The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1903-01-19

Indiana $500. in New Jersey 5000 and
in Michigan 5000. All these States have
great Industrial centers and large for
eign populations. New York, likewise,
gave about 10000 votes to socialist
candidates, except candidates for Gov
ernOr. who suffered to the extent Of
$4,000 votes from Mr.. Coler's popularity
with socialists and from the Demo-
cratic declaration for government own
ership of the coal mines. We find So
cialism manifestfng itself also in the
wholly agricultural States. Its vote in
Kansas was 4,000 in Iowa 5000, in Ne
braska 5000. in North Dakota 1000, in
South Dakota 2,700, in Utah 5000, in
Washington 5000 and in Oregon $500.
These figures suggest that with the
decadence of Populism some of it's
more radical elements, instead Of drift
ing back into the old parties, have gone
on in the way they had started, and
ended up as socialists. Certainly in
these prosperous rural States there is
none of that pressure of factory life,
with it's close labor organizations,
which In the cities offer such oppor-
tunities for the socialist propaganda.
Socialism there must be founded on
pure theory or on a different sort of
discomfort from that of the town wage
Garner 1t reflects the granger side of
the antitrust feeling.
1t is evident that socialism Is grad
ually gaining strength in this country
both as a distinct party cry and as a
principle Of action operating on those
still adhering to old political alliances
Possibly the cause is to be sought in a
world movement which has reached the
United States after having spread over
Germany, France and Italy. Perhaps
socialism is one Of the inevitable re-
suits of the pressure of the highly de-
veloped social organization, and springs
up here only as our concentrated in
dustries are built up, tending to repro
duce Old World conditions. There Is
reason, however. to believe that this Is
not the whole story. Local causes
probably play a part in making social
lists, especially in the rural West, where
European industrial conditions are not
even suggested by experience or
preached by foreign agitators. 1t must
be that large numbers Of people are led
by study Of our own laws and business
operations to feel that injustice is done,
and it hehCoves those who believe in
republican government and individual
istic organization of society to remove
occasion for such beliefs.
The chief teachers Of socialism in this
country are those who have ostenta-
tiously paraded their power under
present conditions to conjure enormous
wealth from combinations, from trusts,
from water, from railroad discrimina-
ton, from legislative favor. When
people see vast corporations built up
by secret contracts with common car
riers in violation of law, when they see
other corporations permitted by i'll ad-
justed tariff duties to sell their goods
here for so much that it IS profitable to
purchase abroad those same goods
manufactured here and freight them
back. 1t Is no wonder that they grow
discontinued. We firmly believe that a
plunge into socialism would be the
ruin of the country. Its salvation
must be found in free initiative and
enterprise as Of old. Whatever seems
to large bodies of the people to trench
upon that freedom by granting special
privilege tends to provoke demands for
such regulation of equality as will kill