Daily Arizona silver belt., 1907-08-25
SOCIALISM

the inevitable combination of business firms and corporations sets in with a rush, when charters of trusts by the hundreds were being issued every month, when amounts of capitalization in ten figures began to be familiar, many writers and speakers predicted a rapid and great growth of socialism, and not few good citizens feared that the day of the commune was at hand. There has been an increase of paternalism, and socialism, in broad sense of the word, has been invigorated by the great changes in the manner of conducting business that the last few years have brought about. Competition has ,been checked to an enormous ex- tent, especially in manufactures and transportation. But the commune is not at hand. While it is a fact that the commune would be a logical devel- opment of the abolition or repression
 
 of the individual, tendency to carry collectivism to that extent is not ap- parent. In Great Britain, far more than in the United States, soeialistie ideas are affecting legislation, but the British are not ready to apply the com munistie theory in government The New York Evening Post in recent editorial said:-
 "There is no sound reason for being afraid of socialism. It has doubtless come to stay in the political world, as it always has been in the world of polit ical speculation. It will have its times of ebb and its times of flow. Men of warm benevOlence vii adhere to it, as will youthful enthusiasts. It will also continue to number embittered men among its supporters, with social level CTS of all kinds. But it can never abuse any political power which it may win without at once provoking reaction, and union against it of the kind Prince BuelOw describes, and SO defeat ing itself. And, as every fair-minded student of our public life must admit, the Socialist party has it's lessons and it's warnings for other political parties. It has a program both idealistic and | utilitarian, and is a standing rebuke to | those partisans who think of offices as a good in themselves, not as a means of doing the public business efficiently and beneftting the community. No sen sible man will let socialism alarm him; but if it can teach him anything, why, what is he here for except to learn9 As between Bourbon and Socialist, the choice might not favor the former"
 Experiments in communism have been tried in many countries and in many generations. Nearly all of them have been abandoned. The Founder of Christianity was, for time, the head of commune
 With His divine word He executed His sentence of death upon Ananias and Sapphira for lying and cheating the community composed of his followers. He said they had lied to the Holy Ghost. In all of the European countries socialistic experiments have failed. In the United States Brook Farm was the most interesting socialistic or commun- istic experiment that has occurred In brains and character the people who [ that family were the cream { of citizenship, the salt of the earth. In I Posey county, Indiana, on the lower German named Rapp estab- , Iished a community in the very early { part of the last century. Byron, in o Don Juan,' makes characteristic men. tion of it. Rapp sold out to Owen, the = ancestor of the Owens Il now residing in that state. He started d community on a very different plan s from that of his predecessor. It seemed to flourish for time, yet before n many years it was wound up, but it s eft a good report as to intellectual and \ moral progress. The Oneida community N n the state of New York, according to o Iuthentic statements published some d orty years ago, had no attractions for e lealthy minded people. The Shakers o Ire still flourishing in a small way sm, m hat is to say, they are making money md are good citizens. But as they prohibit marriage they do not increase T n numbers except by taking in mem 'ers from the outside. They are care ul to obey the laws and to pay taxes. n the last thirty or forty years there as been falling off in the membership m f all communistic bodies in the United 'tates, and new organizations of that u ort have not appeared
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