenets of German socialism, does not hesi- tate to confess that the new order will " considerably modify marriage." As at present constituted, he re- gards the family as only a " commercial institution," an establishment for woman's support, the meanest form of industrial slavery, and he declares that social- ism by securing woman's economic enfranchisement, so that she may be certain of earning her own bread, will break for her also the present tyranny of matri- monial bondage. That the new system will facilitate divorces, he frankly confesses, and the charge of free- love he meets by the reply that the socialistic doctrine is not such, " in the popular acceptation of that term," and by parading quotations from Mill, Bentham, and Fichte, which lead him to conclude that in pleading for a dissolution of the marriage contract when u mu- tual love " has ceased to exist, he is in " very good company." The entire chapter is nauseating reading from the heartless flippancy and cheap sprightliness with which the domestic problem is discussed, and from the apparent absence of all suspicion that there is an ethical element in the marriage contract. 1 These may be extreme and impolitic utterances, of which wiser leaders would not be guilty, and which the sober rank and file would quietly repudiate ; but the significant and alarming fact is that they provoke no earnest dissent from the disciples of socialism, and that they are ignored by a silence which is a confes- sion of conscious logical weakness. Modern social- ism has no place in its creed for any doctrine of mar- riage, except that which leaves it wholly to the whim of the contracting parties, or which remands it to the 1 "Co-operative Commonwealth," pp. 201-214. 280 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. control of the state as an industrial organism. In either case, its moral significance is eliminated. The testimony is introduced here not to cast odium upon the socialistic creed, but to emphasize the necessity of a return to a profounder conception of the institution of marriage, for there can be no doubt that " every- thing which destroys the family bond destroys house and home, economy and property, and thus increases proletarian wretchedness." ' I am afraid that Dwight and Hodge have become somewhat antiquated in in- troducing elaborate discussions of the Decalogue, and especially of the seventh commandment, into their lectures and treatises of dogmatic theology ; but the weighty words of the latter are worthy of being heeded by every earnest lover of human weal : " As the social organization is founded on the distinction of the sexes, and as the well-being of the state and the purity and prosperity of the church rest on the sanctity of the family relation, it is of the last im- portance that the normal , or divinely constituted relation of the sexes be preserved in its integrity." 8 A sober and intelligent jurisprudence is no less em- phatic in maintaining a high doctrine of family life, as when Chancellor Kent declares marriage to be of perpetual obligation, not to be renounced at the pleas- ure of either or both of the parties, constituting them a single person in the eye of the common law. The discussion is introduced by the statement : " The pri- mary and most important of the domestic relations is that of husband and wife. It has its foundation in nature, and is the only lawful relation by which Prov- 1 Kaufmann, " Socialism," p. 52. * " Outlines of Theology," Vol. 3, p. 368. SOCIALISM, RELIGION, AND FAMIL Y. 281 idence has permitted the continuance of the human race. In every age it has had a propitious influence on the moral improvement and happiness of mankind. It is one of the chief foundations of social order. We may justly place to the credit of the institution of marriage a great share of the blessings which flow from refinement of manners, the education of chil- dren, the sense of justice, and the cultivation of the liberal arts"; and the Epicurean philosopher Lucre- tius is quoted as tracing the cmlization of mankind to " marriage and family establishments." We take issue at once with the socialistic assumption that the individual is the unit of society, or that the state is creative of the family. This is not true, either logi- cally or historically. It is as absurd as it would be to say that a child is not only its own, but its father's ancestor. There can be no state where there are no citizens, and there can be no citizens where there is no family. The existence of the state is dependent on that relation of the sexes on which marriage is based. Not the individual therefore, but the family, is the unit of society ; and so far from its being true that the state may determine the constitution of the family, the order of nature demands that the state shall conform in its legislation to the antecedent law of the household. The latter is an elemental fact in the social organization, and the statute must deal with it as fundamental and ultimate. So far as political economy discusses the problem, it must confine itself to the discovery and statement of its constitutional and inherent features. The function of government in the regulation of domestic life is descriptive rather 1 Kent's " Commentaries," Vol. 2, Lectures xxvi-xxviii. 282 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. than legislative; its province is that of revelation, and of enactment only as based on revelation. Upon the integrity of the family, society depends no less for its order, stability, and spirit of mutual good-will, than for its existence. It is the universal testimony of active philanthropists that " the poorest home, unless it be a degraded one, is better than the best institution "; and the plan of massing the children in great structures under public care is one against which the objections are many and unanswerable. The rate of mortality would be enormously increased. The helpless dependence of childhood would command so scanty a response, that infantile life would become one of early and chronic wretchedness and gloom. The affections would be blighted in their first appear- ance, and replaced by a hard, cynical temper. Obe- dience, if any attempt were made to enforce it, would be rendered only through fear, wholly divorced from love, and the galling yoke would be broken at the earliest