Law, Disease AND Human Progress By L. ROSENTHAL, M. D. PRICE TWENTY-FIVE CENTS Law, Disease and Human Progress m COPYRIGHTED, 1914 By L. Rosenthal, M. D. PITTSBURGH, PA. HH64 ^8* INDEX. Pages Introduction 3 False Assumption by Spencer and Others That Over Popu- lation Has Crowded Man's Food Supply, and Will Continue To Do So 1 Man's Natural Enemies Not Man 16 How Nature Selects Life 17 Favorable and Unfavorable Natural Laws 23 Individual Rights Over Property. Real and Personal 28 All Forms of Life are Subject to the Same Laws of Devel- opment Order of Human Development 30 Acts of Chance and Conscious Acts Further Discussed 32 What is Meant by Design in Nature 34 Further Discussion of Natures Methods of Selecting Life. . . 35 Greater Intelligence Can Produce Greater Human Fitness. . 43 What is the Hope of Human Achievement 48 The Merit System 51 Slave Co-operation of Insect Life Due to the Difference in their Physical and Physiological Characters 55 Greater Need for Systematic Co-operation by the Establish- ment of an Industrial Commonwealth 57 Mass Action and the Workers 61 Political Action and Industrial Action 63 Why Working Class Co-operation and Organization is Dis- couraged , . 65 -Why Human Co-operation is Opposed to Human Anarchy. . 66 What Individual Anarchism Means 67 Bases of Law — Criminal. Civil and Moral 70 False Value of Man to Man Competition 77 Competition Between Merit and Merit, and Not Between Wealth Power and Ignorant Weakness 89 Political. Religious, Industrial and Social Customs Not Always Controlled by Reason 92 The Spirit of Aggression and The Spirit of Resistance.... 98 Conclusion 106 W 13 1914 &^- ©CLA371857 iu / It is not the intention of the writer of this essay to make it a scientific monograph. If one is of an analytical turn of mind, there are many splendid philosophical and scientific works which can easily be obtained, written by some of the world's best thinkers, who have dealt thoroughly in detail with all the general facts herein stated. Those who are familiar with biology, physi- ology or psychology, in order to satisfy the cravings for more facts pertaining to statements made in this essay, will find many excellent works by such famous writers and scientists as Linneaus, Lamarck, Romanes, Huber, Comte, Spencer, Haeckel, Darwin, Huxley, Marx, Lester Ward, Kropotkin, Wheeler, Lubbock and many others. I am more than anxious not to burden the reader with the scientific detail pertaining to many general statements herein made, for if one were to become ana- lytical on the various subjects treated in this essay, then not an essay would be required such as this is, but many volumes would have to be written. However, if one is further interested, as I have said before, there can readily be found full information in the text books relating to such matters. The attempt of this little work is to add by me, as far as it is possible, my emphasis of what I see to be the truth. It is impossible to beautify natural truths; exag- geration will not do it. To me the truths of nature are so profound and wonderful that they need no exaggera- tion. Fiction and miracles, concoctions of the human mind, cannot begin to compare to the real actual wonders 3 Introduction. and surprises of natural truth, which are about us every- where and which are being enacted during every minute of our existence. Truth is, indeed, stranger than fiction! Our ignorance of the presence and detail actions of these wonderful manifestations, is the cause of the lack of surprise and wonder we show towards them. We can- not exaggerate them if we will, for if we try, we only distort the true pictures into perverted and ugly images of what is about us. To know that the sun, which gives us light and heat, is one million times larger than our earth, and that there are other suns, or stars, five hun- dred thousand times larger than our sun ; and that our sun is only one star of many millions ; and that the near- est star or sun to our sun is twenty five trillion miles away, is knowledge that makes us dumb with amaze- ment at the immensity and sublimity of nature. Truth opens our eyes and minds to the infinitude of nature. The ignorance of man for centuries and centuries has ridiculed the sublime creation of our existence. While truth solves the problems of life, truth also solves the problems of death. So, our poor efforts, in trying to understand Nature God, Creation and Destiny are not buoyed or sustained to higher truths by the exaggerated superstitious fancies of those minds which are devoid of actual truths; but on the contrary, we fall into dreamy unrealities thru superstitious ignorance, which act upon our senses like a sleeping potion or narcotic acts upon the mind of one already half in slumber. Materlink has well said, "There is nothing