Industrial freedom. [volume] (Edison, Wash.) 1898-1???, 1898-06-11

advocated this process for overelghteeh
hundred wears. and has as yet produced
no visible improvement ut all: human
mature is as essentially selfish to-day as
it was when the Roman emperors
swaved the world The truth Is that
under present conditions no man can
live a thoroughly honest life or carry
out the teachings of the Sermon on the
Mount: anyone who tried. would at once
find himself either in the grave or the
workhouse. What we have to dois not
to reform ourselves and then change
the environment. but to alter the com
petitive environment. and so be ena-
bled to reform ourselves.
The second branch of the Christian
remedy consists in charity and almsgiv-
ing and similar means of patching over
the evils that result from the present
system. We are told that supported
by voluntary contributions is the
noblest motto of our Christian age: but
one is bound to reflect that if it were
not for these drags which voluntary
charity puts on to the headlong down.
ward rush of the victims of competition.
the capitalist system would have long
ago been overwhelmed by the too
patent results of its operations, and by
an outbreak of wrath on the part of all
rightminded people that nothing could
have checked. The truest scope Of
Christian charity does not consist in
acting as the subservient handmade OF
industrial competition-the attendant
who drags away the dead and wounded
and decorously spreads clean sand over
the blood-stained arena-but in found
ing the beginnings of a new system
that shall render the old unnecessary
and even impossible.
But the orthodox Christian does now
adays so further than this; he proposes
not to alter the present conditions of in
dustry, but to moralize them: he says
that there would be no objection to Il
system of employers and employed, pro-
vided the employers were all humane
and kindly men. This is the argument
that the Southern planters, many of
them excellent Christians, used in the
days of American slavery; they said
that the abolition of slave-holding was
an absurd dream, and that all that was
really requisite was to convert the cruel
and harsh Shareholders into good Chris
tian men.
But the truth is that in nearly every
business it is the bad employer that
sets the pace, both in wages and in con-
ditions of work and in the adulteration
of goods. and those who will not keep
up with that pace, instead of having to
be content, as some kindly people sup
pose, with diminished profits. are sim
ply driven into bankruptcy, or forced
to retire from business altogether.
Even if every employer were converted,
there would be no security against
their dying or having moral relapse,
and an honesty produced by these
means would always be an artificial and
unnatural strain: our work is not to
make people honest in spite of the. old
system, but to make them honest be-
cause of the new. The only way to get
rid of bad shareholders was to get rid
of slave-hOlding altogether.
All this is admitted by the orthodox
Socialist, from whom the practical Com
munist does not differ so much in his
ultimate aim as in the spirit in which
he undertakes his work, and the method
which he proposes to adopt. The So
cialist of our own times, unlike his pro-
| totypes, who first used the name sixty
| years ago, wants to convert all the
world before he starts CARRYING his
principles into practice, and for the
most part he appeals TO people on the
basis of personal comfort, and views his
subject from materialist standpoint.
But if a movement aims not at honesty
but at comfort, experience shows that
it will never generate that self-sacrific-
| ing enthusiasm which alone can trans
form the world: man will not risk a
| little ease to secure more ease, but he
will risk any mere material benefit to
secure the right development of his
own nature and the attainment of the
! higher life. The truest Socialism is
not politics but religion. and means
not only creed to be taught. but a life
| to be lived: agitation is necessary and
| desirable, but will never be effective
until those who agitate have themselves
abandoned individualist industry and
the individualist life. My plea is that
under the present system | am compell-
ed to live dishonest and immoral life,
and, now that there are Socialists
enough to found a community, it is not
an answer to that plea to say that we
must all 90 on living dishonesty and
merely agitate for the conversion of
the ld,-[From "a Plea for Com
munism."