Part 2
I am opposed to Socialism because, with all its attendant weaknesses in its present unperfected state, competition is the best known stimulus to ambition. Human nature can never be essentially altered by either legislation or a new social system, therefore we shall always need competitive incentives to make us do what we can. Our present system needs decided modification, but it does not need the reversal that Socialism proposes.
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=Super, Charles William.= (Retired College President.)
Socialism is advocated in so many different forms that it is difficult to deal with the term intelligently without prefixing a somewhat lengthy definition. Every government is at present adopting some of the features of the Socialistic creed.
I am opposed to Socialism in so far as it hinders individual initiative and enterprise. No community ever made a great invention, or an important discovery, or created a great work of art, or planned a great enterprise. The first step forward must always be taken, or at least proposed, by some one person. I believe the State should protect those who cannot take care of themselves, especially children, and those who have proved unable to stand the strain of modern economic conditions. Those who are weak should not be left to lie helpless along the path of progress. But I do not believe government has a right to dictate how many hours an adult shall labor, or what wages his employer shall pay him. The men who have done and are still doing great things in the world have not worked a certain number of hours in twenty-four, but all the time. Socialism, to a certain extent at least, puts a premium on inefficiency. It is a serious objection to Socialism that it has proved a failure wherever it has been tried. It is a return to primitive conditions. The prospect of getting something for nothing is a strong incentive to idleness. Most men are naturally lazy. The power of the State to create value is very limited. If it provides an army of officials whose constant and ubiquitous interference with production limits the collective output, they must be paid from the earnings of individuals. This must increase the cost of living. Laws should be passed and enforced to help the weak and restrain the wicked, but they should not put too heavy a clog on those who are by nature qualified to succeed. You cannot promote the prosperity of a community by taxing the strong for the benefit of the weak, either directly or indirectly. The State should be particularly vigilant against giving any encouragement to the lazy, the shiftless and the willfully inefficient.
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=Krout, Mary Hannah.= (Author.)
I am opposed to Socialism because it is impossible and un-philosophical. All the measures advocated by Socialists today--or most of them--were advocated by the French in the Revolution of 1785, with disastrous results.
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=Hovey, Lewis R.= (Editor, The Record, Haverhill, Mass.)
I am opposed to Socialism because it is unscientific, unwise, and would destroy liberty and progress for the human race.
The bed-rock theory of Socialism is that under the present system, wealth and industry concentrates into fewer and fewer hands, that the big fish eat the little fish, and so on until society is confronted with a great proletarian class on the one hand, with nothing but their labor power, and on the other a few very rich plutocrats who own all the means of production and exchange. That this theory is unsound and unscientific is proved in a thousand ways by every blue book of every industrial nation on earth.
The number of wealth-owners in Europe has increased twice as rapidly as population during the past twenty years. In the United States we find that ownership of land, railways, banks, bonds, industrial stocks, etc., have actually increased three or four times as rapidly as the population. For instance: In 1901, the year of the organization of the "Steel Trust," so-called, there were just about fifty-five thousand men and women who owned all the iron and steel plants in this country, and at this time the Steel Company did seventy per cent. of the iron and seventy-five per cent. of the steel production of the nation. Today the U.S. Steel Company produces only forty-five per cent. of the iron and steel, and in place of fifty-five thousand owners of the iron and steel business, there are now over three hundred and fifty thousand owners. Seventeen years ago the Great Northern Railway was owned by one hundred and twenty-two stockholders; today that same railroad has eighteen thousand owners.
An investigation by the New York Journal of Commerce, a short while ago, proved that two hundred and thirty-one industrial and railway corporations had ten years ago less than two hundred and thirty thousand owners, but those same companies now have eight hundred and thirty-five thousand owners (round numbers). Like illustrations could be cited to fill pages of this book. This shows that the so-called scientific theory of Marx Socialism is a myth, a dream, an imagination from the brain of Karl Marx. Socialism would be unwise because it would be an attempt to change human nature by economic and political processes. This world has progressed in just that proportion as it has got away from things Socialistic. The imperialistic Socialism of ancient Rome destroyed that greatest of nations; the barbarian Socialism of Peru, with thirty million followers, was destroyed by a handful of Spanish adventurers.
