The record-union., 1896-04-11

bureau ana raQlcal reIOrmatlOu ana
economy in the American census sys-
tenn commands respect.
A REPLY TO THE SOCIALISTS.
Mr.. Guniton, in his magazine for April,
in discussing German socialism, de-
clares that there is no error in econom-
les more fatal to sound thinking than
the idea that the advantages of capital
can be monopolized or absorbed by the
capitalist. Yet this is a fundamental
dogma of the socialists. Nothing is cap
ital which is not wealth employed in
producing wealth, and 1t can only be
so employed when engaged in paying
wages, buying raw materials, setting up
plants. producing implements of labor,
and in making loans to be used in en-
pioying labor in production, transport
alton, Transforming or transferring
either the products Of labor, Or the con-
ditions under which labor can work, all
Of which is done by labor, and is q form
Of labor.
But take the wealth that is used in
ostentatious living, 1t is merely an en-
ployment of labor itself, to disperse
wealth among laborers, which is the
very use Of wealth, which socialists re-
gard as most humane and beneficial,
since dispersion is the opposite of accu-
mutation Mr. Gunton adds:
to concrete example, the vast rise in
wages, from Is and 25 cents a day to So
and 81 day for skilled journeymen,
which has marked the nineteenth CEN
tury is part of that present order of
things" due to capitalist aids, which
socialism denounces. While the psychic
or intellectual force which has fought
for each specific rise in rates of wages
in detail has been the unions Of organ
lied laborers, animated by the social
stimulus of larger personal freedom and
broader political rights, more liberal
education and a better standard Of life,
yet the economic conditions which have
rendered continual concessions of these
manufactures, agriculture and trans
portation. These it is which have
raised wages sixteen-fold in machine
using countries, leaving them the same
in hand-labor countries.
This we take 1t is the most succinct
and lucid reply that has yet been made
to the German socialists. 1t is worthy
of careful examination and thought. 1t
will be found to stand the test.
Senator Raines of New York defends
the Raines liquor regulation law in an
essay in the North American Review" !"
The Senator Is very modest in his
claims, and inspires respect by his tenn
perate language and conservative posi-
ton. One point he makes has not been
of the new law, namely, that now all
places where liquors are sold to be
drunk on the premises, the room, or
store, or saloon, must be kept open,
see inside Of 1t on the days and during
the hours when the law forbids selling
liquor This is intended to defeat the
side and back door trick. The reason
AYERS, is not because the people were op-
posed to 1t, but because those in the
traffic have been SO thoroughly organ
ized that enforcement was impossible.
This organization has controlled, or at
least cowed, all officials. or large pro-
portion of them, whose offices are neces-
sarily involved in any enforcement of
an excise law. The Senator assumes
that under the new law organization
will be less effective, because local off,
cials will have so little to do with the
enforcement Of the law. Here, then, is
the keynote of the new law. 1t is not
a local regulation, but State enact
ment, with State officials chosen especi-
ally to carry the law into effect, and
equipped with a force Of special officers
who cannot be involved in local poll
tics, and whose positions will not be de-
pendent upon the Endorsement or oppo-
sftion of the liquor interest. If the bill
Of the Senator works as he forecasts
for it, then New York will have solved
a problem that has not had solution In
any other State Of the Union.
The San Francisco Board of Health
is preparing to make war on impure
food exposed in the markets OF that
city. Well, well, is that famous law
against adulteration and Justification
Of food to be enforced after all? 1t will