land-owner, for there was no money, while there was vacant land in abundance. From the moment, however, that every man could no longer appropriate a part of the soil, property has ceased to be a right. It has become a crying evil, and the cause of the misery and destitution of the masses."1

It is worthy of note that these and other Socialists of Germany deal with the general principles of right and justice in the social organism. It was reserved for later writers, chief of whom are Marlo, Rodbertus, Marx, and Lassalle, political economists of the first rank, to formulate these principles into a scientific system of political economy. Scientific Socialism, therefore, has for its corner-stone the law of Christian ethics, and the whole vast superstructure rests upon this foundation. Marlo (Professor Winkelbleck), who died in 1859, left a work, part of which had already appeared entitled "Investigations on the Organizations of Labor, or System of Universal Political Economy."

This work ably sets forth the principles of "Associated Ownership." The author foresaw clearly that no permanent improvement in the condition of laborers was possible without the reorganization of society. He draws a sound comparison between what he calls the pagan and the Christian principle in political economy.

The pagan principle sacrifices the masses in order to insure the pleasures and the splendors of a restricted aristocracy, as in the ancient cities. The Christian principle knows only equals, and demands that each should have a share of the produce in proportion to his useful work.

The pagan method of making a profit out of the laborer has taken several forms: at first slavery, then serfdom, forced labor, the right of the feudal lords. To-day there are practical monopolies, "cornerings, privileges, and gambling speculations." 2

Karl Rodbertus has been called the "Father of German Socialism." He was born in 1805 and died in 1875. Although Laveleye says that Rodbertus was not a Socialist, it would be difficult to describe him as anything else. He wrote a half-dozen works on social questions, and, if he did 1 "Socialism of To-day " (Laveleye), p. 8. 2 Ibid., p. 11.

not avow himself a Socialist, he laid down in a few powerful writings, all the essential economic principles on which Socialism rests. Few men have had a greater influence in shaping economic and socialistic thought than Rodbertus. He has been called the "Ricardo of Socialism." Karl Marx, the ablest Socialist and political economist this century has produced, was born in Treves in 1819 and died in 1883. His "Das Kapital" is a truly remarkable book. It is called the "Bible of Socialism." In it Marx shows the essential nature of labor, capital, and "surplus value" and their mutual relations; and shows the process by which, under the capitalistic system, the laborer is exploited, with a wealth of learning, aptness, and copiousness of illustration, conciseness of style, inexhaustibleness of research, and unanswerable logic unequalled in the history of politico-economic literature.

"Das Kapital" (Capital) is the book above all others that one needs to study if he would understand the true inwardness of the capitalistic system. It is not improbable that it will sustain the same relation to the abolition of this system that "Uncle Tom's Cabin " sustained to the abolition of slavery.

The last of the German Socialists whom we shall mention is Ferdinand Lassalle, born in 1825 and died in 1864. Lassalle was to Marx what Aaron was to Moses his mouthpiece. Learned, eloquent, zealous, he kindled a fire in Germany that is burning with ever-increasing brightness, that has spread over the whole world, and that will never be extinguished till Socialism is realized as the divinely ordained order in human society.

Laveleye says, "Ferdinand Lassalle is looked upon by his disciples as the Messiah of Socialism. During his life they listened to him as an oracle, and after his death they venerated him as a demi-god."1

He pictured the luxury, crimes, and selfishness of the bourgeois, the degradation and sufferings of the proletariat so faithfully and graphically as to "attract the attention of the civilized world. Statesmen grew pale and kings

1 "Socialism of To-day," p. 42.

trembled." He took Ricardo's law of wages as developed by Marx, and under the title of "The Iron Law of Wages," showed that the wage system is the most subtle, refined, and cruel means of the exploitation of the laborer.

We pass these great Socialists, Rodbertus, Marx, and Lassalle, the more briefly here because a general idea of their teachings is obtained in the quotations from their writings which we often make as authority for positions taken in this volume.

