The Denison review. [volume] (Denison, Iowa) 1867-current, 1899-06-13

ness and selfishness of man, and of that
eternal struggle for supremacy too
often sees the destruction of the honest
and the true and the elevation of the
dishonest and the false. ITO him that
hath, to him it shall be added, and
from him that hath not, it shall be
taken away even that which he hath"
is the absolute rule Of to-day. The say
ing is scriptural, but it has no more
foundation in the eternal fitness of
things and is no more an excuse for the
existing conditions than the saying.
servants, obey your masters was a
warrant for human slavery. Socialism
we say is the tendency of the times.
The fact that dollhouse experiments
in communism have failed does not
prove that the theory of competition is
not failure also.
Can we look upon the homes of power
ty and want, can we see the gaunt face
of want in land of plenty and say
that our system is a success? The ed
itor of the REVIEW is republican, re-
publicanism is to him creed, he be-
lieves that the best heart and the best
brain of the nation belongs to and is a
part Of the republican party. He be-
lieves that in its best heart and its best
brain lies the salvation of the nation,
He has no sympathy with pessimism,
with class hatreds, with demagogical
denunciations, but he does believe that
both of the present parties are but tenn
porary and that republicans and demo-
Gratis alike are drifting to stage where
| socialism Will be the natural, the inev-
table conclusion.
1t is curious that a word which in its
very make up has so much of friendliness
and brotherly love, should be so mis-
understood. SO much reviled. To nine
tenths of the people socialism carries
with vague idea of Herr Most, and
Haymarket riots and Nihilists and lead
pipes filled with dynamite. Yet social
ism means when reduced to it's most
simple terms, a:state where competition
in business does not exist. We are
told that socialism would destroy per-
sonal ambition. What ambition would
it destroy save the sordid ambition of
money-making, the ambition to be
richer than ones neighbor, the ambi-
tion to dine off costlier plate, to eat of
more expensive dishes, to array oneself
in finer raiment? Would socialism de-
stroy the ambition to be honored, would
it stitle the ambition to be good and
true and unselfsh? Would it make the
| artist less an artist, the poet less q
poet, the scholar less student?
Surely, God works in mysterious
way, for it hardly seems possible at
first glance that the trust" the 'smon.
opoly," the 'scombine'' should be the
chiefest present influence leading to-
ward socialism,. A trust is socialism
on selfish plan. A number Of people
engaged in the same business awake to
the fact that competition is the death
of trade. They see that each one is
wearing out his strength. is using up
all the best energies of life in the
effort to compete with and undersell
his neighbor." These men seeing the
futility of competition unite in order to
get living profit. Human greed steps
In howeverand the living" profit be-
comes Surdensome and unjust profit
and the evil of the trust is manifest. II
is fact however that large combina-
tions of capital and labor have come to
stay. They have come just as the
threshing machine, and the cotton. gin
and the sewing machine came and theil
existence is just as inevitable. Al
trusts become more burdensome, the
people are beginning to awake to ar
effort to control them. The first steI
has been to blindly deny their exis
tence, to hide our heads like ostriches
swear that they do not exist. The sec
ond step will be an effort to control, tt
insure that the profit shall be but 9
} reasonable living profit and no more
The fight will be a hard one, no one
will relinquish any advantage withou'
a struggle. The third step, after The
failure to control, for the attempt will
fail, will be ownership by the people
and for the people. Municipal owner
ship of street cars and public utilize!
has already begun. and it is but the be
ginning of the end. We do not believ.
there can be any other outcome of oul
social difficulties, it is long way off
many social struggles will take place
many other subterfuges and panaceas
such as free silver. will be offered. bu
in the end it must come to this.
Sufficient unto the day is the eyi
: thereof. The future is before us bu
the present is at hand. To do to-day's
task, to solve the next confronting diff
Guilty is the duty becoming to man
We believe the republican party car