St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1884-03-28
ENGLISH .SOCIALISM = A1TERIC4N
GENTR ALIZATION.


Herbert Spencer has lately published some
articles, in which he essays to prove that the
English people are drifting into slavery. 1t
will astonish most people to learn that the
slavery which he foresees is socialism in its
extreme development. The English people
are by degrees passing under the control of
the government, and this process will in time
result in the absorption of all power by the
state, and this will be in truth pure socialism.
He defines slave as one who has to give
his time and labor for the benefit of another.
If all power become concentrated in the
state, then every mans labor will be directed
in the interests of the whole, and not for
himself A slave is no less slave when he
works for company or a community, than
when he labors for a single owner. This is
the form of slavery which Spencer sees i'm
pending
Precisely what is occurring in England is
being developed in this country in the di-
rection of the gradual encroachment of the
central powers in the management of the
affairs of the people. In England there are
poor rates; the government is entering on
the work of constructing houses for the
poor, it establishes the hours of labor it forces
the inspection of all houses in the interest
of sanitary requirements; it works the tele-
graph, and now this ownership of the tele-
graph is employed as an argument why the
government should take possession of the
railways. Educational matters are cared for
by the government to certain extent with
the result that every year the people expect
the government to do more and they them
selves to do less. All that can be said in re-
gard to the enlargement of the area of the
powers of the English government can be
said of the authorities of this country.
There is yearly growing belief in the
efficacy of the government as compared with
the ability of the people to govern themselves.
There is clamorous appeal to the state in all
cases. Whenever there is belief that in
temperance is prevalent the state is asked to
burden itself with the evil and to provide a
remedy. There is a growing demand that
the state shall take charge of the telegraph
service, and it is even not uncommon to
hear limitations from those who are afflicted
with the mismanagement, the combinations,
the discrimination against certain points Of
railways, that the only remedy for this con
dition is to be found in the ownership and
control of the railways by the central govern
ment.
There is a complaint of illiteracy and
straightway there is an appeal to the state to
care for the matter. There is a demand
pending that the Federal government shall
prohibit the manufacture and sale of liquors
We have nothing which can be termed poor
rates, but there are heavy demands on the
part of the state to support poor houses, asy-
lums for the insane, for weak minded child
rem and similar purposes, and it is found in
every instance that these philantropic efforts
in place of abating or obliterating the abuses
or evils aimed at, have the effect to increase
them. 1t is well known that pauperism in
creases in proportion as means are provided
to sustain it. Wherever there is fund for
the support of a tramping, vagabond class,
there is always an increase in the numbe of
those wanting relief.
The whisky drinking operative, who knows
that there is an agency to which he can ap-
ply for the relief of the family during the
coming winter, is stimulated by the knowl-
edge to greater excuses in expenditure in
the dram shops, while other men who have
not yielded to the enemy in the struggle be-
tween the demands of their appetites and the
wants of their families are led by the estab-
lishment of relief agencies to yield the strug
gle in the interests of the demand for drink
Sc ha1d NV, 4bo4; :,
mistake on the part of society to care for
the pauper element on the ground that it is
an effort which simply stimulates the growth
and aids in the perpetuation of this social
malady.
There's no doubt that if the English gov
eminent is drifting towards socialism, ours
is going in the same direction with equal
rapidity. AS in their case, every encroach-
ment made is used as a precedent in some
other direction. Some three dozen legisla-
lures are III session each year, or nearly each
year, and each adds hundreds of laws to the
already monstrous mass which crowd the
storehouses of finished legislation. A law is
almost necessarily as restriction in some
form or another on the powers of the people.
As Spencer says: ''Every extension OF the
regulative policy involves an addition to the
regulative agents, further growth of
officialism, and an increasing power of the
organization formed of officials.n
Indeed the more numerous public instru-
mentalities become, the more is there gen
Grated in the citizens the notion that every-
thing is to be done for them and nothing by
them. Each generation is made less familiar
with the attainment of desired ends by indi-