moment. Submission to law is the fruit of domestic training, where authority is lodged in the hands of love; and the elimination of the family would make social order impossible. !N"or is the household less essential as the primary industrial institution, where a reasonable division of labor is made on the basis of capacity and fitness, and where provision for sustenance is not determined by the rigid rule of supply and demand. It is rarely the fact that men begin to save until they marry, and the necessity of industry, economy, and thrift is mightily enforced when children must be fed and sent to school. It is with the founding of a home that the desire for property ordinarily assumes sufficient strength to make SOCIALISM, RELIGION, AND FAMIL Y. 283 self-denial natural and easy. Savings banks and in- surance companies would collapse with the fall of the separate and inviolable households. Men and women will suffer and plan only for their own children, and a communal family is a contradiction in terms. The infirmities of age meet their only adequate consola- tion in a true home. The almshouse and the asylum are not suggestive of pleasant thoughts, and they are accepted only as inevitable retreats for the childless, the friendless, the orphaned, the incurable, and the insane. The thousand ills to which flesh is heir are most promptly and fully met when the household is put to the severest strain, where family devotion is most tender and heroic and enduring ; and the hearts thus schooled are quickest to respond to the sufferings of the friendless poor. For every reason, therefore, for the protection and care of childhood, for the pro- motion of public order and security, for the increase of material wealth and the means of comfort, for giv- ing opportunity and scope to the finer sentiments of human nature, encouraging tenderness, forbearance, parental solicitude, filial devotion, fraternal affection, sympathy for the unfortunate, chivalry towards the weak, love for childhood, and respect for old age, the family needs to be conformed to its Divine ideal, and maintained in its primitive integrity. If the industrial atheism and selfishness, against which modern social- ism is a fierce protest, are to be eliminated from hu- man life, so that the lion and the lamb shall meet in the joy of peaceful companionship, the home must be- come the source and inspiration of the long-delayed regeneration. The Church and the Family represent the Divine and the human factors, by whose formative 284 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. energy the Christian state is to spring into being and power. This assumes that there is a law of the family older than the modern state, older than Christianity, older than the Mosaic legislation, a law fibred upon the essential constitution of human nature, original and irreversible, disclosed in the account of man's creation, and comprehensively formulated by our Lord. The Roman Catholic theologians first involved this subject in confusion by regarding marriage as a sacrament, instituted by Christ, while they cast discredit upon it by their praises of the superior sanctity of celibacy, making the latter compulsory with all ministers of re- ligion. Marriage thus appeared as an ecclesiastical provision, and with an ineradicable taint upon its brow. It was only natural that when the prince suc- ceeded the pope, he should claim the prerogative of determining the conditions under which the family should come into being, and the authority of granting dispensations, relieving from the marriage vow, at his discretion. But, as in the household we deal with the primitive and elementary form of social organiza- tion, we must press our way beyond tbe constitution of the state, beyond the appearance of Christianity, beyond the agreement of modern civilization, to that original relation of the sexes in which the Divine ideal is disclosed. Call it legend or historical tradi- tion, the simple story in Genesis makes marriage a Divine provision, limited to monogamy, and consti- tuting an intimate and indissoluble unity of life. Adam was incomplete until Eve appeared, whom he welcomed as bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh, between whom and himself there was a relation, not SOCIALISM, RELIGION, AND FAMIL Y. 285 of independence, but of interdependence; and the comment is added : " Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife : and they shall be one flesh." A profound philosophy reaches the same conclusion in analyzing the nature of love ; as when Hegel says : " The first note of love is, that I will not be a self-poised personality, and that were I such, I should feel myself wanting and incomplete. The second note is, that I win myself in another person, that I become in her what she on her part secures in me. Love, therefore, is the most pro- digious contradiction, which reason cannot explain." l What is this but an echo of Paul, who, when quoting the language of Genesis, added : " This is a great mys- tery." It is the great, original, perpetual secret of human well-being. The Biblical doctrine of marriage contravenes the tone of that philosophic school with which modern socialism is most closely identified, by affirming the monogamic family to be the primitive social institu- tion. Materialistic evolution has claimed the reverse. Its advocates maintain that communal marriage, or indiscriminate sexual intercourse within tribal limits, was the original form of the family. The tribal and the domestic life were co-ordinate and coextensive. Then followed marriage by capture and purchase, and upon this was based the claim of exclusive possession. Polygamy and monogamy are only modified forms of this exclusive appropriation, of which force, now sanctioned by law, is the only historical justification. Of course, upon such a theory, woman's emancipation from the rule of force, to which she has for so many 1 Herzog, "Real Eucyklopadie," Art. Ehe., p. 67. 