would not now be worth so many millions of dollars acquired since 1865.'

Consider the farmers: * In 1874, there were 20,000 granges or lodges of the Patrons of Husbandry in the United States with dues to the National Grange of over $300,000. (These figures are taken from Simons's American Farmer, a Socialist authority). The Grangers sought (1) to abolish the middle-man; (2) to establish supply-houses; (3) to regulate the railroads; (4) to control grain elevators and sell grain direct to millers. At one time two-thirds of the grain elevators in Iowa were in the hands of the Grangers. A mere remnant of the Grange exists to-day. Why? Because the Grange found that the middle-man fills a useful office and where he can be eliminated, the fierce rivalry in business ousts him. Note the growth of the mailorder houses, the 5-Cent and 10-Cent stores which are preparing the way for 25-Cent and 100-Cent stores, economies which, I regret to say, are making inroads upon the local dealer.

But

after the Grange came the Anti-Monopolists, the Farmers' Alliance, the Populists, the Knights of Labor, the Greenbackers,—all popular movements and all moving in the direction of Political Socialism: And all to-day extinct! Nobody is now

*See Plate II Special Census Report for 1904, showing per cent of farmers and men engaged in Manufacturing and Mechanical Pursuits.

asking that loans be advanced by the subtreasury of the United States to farmers and planters on their crops of grain and cotton;-this socialist doctrine, like the rest, has fallen by the way-side.

A good half of the voters in this country are free-holders. It is safe to say they will never vote with a party which, on the defensive, is impelled to declare that it does not favor the expropriation of rents. A good half of the other half own some personal property and for the same reason applied to interest will not vote in favor of Socialism or socialistic measures.

But deeper than all this, underlying the fundamental propositions of Socialism, is the fact that its success would be a failure. In administrative success it would lead to a dreary, monotonous, uneventful, un-enterprising life:-Lack of interest is intolerable. Granting, then, everything possible to Political Socialism, construing it in the most liberal manner, conceding good motives to it, even accepting all its concessions and waivers to established order, we are compelled to conclude that it offers no panacea for social unrest or disorder.

Shall it be said, then, that Political Socialism has served no good purpose? that it ought to receive anathema of every good citizen? Not at all. Socialism has stimulated political thought

the results of which we see in a re-examination of the basis upon which our system of government rests. It has opened many a man's eyes to the danger of an invasion of personal and state rights. The truth is that as individual man brings himself under self-control and our civilization diffuses itself, we ought to move in the direction of less law and more individual freedom instead of more law and less individual freedom. Socialism has served to make this point of danger clear.

Socialism is inspired in extravagant optimism in the future. There is some good in that. However much or however little this good, it will finally, as a saving remnant, be incorporated into the policies of other parties and there go on to its perfect work even as the practical features of the old Grange movement were finally absorbed into other and more rational programmes.

And here is danger,—the danger of yielding too much to the demand for legislation. Everywhere the spirit is rampant of seeking remedies in law rather than in building up character and self-dependence. The tendency is to lay blame for failure on somebody else,-on government or society. This tendency is deplorably weakening. But action re-acts. Hence we have a healthful movement spontaneously arising out of a multiplicity of state law, to repeal and simplify

and harmonize by an identity of state law.

Note: It should not escape the reader that I am here dealing with the principles and not with numbers. As matter of fact Socialism is growing in numbers in all rich countries. My purpose is mainly to show that in admitting the failure of Utopia, the New Socialism destroys its own foundation and admits its own defeat.

Socialists

A PREDICAMENT,-PROBLEM OF THE BUTTER-MAKER: aver that wage-workers are paid $500 a year but earn $3,500,that is are paid $1 and cheated out of $6,-that is their losses are 500 per cent more than their wages. Concretely this means that the wage-worker who pays 35 cents for a pound of butter is cheated out of 30 cents, that is, if rent, profit, and interest were eliminated the butter could be bought for 5 cents and the wageworker would not be exploited out of 30 cents,-that is, some other Socialist worker must raise cattle, maintain cows, produce milk, churn, and market butter for 5 cents a pound. Now the problem is: How compel the Socialist butter-maker to do so much and get so little?

COROLLARY: On an equivalent scale some Socialist must produce hats for 30 cents a piece, shoes for 30 cents a pair, clothing for $3 a suit, and cottages now costing $1,400 for $200 a piece; looking further we find that some other Socialist must produce bread for 1 cent a loaf, meat for 3 cents a pound, eggs for 4 cents a dozen, strawberries for 2 cents a box, a jug of cream and a pound of sugar both for 1 cent; this interesting Table ot Prices discloses further that some Socialist workmen must produce an alcohol-stove for 2 cents, a paper of needles for 1 cent, a paper of pins for a half-cent, and a bag of peanuts for a quarter-cent.

COROLLARY: The condition of the butter-maker is in no wise bettered if he sell butter for 35 cents a pound, but pay seven times present wages for help or $10.50 a day.

QUERY: Under the new scale how will loans, liens, mortgages, trust funds, equities, testamentary estates, insurance policies, &c. be settled? "Enforced repudiation!" Then men who have worked and saved will be put upon an equality with men who have not worked and, of course, not saved. The world's accumu lations will go to the spendthrift and the lazy the same as to the prudent and the industrious. Men who have faced frontier life and in spite of hard times, low prices, hail storms, blizzards, swine-plague, and all the rest, built a house, opened a farm, grown an orchard, and by hard work at last succeeded in acquiring title to a section of land will be put upon an equality with those other men whose money has gone by the way of poker, grog, patent-rights, race horses, "blue sky," or castles in the hills of Spain. If not "enforced repudiation" (rent, profit, and interest now being valid) then how will these property values be adjusted under a scale in which money will have 5, 6, or 7 times its present purchasing power?

CHAPTER III.

POLITICAL SOCIALISM,-SHALL IT BE PUT UPON THE DEFENSE?

THE FARMER

HOW? WHY?

AGAINST SOCIALISM.-THE

HOME-OWNER

AGAINST SOCIALISM.-LABOR-UNIONS IN PART AGAINST SOCIALISM.-STRONG SENSE OF PROPRIETORSHIP.-SOCIALISM OF THE CHAIR HAS NO SYMPATHY FOR THE CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY AND THE SCHOOL OF HARD-KNOCKS; IT WOULD SUFFER MOST IN CATACLYSM OF ITS OWN MAKING.

What chance of success, in this country, has Political Socialism? None whatever. This question ought to be raised in all seriousness and answered in all confidence. The answer above is the natural one. By that I mean that it is the answer of logic, good sense, and natural conditions. However, this answer pre-supposes that Socialism shall be put upon the defensive. Default is dangerous.

The most casual observer cannot fail to notice that our literature; colleges; churches; universities; newspapers; magazines; humanitarian and reform associations; women's clubs; and a good one-half of the un-organized, so-called apostles of brotherly love, are tinctured, yea, saturated through and through, with a soft,