The daily Nome industrial worker., 1917-02-07


 terlocking ownership with wealth is obvious.
 To associate the social activities as inviolably identified with those idle rich whose leisure hours come to them through ownership and whose pleasing dolce far niente is possible of attainment at Newport or Palm Beach or on the Continent of Europe by reason of their several proprietorships which as often as not has more trouble spending than receiving, is too grotesque a concep- tion of political economy to pass muster for one second with a person of average intelligence
 It is ridiculous reversion of ideas that We should today indentify the social wealth with proprietorship, just in the same way that the na- tional wealth was identified with the kingdom of the monarch or the barony of the feudal lord of other days. Stripped of their parchment rights and hereditary titles to poss- ession, the land still continued pro- ductive and the serfs were able to set themselves to produce with greater productivity than ever be- fore under the heavy levies of king and feudal lord.
 We are duplicating in the indus trial world today what has been the historic experience in the territorial world of the feudal age. and hence just as the king and the lords and the other parasites identified the prosperity of the highest and lowest with their prosperity, the industrial Overlords of today do the same thing in the industrial epoch.
 It would be mistake to depre- ciate the part that ownership plays in the economic scheme. Because of that private ownership and ability to exercise exclusive rights of pro perty in human needs, we have ths entire capitalist system. It is the essence of capitalist production. but it is not and cannot be the essence of production per SC, which Will be carried on quite regardless of the existence of private owners oc not.
 Surely with the obj"ct lesson; now being given us of industries in many of the belligerent nations be- ing carried on for use and not for profit. for the national and not the individual we'll being. this ridicul- ous concept upon the part of the Literary Digest critic carries it's own 
 At for the doubtful morality of the Nearing proposition we may readily allow that the critic is cor rect To question the right of in- dividual ownership to exploit the person of the worker to the utter most limit, and to carry on produc- | tion not for the social use but for l the private profit of the individual is to attack the capitalist system l at it's very base. And inasmuch as ! we engage our morals to measure 1 up to the economic standard of our | it is a self evident pro | position that Hearings remark from | the standpoint of the capitalist sy- stem is highly immoral
 Maecenas urged Augustus Caesar | that he compel the people to respect 1 and adore the Gods of Imperial | Rome, for then he said that the | people would be more likely to re- spect him. and the emperor would 1 discover strength in the morality of 1 the people So it is with those who uphold the system of private owner ship in human necessities. to ques- ] ton it in any way must be regard ad as highly immoral.
 It was for an immortality of this kind that Professor Scott Nearing was discharged from the Pennsylva- nia University. and his heretic no i Iions on the relation of capitalist and laborer of exploiter and eS- l plotted, of owner of machinery and | seller of labor power. naturally are bound to be observed | with dismay and much regrets by those who see an economic or poli- .ical divinity in private ownership. |