286 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. centuries been condemned, resulting in the social equalization of the sexes, must issue in the complete elimination of family life as now constituted and guarded, and in the substitution of a new domestic regime, whose details it is impossible to forecast. To a sober prevision it would seem as if the only result could be the revival of the social state, of which the present is a violent deflection. I do not say that all who maintain marriage originally to have been com- munal, and to have developed into polygamy and monogamy only by force, would advocate the dissolu- tion of the modern family and favor indiscriminate or regulated sexual intercourse. They are monogamists by decided personal preference. They appreciate the signal advantages of the present order, and might ex- plain and defend it as the survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence. But their philosophy deprives marriage of its original and inviolable sanctity, makes it the creation of force, and forbids their maintaining that it has reached its final form. It must still be in process of development ; and if so, it can have no ideal and ethical significance. For in the origin of marriage and of the family must be sought its func- tion and its destiny in the social economy. We have a right, therefore, to expect and to demand the clearest and most abundant proof for the revolu- tionary doctrine that communal marriage was the primitive form of domestic life, in which the women were the wives of all the men, the men husbands of all the women, and the children possessed only a com- munal parentage. There is not even an attempt to justify the claim historically. The written and tradi- tional records of every time disclose the same domes- SOCIALISM, RELIGION, AND FAMIL Y. 287 tic notions and customs as are prevalent to-day, and with a constant approach to monogamy, as the natural and universal order, as we ascend the stream of time. The Indo-European races seem never to have known and sanctioned any other form of marriage than that of one man and one woman. The polygamous na- tions of Asia surround marriage with special solemni- ties, which are not duplicated, so that however large the harem, there is but one wife. 1 Nor is parentage suffered to become doubtful, as the Chinese worship of their ancestry proves. The polygamy is really legal concubinage based upon monogamy. These facts are clear, and have never been denied. There has been no historical discovery revealing an earlier and indiscriminate usage. Such a usage is simply as- sumed on the ground that the life of man began in savagery and animalism, and that the history of civil- ization has been one of gradual and painful progress from the lowest depths. Mr. Darwin hesitated to endorse the extreme conclusions of Mr. Lubbock, not from the lack of historical evidence, but simply be- cause the ape-like creature whom he regarded as man's ancestor, seems to have been a modified mo- nogamist. 2 This is inductive logic with a vengeance. McLennan and Lubbock, who are the chief prophets of this school, simply assume that savagery was man's original condition ; and thereupon induction satisfies itself with collating and comparing the habits and notions of the most degraded races, who are presumed to have retained the primitive customs. The method not only confounds the state of nature with the law 1 Williams, " The Middle Kingdom," Vol. 1, p. 791. a " The Descent of Man," Vol. 2, p. 345. 288 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. of nature, but assumes that the state of nature is found only in the most debased specimens of the human family. The debate is only a special form of a larger con- troversy, whether man began his life as a savage, in brutal and brutalizing animalism, or as a reasonable and reasoning being. Is barbarism the original state, or is it an apostasy, a mental and moral descent? Here, again, the testimony of history is against the notion that man began as a brute. The oldest records show him to have had a varied and creditable civiliz- ation two thousand years before our era, so that the amazed student asks : " Did these people live in the last century, or about four thousand years ago ? " 1 Beyond even that early day we must press to explain the miracle of articulate speech, of which William Yon Humboldt says : " Man is man only by virtue of language, and to invent language he must be already man "; a to which may be added Max Miiller's sober and emphatic testimony : " As far as we can trace back the footsteps of man, even on the lowest strata of history, we see that the divine gift of a sound and sober intellect belonged to him from the very first. The earliest work of art wrought by the human mind, more ancient than any literary document, and prior even to the first whisperings of tradition, the human language, forms an uninterrupted chain from the first dawn of history down to our own tunes. We still speak the language of the first ancestors of our race, .... and this attests from the very first the presence 1 Old Testament Student, Jan., 1886, Article by Dr. Howard Osgood on Egypt. * De Pressense, " Study of Origins," p. 322. SOCIALISM, RELIGION, AND FAMIL Y. 289 of a rational rnind, of an artist as great, at least, as his work." ' Nothing warrants the affirmation that man's primi- tive condition was one of animal savagery. That it was imperfect and undeveloped may be granted ; but it was human from the first. And this is as true of domestic life as of language and the arts. The law of the present wrought from the first. As history shows that even in polygamous races, marriage is surrounded with special and singular ceremonies, disclosing the monogamic basis and the irresistible monogamic trend of human nature, we conclude that the marriage of one man and one woman constituted the primitive fam- ily, and has always been the organizing law of domes- tic life. The record in Genesis stands, not only un- matched for beauty and dignity, but guaranteed by the testimony of all subsequent history, and commend- ing itself to the profoundest philosophy. In the be- ginning God created man in His own image ; male and female created He them, preserving the unity in the diversity ; and having thus created them He blessed their wedlock, and gave them Eden for a home. The monogamous family is the primitive domestic institu- tion. I cannot agree in the judgment of some, for whose learning and candor I have the profoundest re- spect, that the debate is of secondary importance, since on either supposition " we can only regard man as true to his nature and destination, when he rises in his conception of marriage, his respect for women, his feeling of the sanctity of the household." 