4. Professorial Socialists, or Socialists of the Chair, have strengthened the principles of State ownership.

They are political economists who insist that ethics are not only germane to, but an essential part of, economic science. The old classical economy assumes that the principles of economic action were as impersonal and metallic as the laws of nature, and as unchangeable as those of the Medes and Persians. It dealt with human beings as the mineralogist would deal with stones, except that the latter would think it fatal to leave out of the account an essential property of this mineral, while the older economists ignored the fact that man had a moral nature. This is as if one should ignore the property of hardness in stone, or malleability in silver, in his consideration of these minerals.

The science of producing wealth must take cognizance of all data which belong to the nature of the producers. These producers are men. They are not machines and animals, but moral and sentient beings. Intelligence, conscience, and affections are active factors in the production of wealth. Money is blood, although seldom the blood of its possessor, but some time, somewhere, it has cost blood; somebody's brow has sweat, somebody's hand grown weary, and somebody's heart ached in the production of every dollar that exists.

Thus it is that the lives of men and women are wrought into every yard of cloth and ton of coal. Political economy, then, is not a matter of hard and fast a priori laws and conclusions, but must take into consideration the historical, the practical, the just, and even the merciful in the social and industrial life of men,

To Germany belongs the honor of first giving this most important truth a scientific recognition. In 1872 a congress of one hundred and fifty members convened at Eisenach. It was attended by leading politicians, but principally by professors of political economy, all of whom agreed that the vicious principle of laissez-faire must be renounced and the State must assume a larger control of industry: this was a long step in the direction of Socialism; hence the name of Professorial Socialists was applied to them.

As political economists, from a purely scientific standpoint, they uttered a protest in the name of justice and humanity, against the existing industrial régime that is being heard and approved throughout the whole earth. Bismarck himself is the distinguished champion of this school. He declares that he will no longer indorse the representatives of a party, which in political economy advocates the right of the stronger and deserts the weak in the struggle against the might of capital, and which refers him to free competition, to private insurance, and I do not know what else in short, refusing him all help of the State." The ethics of this passage are distinctively Christian. With this school the State is a divine institution. It is God manifest in the body social and politic. The doctrine of self-interest is repudiated. The unjust, unsocial, and iniquitous inequalities that exist are attributed to the present economical arrangement, which must accordingly be modified by the application of the socialistic principle of association.

1

A gross and material individualism which fosters pride, caste, and oppression, must yield to that measure of equality which God has ordained. There is something in this world more sacred than mammon, and that is man. "What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?

All this in the name of political economy! Says Roscher, "The starting-point, as well as the object-point, of our science is man. All hope of resolving the social question'

6

1 As quoted in " French and German Socialism," p. 235.

2 Mark xiii. 36,

without a moral and intellectual elevation of mankind is abandoned. The Christian religion is assigned an important work in this field, and political economy becomes a Christian science. To see the leaders of economical thought starting with anything rather than religious predilections, gradually forced to this position, may indeed be styled a triumph of Christianity." 1

5. State ownership finds a powerful ally in Christian Socialism.

If the Socialist leaders and organizations, and the latest and ablest political economists have been building upon the precepts of the gospel, as the only sure foundation for a sound economic system, we should naturally expect that the Christian church would hasten to seize this vantage ground.

The church, however, has become such a capitalistic institution that she is handicapped in any reform which. touches the question of property. Christian men and women have discovered that the principles of Socialism and the precepts of Jesus are strangely similiar, and the result is an avowedly Christian Socialism.

About forty years ago a company of noble Christian men in England, established a society to promote co-operation and education among working people. Chief among these Christian Socialists are to be found such men as Mr. Thomas Hughes, author of "Tom Brown at Rugby; Frederick Maurice, Charles Kingsley, Mansfield, Lord Ripon, E. V. Neal, Ludlow, and Ellison. They established forty cooperative societies in England. These societies were mostly for production, and had a longer or shorter existence, and were succeeded by co-operative societies for distribution. While these societies were strictly economical, they sought to apply the Christian idea of brotherhood by co-operation and sharing of profits, as against the unchristian principle of competition. The founders were filled with indignation at the misery of working men amid increasing wealth, and perceived as by a revelation from Heaven that the Manchester liberalism, by which was meant freedom of contract, 1 "French and German Socialism" (Ely), p. 244.