more in- teresting or beautiful than the truth, or the effort one is able to make towards the truth." The people are beginning to realize more and more every day that truth, can only solve the great problems of life. Physical and mental poverty with their off- Introduction. springs; poverty, disease and vice such as prostitution, crimes against the person, alcoholism, etc., are caused in 90 per cent of all cases from a lack of know- ing the truth, or the inability of enforcing measures, so as mankind could benefit by the truth. Human beings who commit acts and crimes so vio- lent as to need hospital or prison restraint, and those individuals who commit acts slightly insane and known as eccentrics, neurasthenics, alcoholics, epileptics and degenerates and who fill our prisons, ninety per cent of all these are the direct and indirect results of not know- ing the truth of the causes that produce them, or the inability to apply truth measures to remedy them. Ninety per cent of all the criminals serving sentences for crime in the United States and England are due to acts committed for profit or want. Ninety per cent of all PUBLIC prostitution is com- mitted for profit, only about ten per cent is due to de- generacy. If truth is blinded, how can she show the way to cure such human ills? Truth alone can give the knowledge which can show the way to uproot the causes of human poverty and ignorance, which are the direct products of vices, such as disease, degeneration, prostitution for profit, alcoholism and in return their resulting offsprings, crime and insanity. As the soil of the earth determines the growth of the plant, so environment determines the mental and physical growth of the human being. Preachers and teachers who try to remove the ef- fects of poverty and vice that produce human demorali- zation, without regard to the morality of natural truth, the basis of all human misery or happiness, are either in- sane, ignorant or hypocrites. Or they are of that class that believe it is expedient for the public benefit to teach certain untruths. Those devout brothers that profess a religion of Introduction. compassion, love, pity and tenderness for their fellow men, yet create at the same time a hell's fire for very man, woman and child who do not believe as they do, are not seekers after the truth, but are in most cases creatures seeking profit by blinding the eyes of truth to human exploitation. As the buzzard is a bird scavenger, living off the decayed flesh of the dead, so false teachers and preachers are scavengers who live off the flesh and blood of their fellow men. Xot to further waste time in idle and abstract specu- lation as to the value of natural truths, we will leave off our musings and begin the discussion that deals with man and his struggle to live. L. ROSENTHAL, M. D. False Assumption by Spencer and Others That Over Population Has Crowded Man's Food Supply and Will Continue To Do So In a recent article on the high cost of living, birth rates and over population by C. E. Woodruff, M.D. of U. S. Navy, he states that Malthus proved there was a tendency for the population of the world to increase in a geometrical ratio, and therefore crowd the food supply. "Malthus' fears," Dr. Woodruff states, "were groundless. The future over population, which Malthus dreaded, was then present, and it required a Darwin to show that the very basis of evolution of better things of all kinds, is this over population, which forces a struggle for exist- ence, permitting only the best fitted to survive, and the lessor or non-fit to finally die; if not in this generation, to disappear in a future one. The more prosperous and higher the social layer of those who make their own living, the smaller number of children they have. The clergy and nobility are - ex- cepted, as their numerous offspring are raised by money contributed by the producer." Woodruff continues further, by stating, that the higher types of the proletariat, or those classes success- ful in business, or other pursuits of life, tend to die out : as the birth rate of this class is too small, and the race is kept in existence by those families who have more than enough children of their class. Therefore, the human race, he contends, can survive only because there is a general tendency to reproduce more than enough people, and then this excess of population compete with each 8 Distress and Poverty. other for existence. This is the chief reason, he claims, that socialistic schemes for ending poverty and distress have failed and will always fail. — even while the general state of the efficient is constantly improving. Whether Dr. Woodruff arrived at the above con- clusions independently, or borrowed his ideas from Spen- cer, I do not know ; however, Spencer, in the Second volume of his