The Irish standard., 1905-07-29
Equal Rights Of All, Advocated and Insisted
Upen by Socialists, Is Not
First Principle.
How the Irresistible Force of Logic Drives
Both Moderates and Extremists
to the Same Goal.

industry, economy. Before all man.
kind is reduced to dead level in all
the points mentioned, the equality
dreamt of by the Socialists is utterly
impossible. Let us take four brothers
as equal to one another as nature per-
mits. One of them prefers to remain
unmarried. The other three marry.
The first is childless; the second has
three children; the third has eight.
The rights and duties of the unmarried
brother are quite different from those
of his married brothers. The rights
and duties of the latter three have
varied still more. The first has to pro-
vide for himself and his wife; the sec.
ond for five persons; the third for ten
Add the differences of talent, industry,
economy, and in less than half gen.
GRAFTON the circumstances of the four
brothers have completely changed.
Add possible accidents, sickness, mis-
fortune, persecution, and within one
generation the original equality has
entirely disappeared. And what diff
ferences will set in during the follow
ing generation which has already be-
gun under such unequal conditions?
Socialists may object, We suppose,
to the present state of society, whilst
in the future Socialistic state such a
development from equality would be
impossible, as the care of the children,
the sick, the helpless would be in the
hands of the community; woman
would take the same part in labor as
man, and each one would live upon
the produce of his own labor. Let
that pass for the present. But it still
remains true that inequality is the
necessary outcome of human nature,
and that Socialism could not prevent
such inequality without external VIC.
lence. A gardner may affect that all
trees of park are equal, but only by
the continued and violent application
of the pruning-knife. The Socialists
in the reign of terror tried the same
experiment. In order to obtain the
dead level of Sansculotte equality,
they cut off the heads Of 100000
Frenchmen with the guillotine, starved
over another million to death, and pau
perized several million off French pro-
prietors. But violent things don't last,
True, years after the leveling process
a la guillotine had begun in earnest,
the Jewelers. themselves were leveled
by their own numbering, and the ap-
parent equality obtained by sheer force
fell apart again into the natural in
equality of classes.
4. There is the difference of voca-
tion which will forever make impossi-
BILE the equality of rights and duties.
Without an extensive division of labor,
men cannot satisfy their wants and
propensities and arrive at higher de-
gree of culture. But the division of
labor necessarily produces the division
of society into various ranks and pro-
fessions. Hence also into division
of rights and duty. Let us exemplify
this point. There will always b chill
dren and ignorant people, consequent
ly always teachers. Have children
and teachers the same rights and
duties? There will always be appren,
tices and masters. Have they the
same rights and duties? There will
always be the sick, the infirm, the
aged. Shall they have the same
rights and duties as their physicians,
surgeons or nurses? There will al
ways be agriculture, commerce, indus
try, science and arts. Shall all these
professionals have the same rights and
duties, the same conditions in life?
There will always be men and wo-
men. We have already shown that
equality of rights and duties are i'm
possible between them. With regard
to this question of different vocations
there are two kinds of Socialists. The
extremists, led by Bebel, and the mod
crates. The extremists demand the
equality of vocations in its rigor. But
how? Bebel says: BY education and
culture it is possible to make)all men