Chapter 2

All the above goes to show why many of our foreign-born population look upon a government as "something from above." They are wont to be more subservient to it, or to look upon it as responsible for the welfare of its citizens. Therefore Socialism, which stands essentially for the dependence of the individual upon the State as well as for the governmental direction of the individual and the substitution of State for individual judgment, for this reason appeals to them, and it has made its greatest gains upon the Continent of Europe or among the foreign-born or descended citizens of the United States.

The Socialists answer the charge that Socialism is not American by saying--"Neither is Christianity. It is a 'foreign importation.' Its founder was a 'foreigner,' and never set foot on American soil. Then there is the printing press. It isn't American, either, though somehow we manage to get along with it as well as the other 'foreign importations' mentioned." Of course this smart kind of argument gets nowhere. It is, in fact, intended to appeal to the half-baked type of mind which has only begun to think and has never progressed beyond the point of a consequent mental indigestion that would account for its Socialist nightmare. What the Socialists do know and are not honest enough to admit, is that this country was settled three centuries or more ago by a people who did not come hither to enjoy the fruits of other men's labor but who came here to carve out a new State in America literally by the sweat of their brows. Also they consciously founded it upon the basis of individual freedom and responsibility as proclaimed and enforced by the precepts of the Christian-Jewish religion and by the English Common Law. It is upon this foundation that they built their success. Upon this same basis their descendants and successors to-day weigh, measure and estimate that which is new in thought or invention whether "native" or "foreign-born." And they have weighed Socialism in this American balance and found it wanting.

But they brought with them neither certain loathsome diseases nor Socialism. All of these are likewise the results of immorality--_moral_ and _political_--and of a type of decadent civilization still prevalent on the Continent of Europe and at that time threatening to gain a foothold even in England. It was this last-named threat from which the founders of the American nation were wise and energetic enough to escape, even though their escape meant going into the hardships of an unknown and almost uninhabited wilderness.

Socialism is not only essentially un-American, but it is essentially undemocratic. A democracy means a government by public opinion, and this opinion is the result of the co-operative impulse or community feeling of the people of a free country--a people who are given the opportunity to think for themselves, and are not thought for by a divinely constituted government. As Thomas Jefferson maintained, liberty is not a privilege granted by a government, but government is a responsibility delegated to its officers by the people. "On this distinction hangs all the philosophy of democracy."[5] The people must decide questions for themselves and make their common will known through the representative organs of a government which is after all only the instrument intended to produce the best expression and administration of this public will.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 5: David Saville Muzzey, _Thomas Jefferson_, p. 311. "Generally speaking, one may say of the German soldier that he is normally good-natured and is not disposed to do injury to harmless people, so long as he finds no obstacles put in his prescribed way. But once disturbed, he becomes frightful, because he lacks any higher capacity of discrimination; because he merely does his duty and recognizes no such thing as individual conscience and, besides, when he is excited becomes at once blind and super-nervous." "The Germans are, indeed, a good-natured people, born to blind obedience and humble willingness to let others do their thinking for them." Wilhelm Mühlon, _The Vandal of Europe_, pages 172 and 251.]

III

ITS CONFLICT WITH THE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF DEMOCRACY AND RELIGION

In the course of a conversation during the past winter one of the members of the present city government of New York remarked that although he was not a Socialist, yet he failed to see how the election of Morris Hillquit on his un-American platform to be Mayor of New York would have had any result except as regards the national safety and the immediate influence upon our international relations. He added that the life of the city would have gone on just the same for a time at least; hence why the great fear of Socialism? What this man failed to see was that in fact the life of the city would go on for a time without change only on account of the impetus the former democratic government had given. That the policy of individual responsibility and judgment, which had always been the professed aim of American government in the past, had produced leadership and popular experience by the process of natural selection, and that this leadership would last only until the time that the deadening influence of Socialism had its true effect.

Let us consider for a moment the result of Socialism as a permanent policy. It means the substitution, as already shown, of government or official judgment and initiative for that of the individual. The whole process would be one to deaden and atrophy the powers of the people in general, with the result that there would follow a leveling down to a plane of mediocrity rather than a leveling up according to individual capacities and ambitions, exercised through equality of opportunity.