The Socialization of railways, the municipal ownership of a street railway, a gas plant or an electric lighting plant, has, as a rule, proved a failure when all the facts are taken into consideration. This wild yell of the Socialists, that labor receives but a small part of the wealth it produces, has no foundation in fact and is but the uncouth and unintelligent expression of minds who were never made for statistical insight or investigation.
The promise of the "full value of your production" is a false promise and known to be such by every intelligent Socialist. The workers today do far less work, with less hours, and yet receive twice as high wages compared fifty years ago. This is due to organization and invention of the few. That is, a small minority of society have organized industry and made economic production possible; "they have made two blades of grass grow where one grew before." The Socialists would reverse this, for it is absolutely certain that under the blighting influence of economic Socialism, production would go down.
Politically, Socialism would destroy liberty. A pure democracy leads straight to despotism. Nothing is more despotic than the bossism of the Socialist parties of the world today, and if ever the nations of the world go to Socialism, they will go to a regime of mob rule directed by a Socialist oligarchy, and then the liberty of man will be absolutely destroyed.
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=Penrose, Stephen Beasley Linnard.= (President, Whitman College.)
I am not in favor of that very attractive theory, Socialism, first, on psychological grounds. It rests upon an unscientific analysis of human interests and motives. It overlooks or undervalues strong tendencies of human nature. It may be called a theory for angels, not for men.
Second, on practical grounds; it cannot work well because it can supply neither sufficient motive nor sufficient machinery to secure efficiency, either in production or distribution.
I applaud the moral impulse which is found in many Socialists, but I do not approve their solution for great economic problems.
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=Kizer, Edwin Dicken.= (College President.)
I am in favor of that which means the correcting of the evils that allow one man to prey upon another when that preying is personal or enters into the effect of the preyer, in combination with conditions to be remedied by economic changes. But the very radical differences manifest among the Socialists themselves, i.e., those who accept Marx, and those who deny him in his main statements; the revolutionist, who insists upon a revolution, by blood, if necessary, and the evolutionist, who looks for a more gradual development, would make me hesitate to cast my lot with such a divided army.
Again I am not quite certain that I am willing to give first place to the forces that the scientific Socialist places as fundamental in the affairs of men. I must also confess to a lingering of the older theory of individualism that constrains me to believe that at least a part (those for example who by brain or circumstance are leaders) of mankind, will be personally regenerated by a high spiritual motive before the Socialist ideal is possible to think of even.
Also, radicalism never reaches in practice what it aims to perform. A little less of the ultimate, with destructive acts that undermine man's faith in his present creation, and a little more of the doing the task before us is what is needed. If Socialism is inevitable, as some think it is, we can neither help nor hinder: evolution of moral and spiritual forces entirely rule the average man out of the contest.
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=Brazier, Marion Howard.= (Journalist and Lecturer.)
I am opposed to Socialism because I do not favor anything likely to develop anarchy. Socialistic agitation tends to promote unrest and discord. If granted my divine right to vote, I might look into it more closely and get another point of view.
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=Cazalet, Edward Alexander.= (President of the Anglo-Russian Literary Society, Imperial Institute, London.)
Socialism has been defined as the name given to schemes for regenerating society by a more equal distribution of property and especially by substituting the principle of association for that of competition.
A great statesman and author, M. de Tocqueville, branded Socialism as an energetic and pernicious appeal to the lower passions of mankind; as a system of which the basis was a thorough mistrust of liberty, a hearty contempt of man individually.
The shrewd and experienced L.A. Thiers in his treatise "De la Propriete," also combats the maxim: "La propriete c'est le vol." He depicted the universal poverty and barbarism that would follow from such notions being adopted.
Robert Owen, the enthusiastic and practical Socialist, was not successful in his colony of New Harmony in United States. The improvement of his workmen's material interests in the New Lanark Mill in Scotland, finally proved a disappointment. (See also "Why I am in Favor of Socialism.")
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=Purrington, William Archer.= (Lawyer and Author.)
I do not know of any practicable scheme of Socialism, or of any satisfactory definition of the term upon which Socialists agree; an accurate definition is the necessary basis of intelligent expression of opinion.
Apparently, Socialists in general believe, or at least preach that the State should own the material and means of production, to the end that all should share what is now enjoyed by the few. I doubt if the proposed means would achieve the desired end. At present the United States Government supplies us with postage stamps. The stamps will not stick.
