The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-01-08
SOCIALISM IN AMERICA
Continued from Third Page.)

-
 tunist like Franklin, Washington and | Lincoln. The state may manufacture | goods in prison, inspect buildings, enforce sanitary precautions, require 1 teachers, lawyers and physicians to | pass examination, regulate the saloon | and protect depositors In savings banks | and insurance companies, supervise | railroads, demand proper brakes and | heating apparatus, ensure the safety of l vessels, inspect mines and factories, l limit hours of labor, provide election l ballots, etc. etc, but all this does not | commit 1t to any general theory of the sta supervising individual effort. It is | obvious that the author ranges himself rather with the democrats than with | the republicans, who stand for centrali- i Zation and the enlargement of national | authority. The independent element be- lieves that no great extension of powers ought to be projected in the nation un- l til the civil service of the country and the states has been thoroughly rid of l the spells virus. There is a growing demand in the United States to take the public charities, the free schools, the public libraries, the public parks and numerous other features of mu- nicipal administration "out of politics" The conclusion of the author is there l fore, that socialism as a system has no l hold upon the distinctively American l spirit Here, as Lowell says, the peo- l ple's will is protected against the peo- | ple's whim. As critic of the existing l order the socialist shines with such brilliancy as to delude many but as the expositor of new order he has no sue | cess. A complete transformation of | the natural genius would be demanded
 before the schemes of Karl Marx, Bel lamy or Groulund would be acceptable. A society in which highly centralized government would be the one employer of labor, the one producer the one manufacturer, the one transporter and the one distributor, in which there would be no trade and no competition, in which the individual would wither and the government tend to be all in all such society has nothing in it to inflame the imagination, even in com parison with the present imperfect | system. Equality of reward would be secured only by a augmentation which would raise in revolt every Anglo-Sax- on instinct of personal freedom. Weak in self-assertion, stunted in personal ambition and deprived of the innulner- able indictments of individual interest and voluntary cooperation, the citizen of the socialistic state may well appear to the actual American puny creature | The state socialist would have to es- tabish some new form of government. Republican institutions, as we have them, are plainly incompetent. An ad- ministration numbering millions of of- ficers, centralized in the highest degree and dispensing entirely with our fa-
 miliar checks and balances of power. with the rigid discipline and despotism of an army, would be requisite But no
 conception could be more radically op- posed to the political ideas under which we live. The complete demolition of the
 structure of Anglo-Saxon freedom. painfully reared through centuries.
 would be the initial task in the social istic reconstruction.
 This ends the theoretical presentation of the subject. In further chapters the
 author takes up in detail rhe considera
 ton of nationalism in the United States.
 Christian socialism, the industrial fut-
 sharing, the functions Of the state. the
 higher individualism, social spirit and the way to Utopia. It would take us
 too long to follow these various criti-
 cisms and plans in full and my task has
 been simply to present the trend of the
 book by quotations and condensation.
 A select bibliography of books on So- cialism is a valuable feature of the ap-
 f1,o IA
 worthy of being read to remind us that
 while we go forward, we may go for
 ward with thoughtfulness, circumspec- tion and prayerfusness, keeping close to
 fact and truth, not losing the possible
 in the ideal and withal, not sacrificing in the name of progress the highest and
 best things, wrought by the centuries in the spirit and soul of Americans.