The daily Nome industrial worker., 1917-08-13

thorough application or the prln- ciple of individualism which is anar- chism, everyman for himself and the devil take the hindmost.
 Practically speaking the good things that are produced in coun- tries where such a system prevails are produced exclusively for the few who possess. The pleasures in cidental to ability to spend money are confined to a narrow class in- deed, and this condition is observed without apparent disapproval even by good many who are rightly termed the disinherited.
 Few people considering the situa- ton fairly seem to think of the enormous waste of mental ability that year after year is permitted under our system. Not ten per cent of the children who attend school pass through so moderate a course of mental training as the high school, and these are turned out to shift for themselves and are eX- pected to make good against highly trained competitors
 The cards are stacked against such from the very start. They never had chance, and it is to the values Of the original stock in heri. dity that so many do manage to eke out an existence at all and keep clear of the handiest ways to wealth that usually terminate in the courts.
 What is most astonishing to the average careful observer is that while American public men, public writers and lecturers have no ditfi- culty at all in pcrceiying the unde-- mocracy of titles, and kings in the old world, persuade themselves of the genial humbug that there is ill their own country possible a demo- cracy in the unequal division of wealth, and that there is nothing incompatible with true democracy in billlOnaires and practical pauper- ism in the same society. It is very well to laugh at such foolish rever- ences as are extended dukes and counts and earls and viscounts, but it should not be forgotten that the obeisance that is paid such is not because of their tiles, but because of their wealth, their landed hold ings and their economic influence arising from such which gives them power over the masses who work to enrich them. Nowadays those of economic power, of great wealth, and much land, are ennobled in any event. In England a shipbuilder gets a dukedom. A brewer 6 baron age. Iii Germany a steel king be- comes von Krupp and ship owner is still a plain Herr Direktor only because of the fact that ne has pre- ferred himself to remain un- enObled
 The Kaiser freely recognizes the supremacy of Herr Ballin, and he could be a Baron or Graf just as freely as Rothschild becomes a lord in England.
 The essence of democracy is equal ity. Equality of opportunity, equal ity in industry, equality in politics, equality to such an extent that no man controls for his private benefit another mans labor.
 Obviously when such a condition of industrial democracy does not exist, all other democracy is a sham. This is an industrial civilization but what an astonishing contrast it pre- sent5. Immense wealth on the one sde, defiant prosperity and constant struggle against penury, unemploy- ment, strife to obtain little larger slice of the product of their own labor upon the part of the workers. As Carlyle said of cotton spinning so we can say of all industrial ac tivities; "soot and despair are not the essence of it; they are divisible from it-at this hour are they not crying fiercely to be divided.
 Assuredly they are. They are in evidence in every direction. The against the wholesale vic timization of the workers by those lusting for gain. They are in evid- ence in the industrial struggles