2 The sanc- tity of the family is purely traditional and unstable, 1 " Chips from a German Workshop," Vol. 2, p. 7. 2 Woolsey, "Political Science," Vol. 1, p. 95. 19 290 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. on the theory that monogamy is the modification, by force, of indiscriminate sexual life ; and no fixed prin- ciple remains, upon such a philosophy, indicating the ideal and ultimate form of the household. The present dignity and the future destiny of the family are inex- tricably interwoven with the question of its origin. We believe it to be primitive, and therefore both in- violate in holiness and permanent in duration. The question of the origin of the family leads to that of its ground or reason. I have avoided speak- ing of it as a Divine institution, insisting only upon its primitive character. It is of Divine appointment, but only in that deepest and highest sense, according to which all that is consonant to essential and ideal human nature, is of Divine origin. God so created man, that monogamy is the necessity of his social ]ife. The limitation is the law of nature, clearly and con- stantly evidenced in the singular fact that in the long succession of births the sexes maintain their equilibri- um. But monogamy has its deeper and moral ground. Conjugal love, in its very nature, is exclusive. Call it jealousy, if you will ; the jealousy is inevitable and irrepressible. Sarah could not endure Hagar's pres- ence, after Isaac had been born, in spite of the fact that she had suggested the alliance. Jacob always loved Rachel, and upon her children he showered evi- dences of special regard : Joseph and Benjamin were his favorites. The Song of Solomon holds its place in the canon of Scripture, as the most impressive testi- mony, in an age when polygamous customs were gen- eral, and by a man who was swept away on their corrupting tide, that true love is holy and exclusive, and that monogamy alone answers the law of the SOCIALISM, RELIGION, AND FAMIL V. 291 household. "Set me as a seal upon thine heart" is the impassioned utterance which in the closing lines the royal poet puts upon the lips of the heroine, and its fiery pathos is the condemnation of all departure from monogamy, " as a seal upon thine arm ; for love is strong as death ; jealousy is cruel as the grave : the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it ; if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utter- ly be contemned." There spake the man, inspired of God, wrenching himself away from his debasing alli- ances, and rendering homage to the moral grandeur of that law whose behests he had deliberately despised. So long as man is man, and love is love, monogamy must create the home. This leads to another important conclusion, that marriage, as based upon love, is an ethical relation and state. The sexual difference is neither the sole, nor the controlling, factor. In true marriage, heart is wedded to heart, and soul is joined to soul ; and hence the holy bonds should never be assumed until both contracting parties are reasonably and prayerfully sure that they are " helps " meet for each other, pre- pared to pledge themselves to each other "for bet- ter, for worse, for richer, for poorer, till death us do part." In the Song of Solomon, the king loves and weds a humble maid, but he is not ashamed of her, and conducts her with chivalric pride into his banqueting house. He honors her before the realm. And when she has been insulted and beaten by the watchmen, he does not repudiate her; but through obloquy and misfortune he remains grandly and joy- 92 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. fully true. She is comely, but his heart does not close against her when her beauty is dimmed. It is this lofty ethical interpretation of marriage that dis- tinguishes the Scriptures of the Jews from the Koran, and which prevented polygamy from receiving any- thing more than a qualified toleration in the common- wealth of Moses. In its basic principle, polygamy was always discarded, by the doctrine that marriage is based upon and made sacred by love. Psalmist and prophet speak only of monogamy, even when concu- binage had royal sanction and was permitted by the law of the realm. Mahomet, too, limited polygamous wedlock, but he recognized the principle as right, and associated it with a sensuous and sensual doctrine of marriage. The "Arabian Nights" and the Solomonic Song show how far apart Mahomet and Moses are in their estimate of love. The former never rises from the mire in his most impassioned and pathetic strains ; the latter always soars in the blue and sunny sky. And it was this higher thought that finally drove the rem- nants of polygamy out of Jewish life and history. Nothing less than that can be an adequate corrective of the evils that continually threaten the integrity of home. The household must be built on the Divine pattern. It must be founded on, and cemented by, love ; and the pledge of love is inviolable fidelity. No calamities must be permitted to break its strength. Sickness and old age must not dim its beauty, nor lessen its tenderness. It must deepen with the years, more and more refined in quality and force, outgrow- ing and casting aside its early and earthly wrappings, until death transfigures it into a holy memory and an abiding heritage. The ethical factor should dominate SOCIALISM, RELIGION, AND FAMIL Y. 293 the household from the beginning, and ultimately sup- plant every other attraction. "It is only in man," writes Dr. De Pressense, in a passage whose chaste beauty more than excuses the length of its quotation, " that this purification takes place, and that the feeling of love, blended in its first manifestations with instinct, more and more rises above it and assumes a character of nobleness and sym- pathy, which makes the union of soul predominate, though it does not cancel the attraction of beauty and its supreme charm. Modesty in the sexual relations, of which the animal knows nothing, makes us reticent of the outward signs of love. Human love begins with the enchantment of the eyes, but it is only worthy of itself when it has realized its ideal, the true harmony of souls. It is absolutely free in its manifestations. Hence it can be false to itself and