The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1908-09-12
Mr.. EUGENE v. DEBs AND SOCIALISM.

WE'LL amid a blare of trumpets, fanfaronade
and red lights Mr.. z. V. Debs has come and gone.
He in his own Red Special, bore aloft the red
torch of the revolutionist and waved the red flag
Of the So far, he has not "set the heather
afre," but if his principles and the urid doctrines
he breaches ever become the creed of the masses,
the United States will witness social eruption that
will shake the Union to its foundations and para-
lei the French cataclyem of 1893.
Last June there was published in London the
Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn' Or. Hearn
died few years ago. He was an educated man,
thinker who had much of men and of the
world. He did not pose prophet or the son of
prophet. He was a student of the past and from
history of the past he casts the horoscope of the
future He was a social clairvoyant; he was not
trance medium, but he was a man who predicted
things, and here is what he Predicts
LAFCADIO HEARN ON SOCIALISM
"The tendency seems to point, indeed, to
what Spencer calls The Coming Slavery Monopo-
lies and trusts must continue to grow and multi
py-must eventually tend to coalesce-must uti-
mately hold all Bellamys ideas will be partly car
ried out but in paradisiacal manner. The state
itself will become the one monstrous trust Social
ism will be promised ALL and be compelled to work
against its own ends mconsciously The edifice is
even now being reared in which every man will be
veritabe slave to the state-the state itself uni
versal monopoly and trust Then every life will be
regulated to infnitesmal details, and the working
population of the whole West find themselves stu
ated just as men in factories or on railroads are
situated. The trust will be nominally for the uni
versal benefit, and must for time so seem to be.
But just SO surely human nature is not perfect
just so surely will the directing class eventually
exploit the wonderful situation just as some Roman
rulers exploited the world. Assuredy anarchy will
eventuate; but frs-in spite of all that human wis
dom can donations will pass under the most fear
full tyranny ever known. And perhaps centuries
of persistent effort will scarcely suffice to burst the
letters which Socialism now seeks to impose on
human society The machinery will be too fright
fully perfect too harmonious in operation, too alb
solutey exact and of one piece, to be easily at
tackled As well try with naked hands to pierce the
side of an ironcad. The law, the military power,
the police, religious influence commercial and in
dustral interests all will be as one working to pre-
serve the form of the new Socialism. To seek re-
dress, to demand change, were then sheer madness;
even the power to flee away out of the land, to
dwell among beasts and birds, might be denied
Liberty of opinion, which we all boast of now,
would be then less positive than in the time of the
sway of Torquemada."
Undoubtedly the Coming Slavery predicted by
Spencer will come upon u.s. A democracy more
brutal than any Spartan oligarchy will control life
Men may not be obligated to eat at public table;
but every item of their existence will be regulated