The Birmingham age-herald., 1920-11-28
By WILLIAM RILEY

Mir. E. V. Debs has said from his prison cell that Socialism will flourish
 like a green bay tree under the Harding 1 administration.
 | Is MT. Debs a prophet? The Utopia has
 been forecast before and never has come. It's prophets were egocentric dreamers. Is MT. Debs another?
 | He is sincere. of course. The present
 writer knows him, and many other rad- I icals. Of all the kit and poodle of them ! it is probable that Debs alone is sincere i And that senls strange to us. Socialism has been tried out and rejected so often in the course of human history that it
 seems strange man of MT. Debs' calibre
 can believe it practicable.
 It is not a new science or theory by | any means. It was the earliest form of the social state. and survives still in some benighted parts of the world. No people 1 ever has progressed with socialist gov ernment. The head hunters of New ], Guinea are socialists and always have been. and they have not progressed be- yond the loin cloth as a style of dress
 and human flesh as an article of diet. Many tribes of Africans are socialists
 and jest jedge em. brothah. Jedge 'em. tha's all.
 All "if' obstructs the way of socialism as practical form of government. and an insuperable if it is as far as we are | able to see at this time. If all men were born equal and each would do his share Iof the worlds work without urging, then socialism would be the ideal political system But men are not born equal. We are /, uulte sure of it. Some are born leaders, and some are born to follow This is l plain to mind not confused by fac tional disputes.
 l God makes us unequal; makes us so i for our good and His glory no doubt. 'I The first law of life is struggle. And God i made the law. We are constituted and l.equipped to struggle, toward what goal l we know not for certain. But all of us iinstinctively feel there is a goal-some- i where.
 .'Ye must struggle and progress com | mands Gods first Bible, the panorama of nature spread out before us, and when [ we cease to obey we die. It is social lism's chief aim to do away with strug- | gle. Ii aspires, too, to level the castes I God created; to make men of one class,
 the ambitious and the lazy, the brilliant 1 and the stupid together This impresses l us as being al pitiable waste of effort It seems so stupid to fly in the face Of natures laws.
 i Now, by the very nature of things, SO | cialism ceases to be what the term irn- plies when once it has attained to power
 Every successful socialist coup has been an OrAy or D1OoO that ran US cOurSo III
 a few weeks. The continuation of the
 bolshevists in power in Russia is no case
 with which to refute this statement. The
 true story of bolshevist. Russia is little
 known. shall publish it in an early
 edition of Give and Take my new mag
 azine And then it will be seen that It's history holsters my contention that tho socialistic state cannot exist with peoples who have progressed above savagery. Ii A proletarian revolution is like the loading of wagon with potatoes When the loading's done the potatoes are mixed, ithe big ones and the little ones together. When the revolutions over the classes of human society are temporarily leveled. Men are mixed" the big ones and the little ones together. But the man with the potatoes drives to market. and when he arrives there the big tubers are on top, because the Hitler ones, the ineffi- cients have sought the lower levels and ohscurity.
 | | For alas one man in each thousand or so is born to be a leader, and thesres' of us are born to follow.
 | No. MT. Debs can't believe that so- | cialism twill flourish like green bay | Iltree' under the Harding administration | I cannot believe you are an able prophet l sir. or anything more than an idle dream CT. The thing cannot seduce American' to any great extent Our peoile are of too l fine fibre for that This is the indus ! trial age We are dependent upon oul industries. Under the whitening touch O socialism our industries would decline aIit eventually perish. It would carry u