draggle itself in the mire of sensual indulgence, where it is identified with the animal instinct ; but when it fulfils its true mission, when it is manifested as the very flower of a nature in which the moral was meant to predominate, it tends to blend in one, not simply two organisms, but two individuals, who know how to combine respect with tenderness. True love is chaste even in its most poetic raptures. Thus regarded, love is something far above passion, which is a passive surrender to its enchantments. Love does not abandon itself to the mere play of the sensations; it gives itself freely, and forever, to be the sharer, not only of joy, but of sorrow ; hence it is not consumed by its own flame. Since it was not born of sensation, it lives on, when the senses are dulled ; and long after the smile of beauty has faded 294: SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. from the face that was so charming in its youth, the love remains, deeper, truer, stronger than ever. It has indeed a deathless lif e, or it is no true love. This ideal, often realized, is the only true one. It is this which strikes the sweetest harmonies from the lyre within ; and under every sky the soul of man re- sponds to its music with a rapture such as no inferior creature ever knew." l And where this law obtains, domestic life will have its peculiar and Divinely ordained unity. The life of the family is real only when it is one and indivisible ; so long as it moves only on the line of conscious and free contract it fails to organize the home. Domestic clubs, based on the law of affinity between mutually independent members, are not homes. There must be a free and living coalescence of interests, giving to family life its peculiar and inviolable integrity. The two must become one flesh, whom no social or legal machinery is permitted to separate or set over against each other. The divisive surgery means death to the delicate organism. Here we touch the Biblical doc- trine of the domestic headship of the husband, as the necessary corollary of the ethical unity of the family. The household is not anarchic, but organic ; it is not a rope of sand, but a moral person ; it is not a loose collection of individuals, but an ordered kingdom, or if you prefer it, a constitutional republic. Husband, wife, parents, and children have in it their natural and supplementary relations. And the husband is the head of the wife. This is the old-fashioned Paul- ine and Biblical doctrine ; and it is more, the original and irreversible appointment of nature, against whose 1 " Study of Origins," p. 354. SOCIALISM, RELIGION, AND FAMIL Y. 295 decree it is idle to contend. In the ideal home, the headship of the husband and father will create neither friction nor resentment ; it will command the sponta- neous recognition of wife and children. The rougher energy that must provide the basis of authority and administration belongs to the man by the gift of na- ture, and there is no tyranny in their constitutional exercise. Mischief can result only when the natural representative of authority is unfit for its possession, or when its exercise becomes inconsiderate, arbitrary, and cruel. But this is the danger of every form of organized society. They who bear rule may be false to their trust ; a danger, however, which no one would think of averting by the summary abolition of all rulership. The mean between anarchy and despotism is constitutional government, and in the last analysis constitutional restriction is simply the moral popular judgment. That must be eternally vigilant and alert, if true liberty is not to perish. Nor can any other policy preserve the family from disintegration on the one hand, or from irresponsible tyranny on the other. The family is the primary and basic form of social organization, but it comes into being under constitu- tional limitations. The apostle Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians, speaks somewhat rudely to modern ears, when he says : " Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church." Here the affirmation of authority is accompanied by its defi- nition and ethical limitation. Unconditional submis- sion is exacted neither from the wife nor from the children. Obedience is required only " in the Lord," 296 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. and when the spirit of this higher law is violated, re- sistance is the duty of the weakest. So the apostle continues, " Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself for it. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself." Who will dare to say, in the face of such an exposition, that the Christian doctrine of the household rests on force, and involves the enslavement of woman ? The question is here lifted altogether out of the region of physical superiority, and relegated to the sphere of the highest reason and the purest love. "Will a man mutilate his own body unless he be insane ? In the Pauline ideal the appearance of tyranny on the ground of headship is irrational and immoral, a species of ethical insanity and suicide. The headship of the husband is regarded as the enactment of a wise beneficence, securing the orderly unity of the household ; it is symboled by the headship of Christ in the church, and by the rule which every man is called upon to exercise over his own body. The relation of husband and wife is not regarded as that of a king to his subjects, or of a mas- ter to his slaves, or of a man to his property ; but as grounded in love, limited by the law of Christ, and as determined by a balancing of claims as intricate and subtle as that by which body and soul act and re- act upon each other. Under such ethical limitations the headship of the husband is affirmed, not for the aggrandizement of the man, but as indispensable to the establishment and maintenance of the unity of the family. ISTor may civil government, m the adminis- tration of simple justice between man and man, ignore and traverse this basic fact of domestic unity. It SOCIALISM, RELIGION, AND FAMIL Y. 297 should rather insist that the natural head shall dis- charge to the utmost the obligations which in mar- riage he voluntarily assumes. It should severely pun- ish neglect and cruelty, not only because these are tyrannical, but an abuse of the most sacred trusts. Its legislation may not