It should not be forgotten that the varying degrees of success in the different walks of life finally have caused so-called social differences. These differences result from the attempt on the part of mankind to meet "the inequality of men in their capacity for the work with which they are confronted in this life," said the New York _Journal of Commerce_, with great acuteness, in a recent editorial discussion of the phase of the question.[6] It continued by saying,--

"What we must strive for is intelligent understanding and sound reasoning on the question of rights, and a just application of principles for the common benefit. Everything should be done to develop and train intelligence and increase the capacity of the people for their various tasks and duties, and they should be stimulated by the rewards to which they are fairly entitled in the results; but that cannot be made to mean that they are all equal in contributing to results and entitled to equality in the returns. Nothing could be more inconsistent with a sound democracy than the distribution of the material results of productive activity applied to the resources of nature, regardless of the merits or just claims of those engaged in the work. To apply that so-called principle of equality of rights without regard to the part taken in producing results, would deaden the energies applied in achieving them, and greatly reduce the product. It would prevent material prosperity and defeat national progress."

In a Socialistic State, inevitably there would be formed a bureaucracy of selfish office holders. Although, owing to the impetus of our previous free Democracy, the first Socialist officials might be men of ability who had gained their places through successful experience, yet a close corporation of officials would follow them and retain the exercise of power. The people gradually would sink to a level of servile conformity.

We have a perfect illustration of this in the Germany of the past forty years. There is a good reason for the fact that Germany, in the hands of a selfish and conscienceless autocracy, made more successful use of practical Socialism than any other nation in history and even carried efficiency itself to a point of great success. Her close corporation of bureaucratic officials, playing upon the remains of feudal and aristocratic loyalty among the people that have survived the darkness of past centuries as nowhere else among civilized nations, successfully carried through Socialism in many practical ways, just as Morris Hillquit and his un-American followers probably would have succeeded in doing in New York for a short time. But the inevitable followed. The German people have been reduced to a very low level of political ability.

The German is one of the poorest politicians in the world, as every student of political science knows. His lack of ability to run a government on constitutional principles has been found in the inane vaporings and factional maneuvering of the Reichstag, the supposedly "popular" House of the Parliament, which was merely a machine to register the will of the aristocratic autocracy. The individual citizen is the most servile and unthinking person in any civilized country of the world to-day. He has been trained to political incapacity.

What has the success of German Socialism amounted to? We find that Germany, from the political standpoint, is nothing but an organized machine without soul. Professor Ely, in taking the Moral side of the matter into consideration, well says that "it may be added that truth, an attribute of the gentleman, is less valued in Germany than in English speaking countries. As long ago as 1874 Professor James Morgan Hart in his book _German Universities_ called attention to this weakness in the German character. A German mother will say to her child, 'O, you little liar,' and does not imply serious reprobation thereby, and Professor Hart said that if you called a German student a liar, he might take it calmly, but if you called him a blockhead, he would challenge you to fight a duel. All this has been amply exemplified during the present war. It was the German socialist Lassalle who said of the lie that it was one of the great European Powers! It was natural enough that he should have said it."[7]

The public preparatory schools in Germany are so arranged that the pupils are trained to unthinking subservience to the labor policy and materialistic aims of a selfish, bureaucratic State. In fact, it is well to remember that this German illustration only proves that Socialism, instead of being democratic, is essentially undemocratic in its effects. It produces an autocracy of officials which is as unfair and selfish, because entirely materialistic, as any aristocracy of wealth or birth could be. Shrewd observers note the same tendency in the Commonwealth of Australia where the full fruition of its semi-Socialistic policy of recent years has been somewhat retarded by the individualistic influence of the English Common Law. When the Socialistic autocracy is once completely in power, with its professed policy of taking away human ambition and initiative, its position will be almost impregnable and become more and more secure as the average citizen becomes more and more servile, lazy and unambitious. Socialism is politically decadent and contains within itself the germ of self-destruction. During this process of self-destruction the people at large will offer a rich field for exploitation by the demagogue, the corrupt politician and the charlatan.

Furthermore, Socialism is essentially unChristian. It also is opposed absolutely to the whole basis of the Jewish religion as well. The foundation of the Jewish-Christian religion, for they are essentially the same in basis, is the belief in the value of the individual soul in the sight of God, and the dependence upon its relation to something Divine. The impulse from within the human heart is the basis of all right living. Thus Christ taught the social responsibility of the individual for his neighbor. The appeal always was made to the individual and the responsibility was laid upon him.

We read in the New Testament--"Remember the words of the Lord Jesus how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive." (Acts, XX, 35.)

