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POLITICAL SOCIALISM;

A Busy Man's Book.

Preliminary Note:

Readers not familiar with the literature of Socialism are advised to read the second half of this book first, beginning at page 67; this, because the incidental and descriptive features of the subject are novel and wonderfully attractive. Readers familiar with the elemental and organic features of Socialism are advised to follow the order of the book; this, because the first half is critical and controversial, developing the principles in which the last half strikes root. Comments invited; Address, Cherokee, Iowa.

CHAPTER I.

POLITICAL SOCIALISM-IS IT GAINING OR LOSING GROUND?

FALLING BACK FROM UTOPIA, THE FIRST RETREAT.-A MARXIAN CONTRADICTION, THE SECOND RETREAT.-VIOLENCE REPUDIATED, ANOTHER RETREAT.-CONCESSION TO PERSONAL LIBERTY AND PRIVATE PROPERTY, THE FOURTH RETREAT.ARE THESE RETREATS A CONCESSION TO ESTABLISHED ORDER?

An English thinker recently quoted with approval these discerning and attractive words: "Social life is to personality what language is

to thought." * I accept that thesis for the sake of the side-light which it throws upon the treatment of my subjects: Is Philosophic and Political Socialism gaining or losing ground?

Statistics give a ready but superficial answer. The vital and persistent force in such a movement must be measured by its elemental aspects; by its mental and moral loyalty to itself; by its persuasive and convincing harmony with facts of human nature; by its consistent, confident, and spontaneous power of appeal; by its skill in meeting criticism;-it is by such as these that the growth or decline of this thing called the New Social Order is to be gauged. A few votes here or there, more or less, signify very little in the developing stages of so revolutionary and so comprehensive a system. It will be seen at once that the inquiry pursued from these subjective standpoints is a very different matter from adducing and arranging comparative tables of statistics, a matter, too, not without difficulty, strongly demanding discernment and discrimination.

With open minds, then, we proceed to ascertain whether systematic and contemporary Socialism, in principle, is gaining or losing ground.

*Baldwin Lectures; The Grisis in Unbelief by R. M. Wenley, 1909, p. 247.

FORSAKING UTOPIA

Let the inquiry first be as to the Ideal State which Socialism proposes.

At times for more than two thousand years, there have arisen philosophers and philanthropists appealing with noblest purpose, to the imaginations of man. They have painted rich pictures of social life in a certain, civil State of Perfection attained in islands in the sea, or in cities in the sun, or in grottoes in the earth, or in the future. The plans of Oceana, Atlantis, Icaria, Hulee, Cite du Soleil, Vril-ya, Leviathan, Ideal Republic, Harmony, New Harmony, Merrie England, Modern Utopia, United States of Europe, Erewhon, Zion City, and many others have not all been purely imaginary like Sir Thomas More's island in the Atlantic, but some have been tried out in actual experience and under the most favoring circumstances.

Robert Owens was a man of affairs. He built up large and successful cotton factories in New Lanark. He spent his fortune upon industrial communities, some in England and some in communist colonies in America.

Robert Dale Owen, son of Robert Owen, was so able a man that he was sent to Congress several terms and became a strong political factor in Indiana.

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