Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1889-10-19
THE LATEST FAD

In the Quarterly journal Of Economics,
n. P. Gilman, considering the question of
"Nationalism" in the United States, now
being agitated in New England, declares
that there is one barrier to national social
ism in this country, which it can never
surmount; that is, the intense individual
life of the States of the American Union.
Mr.. Gilman has named the very root of the
barrier to anarchism, socialism, inter
nationalism and all kindred ills, in this
statement The Federal idea is too deeply
implanted in the American political char
acter to be uprooted without total over
throw of the civilization of the country.
In fact, 1t is inwoven with the personal
life of the citizen, and so long as republic
can institutions have any vigor at all, he
will not part with it.
This idea of a permanent league in
which each State retains its sovereignty
beyond possibility of surrender without
disruption of the compact of the league;
in which each State surrenders for ali time
its right to assail any other State of the
league, and in which all affairs of COM
mon interest, for common defense and
strength, are committed to a federated
body which we know as Congress, is the
safeguard of the Nation against the in
siduous assaults of radical socialism and
the new-fanged literary child of Mr..
Bellamy. The practical results of that
Federal idea have been a powerful nation
of phenomenal growth, and advanced state
of general intelligence, the immense bet
terment of the condition of the working
people, wonderful rise in wages without
proportional advance in the cost of
living, a national arm equipped with
the patriotic strength of millions of
devoted freemen, the promotion of
science, art and general education, the
Ieveling Of class distinctions and the open
ing up TO the Iowliest of the broadcast pos
sibIe opportunities to rise socially and
pelitically-these have been the rewards
of the idea against which socialism, no
matter what its guise, can hurl only theo-
ries and speculations of Utopian character.
Without our system of separate and indie
pendent commonwealth it is improbable
that these triumphs could have been
achieved, or this freedom of human action
have been secured. But turning to the
expression of Mr.. Gilman, who has assumed
the Office of exposing the sophistries of
Bellamys Looking Backward" we quote
"To the construction of scheme of
socialism which shall recognize the exist
ence of forty or fifty States as distinct as
Massachusetts aud Louisiana, or Pennsyl-
vania and Oregon, some bold thinker Ray
vet address himself But the practical
difficulties which the simple facts of his
tory and geography have created will be
easily annihilated only on paper. Naive
writers in the Nationalist find in the forma
ton of hundred Nationalist clubs in a
year and halt, and in the sale of 100000
copies of an interesting romance, the sure
prophecy of an immense change in Ameri-
can institutions within dozen years, and
of their entire transformation within fifty.
But not one in hundred of the readers of
Looking Backward has yet Joined
Nationalist club even. Should half the
population of the United States join the
Nationalist party, which has not yet ap-
peared above the horizon, they would find
the political difficulties of their programme
insuperable."
Mr.. Gilman points out that the nervous
fear of Mr.. Bellamy concerning trusts has
led him to conclusions unwarranted by
history and the experience of free peoples.
That the development of legislation under
democracy to meet evils must of neces-
sity be considerably posterior to the full
evolution of the phenomena with which it
deals. since the inventive talent and the
business shrewdness Of modern men have
ALWAYS an advantage over the cumberous
machinery of Legislatures and Congresses.
Scouting the panic of the Nationalist"
as senseless, he holds that Mr.. Bellamy's
adherence to the European type of social
ism is regardless of any popularity in the
American situation, since he consigns the
American State to humiliation, wipes out
all local attachment and proposes a plan
for industrial socialism that would be I'M
manageable in country of such enormous
size and population as ours. Nationalism,
in short, he decribes as founded upon the
basis of clever novel, and distinguished