Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1880-07-24
ANCIENT AMP, nopEas SOCIALISM

anu misleading name OF OTeenpachefs.
fhe latter organization was originally
formed for the purpose OF urging the
adoption of false and mischievous cur
rency doctrines, but it had no farther OBJ
ject. Having now absorbed the Nationals,
the Labor organizations, and the Social
lists, it blossoms forth with platform
representing all its component parts, and
Offering as a whole remarkable exhibition
of intellectual blindness and perversity.
The tone Of mind which is necessary to the
growth OF this kind of ideas indeed has
been not inaptly called the prehistoric tone,
for it requires disregard of human ex-
perience only possible to men who have
halted in their. mental development
at the Threshold of the barbarous stage.
The first stumbling which occurs in
the path of these people is invariably the
question of individual rights. The form OF
government existing in the United States,
and especially the historic documents
always associated most intimately with
the genesis of that form of government,
suggest to the ignorant a recognition
and affirmation of the rights of citizenship,
of very broad and sweeping nature. The
assertion of the Declaration of Independ
ence, that ''all men are born equal, ;"
for example, has been productive
of great deal of harm. IL
was a reflection of the enthusiastic fallacies
of the French Revolution, and it is scarcely
necessary to say thatit is mere rhetorical
flourish, since assuredly all men are not
born equal in any practical sense. No
doubt the author of the declaration in
tended to refer solely to political rights,
but as his expression was loose and in
definite, so has the popular Interpretation
of it been general, and consequently wrong.
To the class of crude intelligences we are
now discussing, it is almost inevitable
that the declaration of universal equality
should be accepted as applying not merely
to political rights, but to social condi-
tons. "All men are born equal, seems,
to such minds, equivalent to saying that all
men have the same rights to whatever the
earth produces or human invention creates,
and this irrespective Of any question Of
relative merits or dement's. In Nature no
such doctrine finds any countenance or
confirmation. She says to all her creatures
that they alone shall enjoy who deserve !;
that they alone shall possess who earn !;
that they alone shall continue who
harmonic with their surroundings.
Throughout the animate world these
laws are enforced with pitiless
ngor. There is no attempt to provide for
the feeble, the imbecile, the timid. They
are simply swept from the face Of the
earth. Man as he progresses has been led
to extend the range Of his sympathies, and
to cast about for the means of mitigating
Natures severity. He has succeeded to
some extent. He has kept alive many who
appeared doomed to extinction from the
| his humanitarian tendencies have worked
well or Ill for the future of the race it is
not yet possible to determine. Certainly the
artificial maintenance Of conditions which
if left alone must destroy all born under
them, has perpetuated not only evils but
miseries of the gravest type, and has con-
fronted the most advanced civilization
with dangers startlingly similar to those
which encompassed and finally over
whelmed the old Grecian and Roman re-
publics. Yet there are differences be-
tween the old and the new Socialism so
marked that it may be interesting to note
them. In the first place the masses
in the ancient democracy were separated
from the wealthy classes by boundaries
such as no longer exist. It is not sufii-
GENTLY realized that commerce as we know
it hardly existed for the ancients. Riches
consisted in land and slaves, in mines and
plantations. Manufactures were almost
entirely carried on by slaves, and the free
men who constituted the democracy,
though possessing equal political rights
with the rich class, were practically cut
off from all lucrative occupations. Thus
the social inequalities of the times were
plainly exhibited, and thus the discomfort
of the proletarians was constantly famed
by their forced idleness and consequent in
digence. 1t was therefore natural that
presently they should demand to be paid
for the time they gave to the affairs of the
State, and that as they realized their
power to compel the rich to support them,
they should have been led to abuse the
suffrage more and more, and should at
length have accustomed themselves to
those coniscations of private property
which degrade the old democratic rule to
a mere mob tyranny.