Socialism will be practicable, if ever, only when
"The roughs, as we call them, grown loving and dutiful, Worship the true and the good and the beautiful. And preying no longer, as tiger and vulture do, Read the Atlantic, as persons of culture do."
That day is far distant, and even when it comes the man of brains will assert his individualism.
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=Screws, William Wallace.= (Editor The Montgomery Advertiser.)
I am opposed to Socialism because I believe in conservatism. We are drifting too far already away from precepts and principles which guided us safely as long as they were adhered to. I am opposed to Socialism because I believe in individualism. Each man in the community should do something for it instead of each man in the community expecting the community to do something for him. I could give many other reasons, but these are enough to convince me that Socialism engrafted in our laws would be dangerous to government and society.
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=Burke, John Butler, M.A.= (Author and Scientist.)
My sympathies are very much on the side of Socialism, but intense as those sympathies may be, they cannot counteract the convictions, still more strong, that the hope of its realization is futile. A lease for capital is all I can plead for equivalent to that for copyright.
There cannot be any doubt, in my mind at least, that Socialism, that is, the distribution of wealth equally for the benefit of the individuals composing the community, desirable as this might be in accordance with the spirit of equality and fraternity, is yet at variance with the principles of freedom and of justice. And unjust as the existing system may be in giving an unequal start in life to individuals, to insist that those who work effectively and those who do not, should share equally the benefits of their combined labors is surely more iniquitous still. Nay, more, that the individual should not possess the power to accumulate and dispose of the fruits of his own work, is perhaps still more at variance with the true principles of liberty.
A Socialistic state, however perfect ideally, to commence with, would be in an unsteady state of equilibrium, and the inequalities with which Nature, as distinct from man, has endowed us, would, I fear, sooner or later, disturb that unstable state and bring things back to the condition where only the struggle for power and its consequent supremacy would prevail, through the rule of the strong in character and intellect. Hence, heredity as a gift or privation of Nature, like wealth and penury in the existing state of things, prevents the ideal of equality otherwise desirable. Such being inevitable, the accumulated effects of industry and talent will ever seek and obtain protection from the hands of the fortunate and the strong.
A lease of the rights of property and capital generally, equivalent to a copyright, for works of genius is all I ever hope for in the interests of humanity, so that with the lapse of time wealth might be redistributed broadcast for the benefit of the State and mankind.
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=Hastings, William Granger.= (Lawyer.)
I am opposed to Socialism because like Comte, I am unable to accept the teachings of "any of the senseless sects who attack those bases of the State, property and the family." If we are to have States, we must have families. At best, if we are to have anything like our present existing States. If we are to have families, we must have property, and private property if they are to be private families. It is as certain as that we must have public property if we are to have any State.
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=Jefferys, Upton S.= (Editor, Post-Telegram, Camden, N.J.)
I am opposed to Socialism because I think that in the final analysis it palsies individual initiative, attempting to set aside nature's law of competition and the survival of the fittest. I cannot agree with the proposition that Socialism is a practical panacea for industrial and economic conditions that have existed since man began to acquire property. While human nature remains as it is, I question whether it is possible to successfully apply Socialism to State and nation.
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=Beard, Daniel Carter.= (Author and Artist.)
I do not believe in Socialism because I am an individualist. I think that the old American idea is broad enough to admit of all the necessary reforms without reverting to the Socialism of Marx. Both Socialism and Anarchy are off-springs of monarchial forms of government evolved by people under the tyranny class and official oppression.
As long as the opportunities in this country were free to all, neither the seed of Socialism nor of Anarchy could take root, but when the opportunities were absorbed by a few, it produced a condition similar to that of a monarchial form of government, and the seed of these exotic plants, Socialism and Anarchy, both found a soil suited to their growth.
There is nothing the matter with our form of government. It has produced the greatest success the world has ever witnessed, has developed a manhood, a self-reliance and a self-respect to be found on no place else on the face of the earth, and I see no reason why we should change that form of government, because some people have monopolized the opportunity for labor and produced an unsatisfactory condition economically. There is but one opportunity to labor, and that is the land. We can free the land without changing our form of government, by simply taxing it to its full rental value, and doing away with all other forms of taxation. This will immediately take the burden off of labor, and while not reducing our present millionaires to the ranks of plain, honest men, it will effectually prevent the growth of any more millionaire monstrosities. (See also "Why I am in Favor of Socialism.")
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=Ladd, Horatio Oliver.= (Clergyman. Author and Educator.)
