the disease that afflicts society, but they regard its proposed remedies as so radical, as involving so many and great changes, that they refuse even to give them a hearing. This is a mistake. Dr. Theodore D. Woolsey said Socialism threatens to control the working classes everywhere, and "with fear of change perplexes monarchs." It is already controlling large numbers of the upper classes, including scholars, clergymen, and business men. Socialism is taking deep root in our country. Democracy furnishes a soil peculiarly favorable to its growth. Political economists and socialists, both in Europe and America, assure us that the great social question "will not down at our bidding; "a real grievance, a glaring wrong, lies at the bottom of it. Every consideration of justice and humanity demands the immediate intervention of the wisest statesmanship, the broadest philanthropy, and the most sanctified common sense.

God is summoning the church to leaven these conflicting forces of society with the principles of the gospel. If the gospel has no message for the social classes at war with each other, then let us "proscribe Christianity, burn the Bible, teach with the ancient philosophers that natural inequality justifies slavery; above all, no more primary education and newspapers. If the existing inequality of conditions is permanent and necessary, then to spread the gospel, to open a school, to establish a printing-press, and to extend the suffrage, are in so many ways to attack the existing order. "2

It is a hopeful sign when wise and good men and women throughout the land and world are devoting themselves to the study of sociology. The mutterings of the lower classes, the great labor organizations, the sterling character of many of their leaders, the glaring injustice and social tyranny that capitalism is inflicting on society, cannot longer be ignored. Ignorance is inexcusable, indifference criminal, vituperation suicidal.

1 "Communism and Socialism," p. 7.

2 "Socialism of To-day." (Laveleye) Introduction, p. 36.

CHAPTER II

CAUSES THAT HAVE PRODUCED SOCIALISM

"Broken by the oppression of ages, laborers formerly considered themselves born to maintain the great, 'belief and obedience were an inheritance.' A man was a Christian and a subject because he was so born. The Revolution came, saying, Arise! you are the equals of your masters. Quickly follows the question, Wherefore this iniquitous division: opulence to the idle, and destitution to the workers ?"— LAVE

LEYE.

THE causes that have operated to produce Socialism are many and complex. A careful and comprehensive study of social phenomena is indispensable to a right understanding of them.

This phenominal labor movement of the century extends throughout Christendom. It has assumed different names in different localities. In France it was called Communism, or Collectivism; in Russia, Nihilism; in England, Chartism; in Germany, Socialism; in America, Socialism, or Nationalism.

Whatever its name or nationality, it is, in one essential feature, the same everywhere; namely, a protest by wageworkers against the injustice of the present industrial system which deprives them of the fruits of their labor; that is, compels them to take less than they earn.

Most wage-workers making this protest have more points. of agreement than disagreement with Socialism. Socialism is the labor question scientifically formulated. Let us now consider the causes that have produced it.

I. — The Introduction of Machinery.

"Hitherto it is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being."-JOHN STUART MILL. At the beginning of the century nearly all work was performed by hand. To-day it is nearly all done by machin

ery. In the little State of Massachusetts machinery is doing as much work as fifty million men.

The machinery in the milk of Great Britain is equal to 700,000,000 men more than all the adult inhabitants of

the earth.

Gladstone says, "That by the aid of machinery the manufacturing power of the world doubles every seven years." 1

From this cause has occurred within a century an industrial revolution which has so affected human society as to make the world well-nigh a new planet. To-day, by the aid of machinery, one man can provide bread for one hundred, or make cloth for two hundred and fifty, or boots and shoes for one thousand. Labor has smarted under these changes. An invention that enables one man to do the work of one hundred forces ninety-nine to stop work, which often means to stop eating. The introduction of the knitting-frame threw great numbers out of employment.

