Why I am in favor of socialism Part 3

Christian Socialism stands unambiguously and clearly for the sanct.i.ty and preservation of the family as a fundamental social unit more significant than the disconnected individuals in whose interests much legislation has been made bearing heavily on the family and favoring unduly those who have selfishly preferred to stand alone. As the perpetuation of the race is one of the most obvious and outstanding of the purposes of the family, marriage will need to be safeguarded still more with this in view, that is to the securing of fit and proper persons as parents through the guardians.h.i.+p, complete supervision and restraint of the unquestionably unfit. Nevertheless, Christian Socialism could scarcely be expected to endorse some of the wild and even shockingly cruel and barbarous proposals of the eugenic group.

The child is the special ward and care of Christian Socialism, and here all the earlier paternalism of primitive Christianity may still find beneficent scope. The child should be protected, nurtured and cared for, and trained in such a manner as to prepare for the most efficient and n.o.ble service at maturity. In the child we see embodied our hope for the future, hence as the most promising road to the fulfillment of the dreams of all social reformers and idealists we must eventually learn to concentrate our efforts on the child. How can the child be trained so as to develop most fully his latent apt.i.tudes and abilities so as to be capable on the one hand of reaching his own greatest realization and on the other hand contributing most to the good of the race? Surely we should all aim to secure for each and every child the fullest development of all his powers, physical, mental, moral-religious, and the moral-religious most of all if we are to secure that altruistic character, that unselfish disposition without which all plans, schemes and programs must necessarily end in failure.

=Fleming, William Hansell.= (Lecturer, Author and Editor.)

If by Socialism you mean that the individual in a.s.serting and demanding his rights should consider and grant equal rights to all others in the community, then I am in favor of Socialism.

=Whitaker, Robert.= (Clergyman and Editor.)

I am in favor of Socialism because I see no other way out of the world-wide social distress which afflicts all the industrial nations today. Capitalism has outlived its historic function, and is today a cause of intolerable oppression, immeasurable misery and irrepressible conflict. The whole order of things by which society exists for the exploitation of the many by the few, either through compet.i.tion or private monopoly, is fundamentally awry, and must be superseded by an order which shall give us the largest measure of practicable co-operation for ends of common service. There can be no real or lasting peace between capital and labor until society recognizes the common rights of all in natural resources, until we meet the marvelous multiplication of human effort through mechanical invention with social owners.h.i.+p and democratic control of the machine, and until the whole industrial order is organized so as to eliminate the waste of compet.i.tion not in the interest of a few great industrial barons, but in the interest of the whole body of laborers. This is the program of Socialism in a large way, a system of social service as against a system of private profit, of co-operation as against exploitation, whose threefold objective is to make every man a partner with every other man in the commonwealth of nature, in the common gain of the world's inventive genius which is fundamentally social and not individual in its origin, and in the organization of industrial life, which ought to be democratic and not autocratic or oligarchic in its end.

I am for Socialism because Socialism is the economic expression of both democracy and religion, and because as such it is as inevitable as the movement of the suns.

=Schindler, Solomon.= (Author.)

If Socialism means the adjustment of social conditions of the past to the industrial and commercial needs of the present or some future day; if its objects are the utilization of natural forces, inventions and discoveries, for the benefit, not of the few, but for the greatest number--I am thoroughly in favor of Socialism.

Or, if Socialism stands for an endeavor to improve all things human, to attack all the hostile forces that threaten human well-being, such as hunger, sickness, ignorance, etc.--I, again, am in favor of Socialism or any "ism" that will try to make this world a happy abode of human beings.

But, if Socialism should stand for upheaval by force instead of peaceable evolution; if it should appeal to cla.s.s hatred nurtured by envy; if it should endeavor to realize dreams of an impossible economic equality by means of the ballot or nitro-glycerine--in that case I am not in favor of Socialism.

Show me your Socialism, and I will tell you whether I am in favor of it or not.

=Axon, Stockton.= (University Professor and Writer.)

I think that all people who hold progressive opinions are desirous of getting a more equitable distribution of the wealth which is produced by the many, of getting such governmental adjustments as will destroy favors and special privileges under the government, of getting a government sensitive to the interests of all instead of a few. I believe these things can be accomplished by the free processes of democracy in the hands of a thoroughly aroused and informed people, sufficiently informed to make their own choices, and sufficiently determined to hold their leaders responsible to themselves, the people.

Every progressive platform has in it something that may be called Socialistic, and I am not sure just how much progressivism is necessary to make a Socialist.

Politically, I am a Democrat, and I was never stronger than now in the faith that Democracy can be free and powerful to serve the best interests of the whole people.

=Clare, Israel Smith.= (Historian, Author of "Library of Universal History," 15 Vols. Address: Lancaster, Pa., R.F.D. 2.)

I am a Socialist because Socialism is right; because it is industrial democracy and economic freedom; because it is in accordance with the principle of human brotherhood; because it is against dividing up, against breaking up the home, against free l.u.s.t (wrongfully called "free love," as all love is free love, there being no forced love or compulsory love), against killing good incentive or good personal initiative; because it is against robbing the producer of four-fifths of his product; because it is against poverty, misery, prost.i.tution, vice, crime, insanity, war, murder, suicide, pestilence, famine, ignorance and all that is bad; because its ethics are identical with the ethics of Jesus Christ; because it would make man's existence in this life a heaven upon earth; because the Socialism we already have works so well, as our post-office system, our public school system, our free textbook system, our public water and fire departments, our public roads, our public parks, our public playgrounds, our public libraries, etc.; because it is the next step in accord with economic revolution and is inevitable, is destined to come in spite of all opposition, in spite of all obstacles thrown in its way to obstruct or r.e.t.a.r.d it, and in spite of all mistakes or shortcomings of Socialists themselves; in short, because Socialism is a rising sun.