separate husband and wife, parents and children ; but it should preserve a vigilant guard over them all, for the maintenance of domestic peace and order. Granting all that some critics have charged against the home as it exists in average life, which I am very far from conceding, the policy that would substitute legal independence for legal interde- pendence would plunge us from Scylla into Charybdis, from despotism into anarchy. The evils would be remedied by ruining the home. The surgery is alto- gether too heroic. What is needed is the constitu- tional treatment, that shall drive the poison out of the system, a regeneration of human nature that shall lift every home to its Paradisaic and Christly ideal. Marriage is a solemn league and covenant, rather than a civil contract. The latter is terminable upon mutual consent ; the former lapses only by deliberate and final abuse of confidence, or stubborn faithless- ness, by one of the contracting parties. The ruling principle in contract is the freedom of the agents, whose wills define and limit obligation ; in a covenant it is the subject-matter of the agreement that defines the duty and determines the duration of the compact. The bond must hold until its claims have been fully met and permanently secured. The alliance is de- fensive and offensive, so long as its maintenance is necessary and possible ; practically, as related to the end to be secured, it is permanent and inviolable. A SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. contract creates only a commercial and temporary unity of interests ; a covenant is based upon ethical relations, deals with matters of inherent and essential dignity, and establishes a peculiar unity and reciproc- ity of action. It follows from this conception of mar- riage as a covenant, a view enforced by what has been said of its origin, its ground, its nature, and the moral unity which it presumes and compacts, that it is ideally indissoluble. It can terminate only by the act of God, or by the flagrant violation of its essential law, which demands inviolate unity of life; by death or by adultery. The latter accomplishes by moral means what the former does by physical; with this great difference, that death leaves both parties equally inno- cent, while adultery is the gravest injury to the one, and the darkest guilt of the other. The Mosaic legislation permitted a certain liberty of divorce, as it tolerated a qualified concubinage and polygamy ; but our Lord only brought into clear re- lief, and made emphatic for all time, its determining ethical principle, when He declared that the Mosaic permission was an unwilling concession to the " hard- ness " of the people's heart ; that " from the begin- ning " marriage was not so contemplated and consti- tuted, that man may not "put asunder what God hath joined together"; that divorce is permissible only " for the cause of fornication "; that separation for any other cause is an incentive to adultery, and that whoever contracts marriage with the guilty party commits adultery. 1 When Christianity secured con- verts to the faith, and established churches among the 1 Mark x. 2-12 ; Matt. v. 31, 32 ; Luke xvi. 18 ; Romans vii 1-3, SOCIALISM, RELIGION, AND FAMIL Y. 299 Gentiles, new domestic questions arose, for whose set- tlement there seemed to be no authoritative rule ; just as even in our day the problem of polygamous mar- riages, contracted under sanction of heathen customs, has greatly perplexed our missionaries. In Corinth, as elsewhere, families became divided in their religion, producing alienations that sometimes proved to be in- surmountable. What should be done ? Was a hea- then marriage valid ? Might the believing party take the initiative in withdrawal ? Paul replies that pagan wedlock is valid, and that Christian discipleship only confirms the obligations of natural wedlock. The unity of the household is such that any advantage gained by one accrues to all, " the unbelieving hus- band is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband ; else were your children unclean ; but now are they holy." The rule, therefore, the apostle maintains, should be one of con- ciliation. The provocation to abandonment should not come from the believing party ; least of all should such an one take the first step ; " let not the wife de- part from her husband, .... and let not the hus- band put away his wife," an injunction which he is careful to support on the double ground of his own apostoh'c authority, and the plain command of the Lord. Still, if patience does not secure conciliation, and the heathen party is fully determined upon sepa- ration, it should be accepted quietly and in good part ; " a brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases : but God hath called us in peace." The latter clause gives the general reason for the advice. Do- mestic life thrives only in the atmosphere of peace ; force cannot secure nor retain its sweet and subtle 300 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. harmonies ; when, therefore, moral means have failed to allay irritation and resentment, separation is prefer- able to enforced union. 1 The apostle concludes his discussion by giving to his advice the authority of a universal Christian enactment : " so ordain I in all the churches." So far, therefore, as this advice modifies the earlier, and apparently more rigid, doctrine of our Lord, it must be embodied in the Christian theory of the causes that justify separation or divorce. That sepa- ration is permitted on the ground of wilful desertion, leaving the deserted party free from matrimonial ob- ligation, is admitted by all. The question in dispute is whether the termination of the " bondage " of which Paul speaks in the fifteenth verse, has reference simply to the act of separation, or whether it affirms the liberty of remarriage for the deserted party. The traditional Protestant view, ably championed by the late Dr. Charles Hodge, maintains that wilful deser- tion is recognized as terminating absolutely the mari- tal relation, and that divorce " a vinculo " may be demanded for such a cause. 