I do not favor Socialism because it is an effort to reform society against the nature of man.
No man is created equal to another, or every other man. He is an individual who makes his place in the world by his special individual traits and powers. By these he uses the powers of others, and material and moral instruments and forces around him to accomplish his ends. He concedes to others what he cannot or does not wish to hold or acquire for himself in the influence and possessions of this life.
The inequality of man in this world is everywhere manifest. The advantages won in this life are the result of effort and character, not of any distribution based upon the principle of equality of man.
The differences in man's condition, make the interest and the incitements of life. Collectivism is an absurd theory of distribution of the good of life, because it cannot preserve equal conditions, even in one generation. The weak, the lame and the lazy must fall behind the strong, the able, the ambitious. The apples on a tree are of different sizes, and soundness, because of the vigor of the buds, leaves, branches and location which have contributed to their growth. So it is in all Nature, and in man.
The prizes of life belong to those who win them by merit of their powers, their diligence and their effort.
A common opportunity is the highest condition Nature and society can offer to the individual.
Life is rich in and through its varieties. Religion and common sense stand for these principles of individualism in the development and conduct of human life and government.
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=Levermore, Charles Herbert.= (Educator and Author.)
I am opposed to Socialism because I believe that any plan thus far proposed for the reorganization of society upon a Socialist basis would result in a tyranny of a majority, or of a bureaucratic clique or "ring," representing that majority, which would be meaner and more unendurable than any corporation-ridden party-machine or any Tammany Hall that we have ever known. (See also "Why I Am in Favor of Socialism.")
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=Bell, Mackenzie.= (Poet, Critic and Lecturer.)
Though a collectivist I am not a Socialist in the Marxian sense, because I think the private ownership of capital has never until now, had a fair chance in the work of civilization. Throughout the world the people are dimly awaking to insist that property has its duties as well as its rights, and to insist likewise that property pays its due toll to the commonwealth.
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=Binney, Charles Chauncey.= (Lawyer and Author.)
I cannot pretend to much familiarity with Socialist writings, but I have read with some care the platform of the Socialist Party for the recent election. Some few of the planks have nothing to do with Socialism in itself, and some (that in regard to child labor, for instance) express the views of men of all parties; but the distinctively Socialist part of the platform impressed me as co-operation run mad. People seemed to be regarded as masses only, not as individuals, although the individualist feeling is one of the strongest in human nature, and is of the utmost importance in the progress of civilization.
If a Socialist administration of government be possible as a permanent institution (which I doubt) it would be impossible under the conditions demanded by this platform, because no man's life or property (if any individual property be permitted) would be safe under it. For instance, the legislative power is to be vested in a Congress and legislatures composed of one chamber only, subject to no veto and controlled by no constitution, for the courts are to be forbidden to question the constitutionality of laws. This would make the legislature all-powerful, but the fact that no one branch of the government is all-powerful is an important guarantee of our present liberties. Worse than this, although the experience of ages has shown that the greatest safeguard of liberty is the administration of law by an independent and fearless judiciary--that is, by judges who cannot be dismissed except for official wrongdoing, and who therefore are not merely free to do right in every case, but have the strongest incentives to do so--yet the platform proposes to destroy judicial tenure during good behavior wherever it exists, and to cause all judges to be elected for short terms. If you ask any man of intelligence, who wants only justice, whether he would feel more sure of a just decision in a United States Court before a judge holding office during good behavior, or in a State Court, before a judge elected by the voters of a political party for a short term only, I am confident that he would express much greater confidence in the former.
The Socialist platform asserts that the "capitalist class" controls the judiciary. This broad assertion is ridiculously false. What is true is that the judiciary is not composed of Socialists, that the judges are as yet unwilling to disregard the law, and to decide in accordance with the wishes of Socialists. If, however, the "capitalist class" sought to control the judiciary, it could do so much more easily in the case of judges elected for short terms than in that of judges holding office during good behavior. Evidently the Socialists want a chance to "control" the judiciary themselves, whereas what the country needs is a judiciary uncontrolled by any class, capitalist or Socialist.
The platform declares for collective ownership of all railroads, telegraph and telephone lines, etc. The word "confiscation" is avoided, but confiscation must be intended, for surely the Socialists do not wish to enrich the "capitalist class" by buying out their interests in public service corporations at a fair valuation.