I am opposed to Capitalism, because it is social and economic slavery; because it is in accord with the doctrine of human greed and selfishness; because it robs the workers and the industrious and rewards the s.h.i.+rkers and the exploiters; because it is for dividing up with a vengeance; because it breaks up the home by low wages, unemployment and high cost of living, as shown by government statistics, which tell us that there are a million divorces every ten years in this country; because it promotes race suicide, as the marriage rate and the birth rate are decreasing, and the death rate increasing, in all so-called civilized countries; because it causes panics and business depressions and makes ninety-eight out of every hundred business men fail (according to Dunn's Agency figures); because it discourages all good incentive and encourages all bad incentive; because it promotes free l.u.s.t, or so-called "free love;"

because it causes poverty and then punishes its victims for being poor; because it breeds poverty, misery, crime, prost.i.tution, drunkenness, insanity, political corruption, pestilence, famine, war, murder, suicide, ignorance and all that is bad; because it is in accordance with the ethics of His Satanic Majesty; because it is a setting sun, a dying system, as it is destroying itself, is impregnated with the seeds of its own dissolution, is slowly committing suicide and digging its own grave, giving up the ghost, unwept, unhonored and unsung.

=O'Neill, John M.= (Editor, The Miners' Magazine, Denver, Colo.)

I am in favor of Socialism because I believe that Socialism in operation means the emanc.i.p.ation of the human race. It is idle to talk about political liberty while the vast majority of the people are without industrial liberty. The man who owns a thousand jobs, owns a thousand lives. Such a statement may sound harsh and brutal to the man whose cradle has been rocked beneath the starry banner of young Columbia, and he may say to me, "I am not a slave for I can quit the owner of the job," but if he quits the owner of the job and he belongs to the disinherited cla.s.s, the wage earning cla.s.s, then necessity demands that he shall seek another owner of jobs, and he has merely changed masters and he is still a slave.

For men to be free, they must own their jobs, and to own the jobs the people must own collectively, the natural resources of the earth, and its machinery of production and distribution.

I am in favor of Socialism because collective owners.h.i.+p of the earth and its machines of production and distribution will open wide the gates of equal opportunity to every man, woman and child who live upon the face of the earth. Socialism means that the profit system shall be destroyed and that upon its shattered ruins shall be built a real republic, beneath whose sheltering dome, there can live no master and no slave.

=James, W.E.S., M.A., B.D.= (Clergyman, Ayr, Ont., Canada.)

Socialism is the scientific a.n.a.lysis of the present state of society and the theory of social development founded thereon. A Socialist is one whose study of this scientific a.n.a.lysis has convinced him that society is progressing towards a co-operative commonwealth. My study extends over fifteen years, and I clearly see the gradual concentration of capital--the gradual consolidation of labor interests and the life and death struggle between them. As no question is ever settled until it is settled right, this can have only one result--the capturing of the wealth of the nations by the producers of wealth and the utilizing of it, not for the few, but for the whole people.

With the pa.s.sing of the small privately owned shop through the coming of the large manufactury, socially operated but privately owned, way was prepared for the larger, nation-wide manufactury, socially operated and socially owned. It must come.

As right has behind it all the power of omnipotence and so must prevail the present system, which makes the many toil in poverty while the few live on the earnings in idleness and luxury, must make way for a system which will provide a more equitable reward of labor.

As compet.i.tion is based on man's selfishness and so is un-Christian, co-operation, based on man's brotherhood, the essence of Christianity, must supersede it.

The capitalistic system must consider profits first--business must pay--and men second. The last hundred years has traced the gradual rise of man and the next twenty-five will see him freeing himself from this system of wage slavery and evolving another which will dethrone the dollar and will enthrone the rights of man.

When the ballot was given to the ma.s.ses and free education to their children, the inevitable result was the rise of these ma.s.ses to a.s.sert their freedom and their right to all the product of their labor--possible only in a co-operative commonwealth.

Every great religious awakening of the past has resulted from the preaching of some great neglected truth especially needed in that age.

The next great religious awakening will come from preaching the one sadly neglected truth of this age--economic justice and brotherhood.

It will be greater, more fundamental, more stupendous in its effects than any reformation or revolution of the past. It is inevitable.

This coming emanc.i.p.ation of man--dethronement of compet.i.tion and dollar rule--the new moral, social and religious awakening--these give my life its greatest joy, its highest hope, and its greatest inspiration to service. I am in favor of Socialism.

=Peake, Elmore Elliott.= (Author.)

The word "Socialism" (aside from its partisan use) has so many connotations that one can hardly say he is either for it or against it without being misconstrued. With Socialism's cardinal tenet, the better distribution and the better production of wealth, I am heartily in sympathy, as I suppose everybody is. People disagree as to the means by which this may be obtained. Public owners.h.i.+p of wealth-producing factors is evidently coming more and more into favor, as is evidenced by the munic.i.p.al owners.h.i.+p of electric, gas and water plants. This principle is bound to be extended.

But it seems to me that Socialism stands with Prohibition to this extent: Long before either of them has made sufficient converts to put their party in power, their principles will have been incorporated by other parties which do not confine themselves to these specific contentions.