Aberdeen herald. [volume] (Aberdeen, Chehalis County, W.T.) 1886-1917, 1908-11-09
A View OF SOCIALISM
SOME S0CIALISTIC Theories AN.
ALYzED.
The fallaCy That All That Is, Is Due
to Labor will Not Bear Scrutiny.
"A WinSOme Theory for Those
Who Want to Get Something tor
Nothing.

During the recent campaign, Eu-
gene V. Debs, socialist candidate for
president, visited Salt Lake City.
just before the meeting, Goodwin's
Weekly, published in that city, adj
vised its readers to go hear him, say
ing,
"We want the people to go and hear
him, and to pay close attention to
what he says, so that when they go
away from the meeting they will be
able to Judge whether what he advo-
Gates is for the good of this country
or not. And that they may be pre-
pared to judge accurately, we will
state briefly some of the theories
which he and his party advocate.
''The first is that all that is, is due
to labor, and we want this emphasized
all along, and then we want people to
consider whether labor by itself, un-
directed by brain, has ever accom-
plished anything. In our judgment,
the very foundation on which he rests
is false one. AS well might the OK
claim for himself a special honor be-
cause he has broken the ground of
every new country in the world. 1t
would haye been difficult in many
places without him, but he did it be-
cause first man taught him the disci-
pline necessary and invented the plow
for him. His work was merely to
haul the plow, he had nothing to do
with the foresight which anticipated
the planting of the crop and the har-
vest to follow it. All he did was b
brute force, and he did it because h
had to. That, perhaps, may be con-
sidered a coarse comparison, but it is
true. Turn the average man alone in
the world. and he would simply be
wearing skins, as the man of the stone
age wore them, and trusting to what
he could get from the fields and from
the game that he could catch for a
living.
'The theory of Mr.. Debs is that all
the treasures of this world, all the
property of this world, having been
produced by labor, belong to the peo-
pie. 1t is a very winsome theory to
men who would like to get something
for nothing. And if Mr.. Debs is hon.
est, and we are not going to question
his honesty today, then when Mr..
Edison invented the phonograph and
made fortune through it, with his
death that fortune should go to the
public, because it is the result of labor
perpetuated. In the some way, when
an enterprising man goes out, finds a
mine, digs from the earth a fortune,
he is entitled to that fortune while he
lives, but when he dies it belongs to
the men who never found mines, who
never worked them, who never did
anything. 1t is the same way every
where. Mr.. Debs' assumption will be
that all wealth that has been saved,
or that has been bequeathed by for
tunate ancestors to their children, be-
longs to the public because they
could not have made fortune except
that they wronged someone else.
1--WE do not care to elaborate on his
creed; we only stated the above few
outlines. So we want the people to
listen to him, and then to try to think
what would follow could his recon-
mendations be carried out, could there
be a general division of the earth's
property among the earth's people,
what would follow.
zone more thing he advocates, and
that is that the government shall en-
ploy all the unemployed, and employ
them at union wages. Then try to
imagine how any government under
the sun could pay employees thus en-
ployed, because it is a clear case that
If that was the law, in month four
fiths of the men seeking employment
that way would not be worth the
powder and shot to blow them to the
beyond.
"Finally, we ask the people to look
at Mr.. Debs, hear his expositions, and
then to answer their own souls wheth-
er, if they had any business they
would put it in the hands of man
like him.
"The great Austrian physician cured
prenatal deformities. He could not
cure Debs; his deformity is in the
brain"
A twice-a-week transcript Of thu hap