3 The opposite view, that the apostle only confirms the older commandment of Christ, and simply contemplates a justifiable separa- tion, under certain painful circumstances, without lib- erty of contracting a new marriage, is very clearly, and as it seems to me unanswerably maintained by Dr. Timothy Dwight in the third volume of his Theological Lectures, and by Dr. Theodore Woolsey 1 1 Cor. vii. 10-17 1 " Systematic Theology," Vol. 3, pp. 391-397. Herzog, " Real-Encyklopadie," Art. Ehe. SOCIALISM, RELIGION, AND FAMIL Y. 301 in his Essay on Divorce. 1 A repeated reading of the text itself, apart from all the din of controversy it has provoked, leaves upon my own mind the deepening impression that Paul was primarily intent upon main- taining the integrity of Corinthian wedlock, and the inviolable unity of the home, that he regarded the dissolution of the marriage tie as the gravest of all social calamities, against which he asserted all the force of his apostolic authority ; while he recognized that sometimes desertion should not be forcibly re- sisted, but accepted as an unsought and undesirable release from marital bondage. And, as thus read, the drift of the passage is against the view that desertion is justifiable cause for securing divorce, with the right of remarriage. Wilful desertion, under which habit- ual cruelty and neglect may be included, constitutes cause for legal separation ; but only death or adultery can absolutely cancel the marital bond. Thus our exposition confirms and establishes the conclusion de- rived from the nature of marriage as a covenant ; and we must insist that the civil authorities have no more right to modify this ethical law of the household than they have power to change the order of the seasons, or to enact laws of health. The home has its own law, growing out of its ethical relations, to which legislation should conform. And even where the right of remarriage is unques- tioned, as in the case of proved adultery, its wisdom is a question of the utmost seriousness. Jurists are agreed that even here there is grave danger of incon- siderate and hasty action. The right to divorce is not 1 "D wight's Theology," Vol. 3, pp. 423-434; " Woolsey on Pivorce," pp. 69-85 f 302 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. the duty of divorce. The offence may be so glaring and utterly defiant, that immediate and summary action is imperative. But the sin may have been thoughtlessly committed, and bitterly repented of in dust and ashes, so that forgiveness and restoration may be the noblest exercise of Christian manhood. I have known women ruthlessly and mercilessly tram- pled underfoot, and separated from their children, mocked in their bitter agony as they were turned away to face the world's pitiless scorn, while the men have made unseemly haste to bring a new bride to the ruined altars. But the thorn rankled. The face that went out into the storm would turn back, and its hollow eyes strangled the laughter in its birth. You cannot make a child forget its mother, and the chil- dren in their hearts will take the part of the weak against the strong, and resent the apparent cruelty that supplants an exile, perhaps more sinned against than sinning. At all events, I call for even and im- partial justice. Let the man who sins suffer equally with the woman. There are hundreds of women who are dying of broken hearts, the fair dreams of whose girlhood have long been blasted, who know that their husbands are unfaithful, but who bear in silent pain what they never can excuse, because they will not blast their homes by complaint, nor cloud the future of their children with the memory of a father's pub- lished shame. One is not tempted to be proud of his sex when he sees how many men are eager to take advantage of a fault in woman, who make sport of the same sin when committed by themselves. And as many a wife bears the burden of a ruined home, it is not too much to ask of the husband that he remem- SOCIALISM, RELIGION, AND FAMIL Y. 303 ber mercy when the fire of judgment rages in his heart. It may be that the bond must be broken, that the children can be saved only by repudiating the mother ; but even then, let him not cease to remember that she was his wife, and the only mother his children can ever have ; let him not cease to pray for her, and let him wait by his desolate fireside until release comes to him by the act of God. Thus waiting, the absent face will not haunt him as a spectre ; and should it ever return, he may be free to give it sorrowing welcome. I have deferred any reference to the problem of "over-population," which in the judgment of many economists is the Gordian knot of the industrial situ- ation, and any discussion of the methods by which it may be wisely controlled, until in the doctrine of the family there should be available a fixed philosophy of criticism. It is said by some that the ranks of labor are overcrowded, and that the struggle for existence is becoming fiercer because of imprudent marriages and increasing numbers of children. Malthus claimed that the well-to-do must apply what he called the " prudential " checks, while nature executes her wrath by the " preventive " checks of famine, pestilence, and war among the unheeding poor. If men starve, he argued, it is their own fault, there are too many of them ; " any human being entering a world already occupied has not the slightest right to any share in the existing stores of the necessaries of life. He is altogether a supernumerary, and finds no cover at the great banquet of nature. She tells him begone ? and does not hesitate to extort by force obedience to her mandate. Hunger and pestilence, war and crime, 304: SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. mortality and neglect of infantile life, prostitution and syphilis, are the forms, hospitals, houses of cor- rection, foundling hospitals, and emigration packets are the places, of execution erected by nature." 