In the short space of five years, 1856 to 1861, 146,000 embroidery works in Ireland and Scotland were superseded by machinery. In 1846 the power-loom took the bread from the mouths of 250,000 workmen in Flanders. These are merely samples of cases that would fill volumes. "It is no wonder," says Thorold Rogers, "that they looked on machinery with the profoundest hostility, that riots and machine-breaking were frequent, and that the bitterest animosities were engendered." 2

Laws were enacted, punishing machine-breakers with death. In 1816 six persons suffered the death penalty for machine-breaking. The record of this period gives a frightful list of riots, arsons, and murders occasioned by the sufferings of wage-workers. The mode of warfare has been modified, but the struggle continues with ill-concealed animosity, and the distrust and hatred of the laborer is met by the contempt and arrogance of the

master.

1 "Our Country" (Strong), p. 98.
2 "Work and Wages," p. 495.

66

History discloses no tragedy more horrible than the gradual extinction of the English hand-loom weavers an extinction that was spread over several decades and finally sealed in 1838. Many of them died of starvation; many with families vegetated for a long time on two and a half pence a day. On the other hand, the English cotton machinery produced an acute effect in India. The Governor-General reported in 1834-35, 'The misery hardly finds a parallel in the history of commerce. The bones of cotton

weavers are bleaching the plains of India.'” 1

2

Now, while it is true that the ultimate effects of machinery confer an absolute benefit upon laborers, and while its introduction is by no means always attended with discomfort to labor, and figures at hand prove that generally machinery after a while employed more workmen than it superseded, it is, nevertheless, adding insult to injury to tell a laborer, pushed to the wall and rendered helpless by a machine, that in the future, perhaps in the next generation when all industrial processes and social forces become adjusted to the change, labor will be benefited by it. Not one laborer in a thousand knows how this is effected, nor does he care so long as his stomach is empty. In one respect the effect of machinery is a terrible disappointment. It was hoped that it would lighten labor. The toiling masses believed that when invention had made iron hands and steal sinews to do their work, their condition would be improved. But they are disappointed. John Stuart Mill says, "Hitherto it is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being." This is a significant and tremendous indictment of modern industry. By means of machinery. capitalists have been enriched and laborers relatively impoverished, and herein the latter have been deceived and disappointed. It was a quaint and homely saying of Abraham Lincoln, "You can fool some of the people all the time, and you can fool all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time."

1 "Capital" (Marx), p. 431-2.

2 "Contemporary Socialism" (Rae), p. 351.

Laborers, who constitute the vast majority of the people, feel that they have been victimized by the few who have obtained possession of machinery and capital, hence the complaint of Socialism.

The age of machinery has not passed. The disturbing influence, however, and the hardships to laborers in the future, can hardly equal those of the past, although it would not be safe, in view of the possibilities of invention and development that still await us, to say that machinery may not be practically a permanent cause of discontent. It is, however, a burning shame upon our civilization to allow tens of thousands of poor, honest working men and women to be turned out of work by the sudden introduction of machinery without any provision for their employment, thus compelling them to starve, or become the subjects of the degrading and pauperizing driblets of charity. The difference between capitalism and Socialism is this: in the former the workman exists for the machine; in the latter the machine exists for the workman.

"There will therefore be an increasing tendency toward the centralization of great wealth in corporations, which will simply eat up the small manufactories and the small dealers. As the two classes of rich and poor grow more distinct, they will become more estranged, and whether the rich, like Sydney Smith, come to regard poverty as 'infamous', it is quite certain that many of the poor will look upon wealth as criminal."— JOSIAH STRONG, D.D.

Another cause of Socialism is Concentration of Capital, thereby involving the ruin of small industries.

Steam is the most important factor in modern industry. Machinery in detached parts can be operated by hand or horse power, which can be employed in villages and in the homes of the people; but steam will move an immense and complex system of machinery, so that production may take place on a scale so large as to lessen cost.

Capital therefore concentrates, and a few immense establishments now do the work formerly done in villages and hamlets throughout the land. By this change individuals,