Right giving, which results from an appreciation of the obligations of service, is an individualistic action; receiving, which means a benefit from the activity and initiative of someone else (and often irrespective of the real deserts of the recipient), is essentially Socialistic in tendency. The one causes a growth in individual character; the other tends to stunt or weaken it. St. Paul mentioned (1st Corinthians XIII, 3) as one of the greatest possible forms of service the bestowal of all one's goods to feed the poor. But he did not suggest as a better way that the individual should sit back, let the State take over his goods and attend to the feeding of the poor, and thus relieve him from responsibility. In fact, "love" itself, which is declared to be the greatest thing of all, is essentially an individual impulse and never could be called forth from the human heart, nor supplied to it either, by the fiat of a government.

The same note runs through the Jewish Scriptures. At the beginning (Genesis, chap. IV), in the old story of Cain's murder of Abel, when Cain inquired of the Lord "Am I my brother's keeper?" the inference to be drawn most decidedly is that the Lord thought he was, and not the State, or the tribal government of that day, in his stead. Both the Christian and Jewish religions are essentially individualistic in appeal and social in responsibility, and so also is Democracy.

May not the extreme brutality of the German soldier of to-day be the result not only of the ruthless command from the official higher up but also of the de-souling, materialistic influence of Socialism on the common people of Germany during the past twenty-five years? Is not the viciousness of Prussian militarism plus the demoralizing influence of Socialism a sufficient explanation?

According to Mr. J. Dover Wilson, "the German nation, in fact, is suffering from some form of arrested development, and arrested development, as the criminologists tell us, is almost invariably accompanied by morbid psychology. That Germany at the present moment, and for some time past, has been the victim of a morbid state of mind, few impartial observers will deny. It has, however, not been so generally recognized that this disease--for it is nothing less--is due not to any national depravity but to constitutional and structural defects."[8]

Many Socialists point to the housing, sanitary, insurance and other State activities of Germany as showing the care of the Government for the laboring man. My dogs are well fed, are kept clean, dry, healthy and amused, and are carefully looked after in every way. But they are still dogs. They have no soul or any right or power of self-determination. So recent events show beyond cavil that the German workingman, from the standpoint of the State and Government, was in reality a political dog. He existed only for the good of the divinely constituted State and its God-given princely proprietors, and as such was used and sacrificed for the imperial and national glory. The German laboring man was the most exploited, the most servile, the most unfairly treated worker on earth. He was given enough material comforts or even amusements (religious, theatrical, musical or otherwise) to keep him seemingly content, but politically he was not permitted to think--or economically either, when taken in the broad sense of the term. Therefore those who expect from the revolution or uprising against the Kaiser and his military henchmen the immediate establishment of a well-ordered and democratic republic, are reckoning without their host. People must be experienced in self-government before they can make a success of democracy as that term is understood in America, and experienced the German people are not.

While the Socialists of the United States, "parlor" and otherwise, include in their number many sincere and thoughtful, as well as idealistic people, it is well to remember that a large part of them is composed of individuals who have nothing, and want to divide it all with everybody else. It is the old jealousy of the "have nots" for those who have, which usually means the "will nots" for those who have the ambition and will. Or if they are not of this kind, the best that can be said of them is that they are foreigners, who are in reality not Americans, who don't believe in democracy, but in autocracy, and probably don't even know what democracy means. Autocracy is the government of the many by and for the benefit of the selfish few. Real democracy is the government by and for the many, who express their will through their duly chosen representatives.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 6: Issue for November 12, 1918.]

[Footnote 7: _Op. cit._ p. 172.]

[Footnote 8: _The War and Democracy_, p. 58.]

IV

SOME INSTANCES OF ITS PRACTICAL FAILURE

I have stated my conviction, and the reasons for it, that Socialism is essentially undemocratic and unChristian, as well as unAmerican. Yet after all it is in the practical realm of experience that it has proved to be most lacking and inefficient. To prove this, it is hardly necessary to point to the classic illustrations of the utter failure of Socialism when actually tried in France under the leadership of Louis Blanc and Albert during the days of the Second Republic in the year 1848, or again when tried under the form of the Commune in 1871. The horrors of the extreme form of Socialism known as Bolshevism, as seen in the Russia of 1918, are destined to implant a useful lesson, not soon to be forgotten, in the minds of intelligent people throughout the entire world.

