The Globe-republican., 1890-07-23
Horace Greeley's SOcIalistic Greed.

Horace Greeley's SOclallstlc Creed.
Nearly a score of years have passed
since the first editor of the New York
Tribune laid down his pen for the last
time. A new generation has grown up
who perhaps look upon his name with
but fading and traditiOnary interest,
but posterity should not forget the name
of one of the greatest journalists Amer
lea has ever produced, the man whose
great, warm heart was ever ready to es-
pouse the cause of the dOwnfallen and
oppressed, one who had the moral cOur-
age to stand for the right in the face OF
all opposition.
Horace Greeley always said what he
believed to be true. strike where it might
yet few men had that power of enlisting
the abiding personal affections of their
intimate acquaintances and the deep and
profound respect of the great thinking
public. The one was due to his warm
and sympathetic nature and the other to
his answering loyalty to truth and his
own convictions.
With his own far-sightedness he saw
deeper and truer to the heart of the So
cial and political problem than the great
mass of the rabble of readers who in
turn jeered or applauded his utterances.
But he rose above the storm of OppOsi-
ton though saddened and wounded by
personal detractiOn; yet he was never
disheartened from the time he left the
little printing shop at Putney, Vermont,
until he had entered upon his journal
istic career. 1t was his to tell the truth
as he saw it, and he never faltered. Over
fifty years ago he saw the criminally
wasteful and cruelty unjust condition of
our sOcia! organization and stirred him
to action. He strove at first alone and in
the dark. to formulate some means to
give even partial relief. Now that the
term has lost all reproach he can be
pointed to as one of the pioneers of
American socialism.
He was derided by some and denounced
by many. The times were not ripe for
the seed he planted, but he gave to the
young movement the aid of his pen and
the cooperation and conservation of his
life work. He did not live to see the
growth of the principles he eXpOunded
but he never wavered in his allegiance
to them. And when we read over the
writings of his pen they have a prophetic
ring; when we look around us and see
their partial realization we see the gulf
between the rich and the poor growing
daily wider, the disappearance of the
middle class-the bone and sinew of the
nationalist becoming proletarian class;
every day tells of some new combine,
the concentration of more wealth in
fewer hands.
To those who to-day are looking for
ward to the future with larger hopes it
will no doubt interest them to know the
statement of social economy to which
Horace Greeley held:
Il. | believe that there need be and
should be no paupers who are not infan-
tile, idiOtic or disabled; and that civil
lied society pays more for able bodied
pauperism than the necessary cost of its
eXtirpatiOn.
50. l believe that they babble idly and
libel Providence who talk of surplus la
Dor or the inadequacy of capital to sup
ply employment to all who need it.
Where labor stands idle. save in the
presence of some great public calamity,
there is demonstrated deficiency. not of
capital but of brains.
3. believe that the efficiency of hu-
man effort is enormously, ruinously dim
inished by what | term social anarchy.
That is to say, we spend half our ener-
gies in building fences and providing
safeguards against each others roguery.
1t is quite within the truth to estimate
the annual product of our national in
dustry at less than One-half of what it
might be if better applied and directed.
~. Inefficiency in production is par
alleled by waste in consumption.
A thousand cooks are required and a
thousand fires maintained to prepare
badly the food of q township, when a
dozen fires and hundred cooks might
do it much better and with vast saving
in quantity as well as improvement in
quality.
''5. Youth should be season of in-
struction in industry and the useful arts,
as we'll as in letters and the sciences mas
tered by their aid. Each child should
be trained to skill and efficiency
in productive labor. The hours of chill
dren should be alternately devoted to
labor, study and recreation-say two
hours to each before and like allotment
after dinner each secular day. Thus
each child would grow up an adept. not
merely in letters but in arts-a skillful
worker as we'll as a proficient in the les
sons of the school room, familiar with
mechanics as well as agricultural pro-
cesses, and acquainted with the use of
steam and the direction of machinery.
&c. Isolation is at war with efficiency
and with progress. As iron sharpeneth
iron so are mans intellectual and in
ventive faculties stimulated by contact
with his fellow men.
81. The poor werk at perpetual disad-
vantage in isolation, because of the in
adequacy of their MEANS" Then fol-
lows detailed illustration of the disad-
/