The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1900-11-27

! 7olls, LOI SlduulllS mere lO-HlSIlI dS al
advocate of the first political expires
sion of socialism that has presented it
self to us here in America. We are jus
now in the beginning of the first at
tempt to crystalize in political action
an American socialist movement.
/ came into the socialist movemen
from different point of view, perhaps
from many others. 1 was, as most of vol
know, preacher, and a teacher in con
nection with an American college, anC
have been seeking to know how thu
highest ideals of life might be made
livable in the world whether we take
Jesus or Plato or Buddah or Mazzini
the sum of all that they have taught is
that human life, in order to become
lVable for the bulk of mankind, in or
der to become happy and reasonable
and healthful and noble must be lived
out under what they called the law OF
cooperation.
And out of a passion of soul, out OF
an infinite yearning to find some way
by which that law of love, of cooper
alton, might be realized and change the
world from an arena of struggling and
world that might be indeed a paradise,
I came into the economic problem, and
through that into socialism"
All political questions are to-day re-
solving themselves into economic ques-
lions. The politics of the future will be
economic politics. Although we are
not aware of it, all political questions
are already merely property questions
. Politics the world over have
nothing else to do but be the grea'
agent of great business interests. $ =
cialism comes to make politics eco o.
mic in an entirely new sense In fact,
all that we have understood by politics
will pass away:
Without any regard to what you de-
sire or would have, the present indus
trial system is getting to the end of it's
string. Face to face with this world
crisis, it is easy to define the attitude
of the two great political parties. The
republican party is frankly and avow-
edly the party of the capitalistic order
of things. 1t stands for the perpetuity
and development of the system of p1i-
vate capitalism. AT any rate, the re-
hind them, know exactly what they
want. Those who represent the leader
ship Of the democratic party do not
know what they want, but in so far as
they attempt to meet the great indus
trial problem, they meet it with meth
DDS which are entirely inadequate and
The election of democrat
ic president and Congress would be a
movement. Why? Because
they propose to go back and begin
century ago. We cannot go back to
individual ownership and free conpeti-
tion, though the capitalistic develop
ment had not taken place. To talk of
against the trusts is as fool
ish as to talk of legislating against the
rising tide or the solar system.
Taken broadly, socialism means sim
ply the ownership of the sources and
means of production and distribution
by the people and for the people, in
stead Of by the few for the few. This
is merely expressed economically; but
II has very much larger meanings than
that. 1t seeks justice and equity in
production and distribution, not be-
cause men ask for more things, but be-
cause men want more things where
with to express themselves in full and
free and noble living.
We have not yet had any such thing
as a coherent and orderly civilization.
We have as vet only a menagerie
world. We have not yet assembled into
sanity. Nothing is more insane or be-
niehted than the notion that one man
can really prosper at the expense of the
other man. Socialism does not come as
IN attack upon property; it comes as
IN attack upon the world method of
stealing the property of the people. No
is sacred property until it be-
comes in the truest sense of the word
common property.
1t is not a question of character.
Though employers were archangels and
rades union men angels, the system of
Kings which makes men depend upon
,ther men for chance to earn their
bread is elementally and eternally
wrong, To be obliged to sell
mes labor power at terms out of ones
control is simply to sell ones self into
slavery, A mans labor power is his
life, and when he sells it he sells his
life, and sells it for bread. I am not |
flaming you for it, nor myself for it.
Socialism comes then, not as a RENE
ly, not as a tinkering and mending of |
he old but as a new state of society. |
t does not come, attempting to cure
it comes proposing a new
vilization,-a civilization that shall be |
t last so organized that every child |
hall be born into the world with an |
quail inheritance with every other |
hid in all the opportunities and the |
esourCes that go to make fullness of |
ife, and all the forces that are in the |
world shall surround that child to |
make it blossom in love, in trust, in
God will, in healthfulness of soul as
veil as body, and push it upward in
reedom and beauty of living.
And it is because this coming presi-
entail election offers through IS cam
idates, both national and local. the
rst tangible, even tentative, step to-
ard crystalzing an American social
1t movement, that [ have FASTENED
cross the seas to take my place in the
n Get, frr,la ,f Y