One of the best illustrations of the failure of a practical Socialistic State is that of the "Mayflower" settlement at Plymouth in 1620. In order to raise the money needed for the venture the Pilgrims borrowed seven thousand pounds from seventy London merchants. In order also to provide a species of sinking fund it was decided to accept the suggestion of the creditor merchants that the net earnings of the colonists should go into a common fund for the space of seven years and then should be divided among the shareholders. It should especially be remembered that the Pilgrims were a set of people small in number and as a consequence easy to govern; of a high type of industry and integrity; and that they were united by the strongest of all common and social interests,--that of deep religious conviction. Furthermore, the relative positions in life of the personnel of the entire Plymouth Colony showed a remarkable equality. Their method of living was primitive and most simple in form, without the usual complications of the life of even three hundred years ago, much less of that of today. And yet this communal or Socialistic system in Plymouth resulted in such a marked lack of interest among the inhabitants, the whole arrangement worked so badly, that the settlement verged on failure and destruction. The system virtually was abolished after only three years trial in the year 1623 and good results showed themselves immediately. "Individual effort returned with the prospect of individual gain." The cause of the failure is evident,--the system was opposed to the fundamental facts of human nature.

But what is "human nature"? Let us take a definition from the Socialists themselves. "If the phrase means anything at all, it means man, with his loves and hates, his desire for pleasure and aversion to pain, his noble and ignoble traits, his interests, feelings, beliefs, prejudices, ignorance, knowledge, fears and hopes. All these motives, desires and emotions vary in each individual, some of them usually dominating over the rest, yet all more or less active. Some one or more of them may be cultivated by favorable environment or almost crushed by an unfavorable environment. A saint may be dragged down to hell by adverse conditions and a rake win eminence in the same environment. If the cultured educator ... was suddenly forced to earn his living in a vile mining center, his polish would soon wear off, and he would brood over a world that now strikes him as on the whole all right. If cast adrift at sea, within a week the wolf stare of hunger would make him and his associates seriously consider casting lots as to who should be eaten. Later the feast might actually begin and ... human nature find it easy enough to gnaw the shin bone of a fellow castaway. This thing we call human nature is a bundle of emotions and desires that will find expression in different ways, according to the environment in which it is located, as we have seen in the example given."[9]

This is exactly true in thesis, though utterly false in detail. But it is the object of democracy to give equality of opportunity for human nature, starting from the essential point of individual impulse (which is the precise expression of character), to work out the best of which it is capable. On the other hand, it is the object of Socialism, acting through political and economic machinery, to crowd out these varying attributes of human nature and reduce the individual to the mental status of a dull, unthinking animal. Of course human nature always has rebelled against this repression and always will do so in the final analysis. It is impossible for Socialism or any other system of uniform and outward repression to fetter the human soul and it inevitably will fail to do so in the end. It is from an experience of the difficulties and dangers, the unhappiness and injustice that will accompany this process of failure, that the opponents of Socialism and the believers in Democracy wish to spare the people of the world to-day.

This failure of Socialism especially is true as applied to Germany. The un-souling of the people has come as the direct result of the use of Socialism by the military autocracy for its own selfish purposes. Also its failure is repeatedly seen in its actual working, and in spite of the German boast of efficiency. The best illustration of this, because the one most used by the Socialists on the other side of the argument, is that of the railroads.

Most of the railroad lines of importance in Continental Europe are owned and operated by the various governments. I can say from my own personal experience and observation that the only railroads that are really well run, so far as I have traveled, are those under private ownership and direction, as in Great Britain and the United States. I have tried the various trains de luxe and Blitzzüge of Continental Europe and their slow progress and often indifferent accommodations make one long for an English or American express train. And then to hold first-class tickets in Germany, and be refused admission to first-class compartments still empty "because some officials may want them," as was my experience in going from Nürnberg to Mainz, does not add to one's desire for governmental control. The best European trains do not for one moment compare with those of the privately owned British and American railroads.

According to statistics published in 1913, the railroads of the United States were capitalized at $60,000 per mile under private ownership; the government-owned German roads at $109,000 per mile, and this in spite of the far cheaper costs of building. Railroad rates in the United States, both freight and passenger, under private ownership have been among the lowest in the world. The first thing that our government control has brought about is a raise in rates that exceeds by far what the private managements would have dared even to imagine, much less ask of the Interstate Commerce Commission. And this has been accompanied by a marked deterioration of service, all of which can by no means be blamed upon conditions resulting from the war. Poorer service at higher cost is the almost universal experience, in the long run, of government-owned public utilities both here and abroad.