Workmen's advocate. (New Haven, Conn.) 1883-1891, 1890-01-11

portion of their surplus from other
sources to keeping this service ever in
advance of actual necessities; that the
successful management of sixty thou.
sand employees is no small achievement,
and that one item Of expense which
should not exist is the profit which must
be paid to the private carrier.
We may also dismiss the inaccurate
definition, the trite and misleading illu-
stratiOn, of communism. We may re-
fuse to quarrel over the statement that
even in these days of joint stock compa-
MES and hired managers, ability and
success, wealth and intellect, are syno-
nymous. We may perhaps pardon the
eulogy of competition as 1.-The stress and
struggle out of which men are born,
and the astonishing statement that it
harms only that particular business in
which it occurs, even though these
statements would ignore the vital di-
stinctiOn betweenindustrial competition,
whose outcome is the hell of poverty,
and the emulation for leadership which
the abolition of competitive industry
would leave untouched and would also
ignore the destruction of competition of
every sort going on before our very
eyes. We may even forgive the criti-
cism of Progress and Poverty" as
without rason d etre, because the rich
are growing less rich, and the poor less
poor A criticism which is but another
attempt to rejuvenate the hoary and
moribund fallacy, kept alive until now
only by the thinnest of statistical cruel,
that the position of the unskilled worker
has been constantly improving.
say, we may forgive all these. But
what shall we say when Mr.. Savage
declares that Socialism offers as much
compensation to the drone as to the wor-
kerr; that the fatal defect with Social
ism, Nationalsm, and the rest, is that
they are in the air. they have no sort of
demonstrate connection with existing
tendencies.
Here indeed, it is hard to forgive.
Mr.. Savage cannot reasonably blame
those who do know what Socialism and
Nat0nalsm are, and there were many
such among his hearers, for being in
censed that one of his prominence and
conceded ability should publicly give
utteranCe to statements showing such
a complete failure to grasp the Soclalstlc
idea. If there is one created thing,
whose practical extinction by Socialism
may be counted upon, that thing is the
social drone, to whom. in many cases,
the present system gives not merely the
same compensation as to the worker,
but greater Let Mr., Savage 20 into any
fashionable assembly of our day, whe-
Their at the church or at the theater, and
he will find more drones than it would
be possible for a whole city to furnish
under Nationalism or Socialism.
Mr.. Savage tells us we must study the
past. In my humble opinion, closer
study of the present would be of use. If
he will resort for information not merely
to the daily press, but to the organs of
the workers themselves; if lie will con-
slider the great practical advance in col
lective control here and abroad if he
will note how largely and increasingly
the Socialistic thought is represented,
not merely in the local governing bodies
in Italy, France, and England, hut in
the national assemblies of France and
Germany; if he will bear in mind the
training which the workers have had in
the last twenty five years in organiza
ton, in discipline, in management, the
education which they have succeeded in
obtaining, spite of all difficulties if he
will do only these things he will find
not merely q demonstrable, but an UNI
mistakable connection between Social
ism and existing tendencies )" he will
find ground for belief that the assump
ton by the people of the functions of
production and distribution is not 80
distant, not so impracticable, as may at
first thought seem; he will find that So
Cialism and Natonalism are lin the air
in a sense that he did not mean he will,
perhaps, be convinced that wave is
now beginning to gather strength and
bulk, the mere echoes of whose break
ing crash will open deafer ears and jar
the scales from binder eyes than his !;
unless indeed that channel through the
public mind be swiftly opened wider,
which he himself-exponent of an
''existing tendency" as he ls--has been
so largely instrumental in forming.
But, though | have found much to
critcise, can also find much room for
| praise and agreement in Mr.. Savage's
condemnation of the wage system, his
deep faith in the ultimate realization of
some 'social dream" and his sincerity;
and | would ask every good citizen to
ponder well what it means even when
Mr., Savage, strong opponent that he is of
Natlonalism and Socialism, can use these
words, Treat the workingmen as a
slave, and his answer is dynamite, as
mine would be were in his place"
w. w. TOWNSEND.
WASHINGTON, Dec 10.