1 This is claimed to be an ultimate fact in the economics of nature, and the poor are regarded as the authors of an ever-increasing misery by their reckless family life. Others claim that the evil here deplored is the greatest of all blessings, that as labor is the only source of wealth, the increase of workers makes subsistence more plentiful and sure. And still another class ad- vocate governmental or sanitary regulation of domestic life, so that population may be kept within control- lable limits. The first was advocated by Plato, who still remains its boldest expounder, and of whom the Oneida Community may be regarded as the modern representative ; the latter has been somewhat more timidly championed in our day, by advising the dis- semination among all classes of the laboring poor of such physiological knowledge as would result in thin- ning their future ranks. These remedies require no discussion. Their state- ment is their condemnation. The moral sense repu- diates them. It will suffer us to be hospitable to no measure that dissolves the household, or that degrades its ethical dignity, and brings its life down to the level of a refined and studied animalism. Such checks as operate must be moral, and not physical or physiologi- cal. And marriage imposes such checks. Young men need to be reminded that wedlock involves the most serious obligations, not the least among which is the 1 " Kaufmann's Socialism," p. 39. " Malthus on Population," pp. 431, 490-496. SOCIALISM, RELIGION, AND FAMIL Y. 305 duty of seeing to it that the young wife and aging mother is not burdened with cares that overtax her strength. Children are an heritage of the Lord ; and " happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them." But then, they are an " heritage of the Lord," God's sacred trust to the parents, for whom the table and the bed are to be prepared in advance. There is a blas- phemous and sensual doctrine of birth, as well as a pure and reverent one ; and perhaps the most delicate and difficult task of Christianity is to make effective among men the rough and radical doctrine of Paul in the first five verses of the seventh chapter of First Corinthians, and of the first seven verses in the fourth chapter of First Thessalonians, to inculcate an intelli- gent and noble self-restraint. With Paul's doctrine ruling the household, the cares of motherhood would never break the body down, and the children would not want for bread and raiment. We need to teach men that marriage is a holy estate, and that men and women are responsible for the birth of their children. It is here, too, in deepening, and strengthening, and sweetening the life of home, that we control the simplest and the strongest agency for dealing with the wider industrial evils of our time, illiteracy, over- crowding, intemperance, pauperism, and crime. The bread-winner must be made to feel his industrial re- sponsibility for himself, and for those whom he has voluntairly and deliberately made dependent on him, and for the maintenance of those to whom he owes his life, and who in old age are no longer able to wring the needed pittance from the hard hands of nature. The stern old law carries in it the dispen- sation of mercy, and needs to be enforced with a 20 306 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. righteous rigor, " if any provide not for Iris own, and specially for those of his own house (or kindred) he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel." ' If every able-bodied toiler should manfully shoulder his lawful burden, and with joyful self-control do his utmost to provide the needed bread, our relief societies would soon be forced to dissolve their or- ganizations, or turn their income into other chan- nels. And all other agencies for the decrease of misery and want must remain tentative and partial in what they accomplish, until the individual man can be quickened into moral independence, and the family become the sanctuary of Christian chivalry and honor. Reviewing now, for a moment, the field traversed in the present discussion, we discover that the contro- versies of our time are new only in their form, and in the growing earnestness with which they are conduct- ed ; that their difficulties may be traced to the deep- seated selfishness that controls and deforms human nature ; that their increasing bitterness is due to the spread of intelligence and the development of conscious manhood among all classes, and that only an industrial and social economy in which manhood as well as merchandise comes to its rights, can hope to lay the foundations of the future state. But the regeneration is provided for in the principles and precepts, the doc- trine and the spirit, of Christianity. The discontent of our time is hopeful, if only we deal with it wisely. Humanism has its birth and support in the gospel, and every new accession of conscious manhood is a heavenly baptism, for which we should give thanks. 1 1 Tim. v. 8. SOCIALISM, RELIGION, AND FAMIL Y. 307 The danger is that zeal may outrun knowledge. The engine, under full pressure of steam, may jump the track, and hurl the great train down the embankment. Liberty must honor the authority of law. Men can- not have what they want simply for the asking. They will starve if they do not work. They will not rise unless they become intelligent. They will remain poor unless they are temperate and thrifty. They will provoke resentment and organized retaliation, if they become unreasonable and despotic in their demands. Fire is sometimes fought by fire, and the very strength of a party has frequently become the prelude of its disgrace and overthrow. Justice is the security of the state, and the guarantee of victory. And justice, though heaven-born, has always tabernacled on earth, and wrought among men, and found embodiment in law. Her banners do not lead the army of destructive revolution. She wins by appeal to reason's ear, and by the policy of patient, dignified demand. Let the panting engine be firmly kept on the ancient tracks of steel. The world's regeneration, in shop, and home, and state, is to be sought along the lines of past en- deavor, lines that are clearly manifest in the Christian Scriptures and in Christian history. Capital will not become communal possession. Private property will not disappear. Superior endowments and unflagging industry will continue to command exceptional re- ward. Competition will not cease. But these ele- mental industrial and social forces will come under a higher law, and be knit into a compacter and loving partnership. The lines of power that now are strained upon the shoulders of some, and slack upon the necks of others, will be gathered up and held with even 308 SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY. firmness by the palms that bear upon them the print of the nails, witnessing to His equal love for rich and poor. 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