Principles of Biology, in the chapter per- taining to the ''Laws of Multiplication" and ''Human Population in the Future," states, "In all cases, pressure of population is the original cause for the struggle for existence. Were it not for the competition this entails, more thought and energy would not daily be spent on the business of life ; and growth of mental power would not take place. Difficulty in getting a living is alike the incentive to a higher education of children and to a more intense and long continued application in adults, in their various pursuits. In the mother it prompts foresight, economy and skillful housekeeping ; in the father, labor- ious days and constant denial. Nothing but necessity could make men submit to this discipline, and nothing but discipline could produce a continued progression. n In the same section, on "Laws of Multiplication and Human Population in the Future," Spencer contradicts the above statement bv another, which bv all means is the true one: it is as follows: "EVEN WHEN RE- LIEVED FROM THE PRESSURE OF NECESSITY, LARGE BRAIXED EUROPEANS VOLUNTARILY ENTER UPON ENTERPRISES AND ACTIVITIES WHICH THE SAVAGE COULD NOT KEEP UP. EVEN TO SATISFY URGENT WANTS." In other words, this last statement of Spencer's means, that it is the intelligent self expression in man which dominates his surroundings, and forces him to Self Expression. work, labor and produce, even when there is no direct necessity for him to do so. This is because man desires to receive the approbation of his fellow man, be he king or pauper, honest or dishonest, he strives to gain the recognition, appreciation and laudation of the class to which he belongs. The work of a Darwin, Spencer, Huxley, Goethe, Pasteur, Wagner, Stevenson, Burbank and many thous- ands like them, were not produced because they needed food, shelter or clothing; they all possessed more than the mere necessities of life, even from the cradle. It was the great natural desire of these intelligent brains, that prompted them to do things. If Spencer, Darwin, Lile, Agassiz had had to struggle for their mere existence, they would never have had time to produce and give to the world what they did. Nine out of every ten of the great minds in the world's history, were those of men and women above want, and the greatest minds which gave the most enduring benefits to man, were modern peaceful minds trained to peaceful human pursuits. The theory of Spencer, in his "Principles of Biol- ogy," that the pressure of population, or the over crowd- ing of humanity, is the cause of the great human struggle for existence, is again contradicted by him. It reads as follows : "Through man's increased intelligence, the repro- ductive power of man, and the world's future popula- tion will decline naturally from physiological reasons." The cause, he contends, being due to the greater amount of nutritive matter being necessary to feed a highly de- veloped, functionating, growing brain and nervous sys- tem, which will deprive the reproductive organs of the individual of the necessary amount of nutritive matter to produce many offspring. However, Dr. Woodruff, taking only one side of the Spencerian view of the struggle for existence, contends, 10 Excess of Deaths over Births. ""That it is now acknowledged that ever since primitive man picked up his first club, or stone., as a tool to help him get food and shelter to survive, he has been constant- ly improving those tools to get more of that food and shelter. Labor saving machines are the result of our •labor competition, due to over population. The sweat shop worker, bending over an electrically driven sewing .machine, works just as hard and long as the needle woman of a century ago, and gets just as much of the -necessaries of survival in exchange for an hour's work. But, each worker, in the main, is as poor as ever. His own needs are more, and if his labor is very valuable, there are competitors who would overbid him for his job." Woodruff contends, that the whole economic struggle is brought about by the excessive population, which produces an unemployed class, thru excess of births over deaths, and which excess compete with the workers for their job, and that as new inventions and appliances are brought into use, the increase product thus produced is as quickly disseminated by the increase of the world's population, who use up the excess thus produced. The contention of Spencer, Huxley, Woodruff and many others is, that by the process of natural selection, a survival of the fittest class, in the main, is produced, through a competitive struggle between man and man to get the necessary food, shelter and clothing, where- by only the chosen of nature shall continue to live and all others die. It will be my endeavor in the following pages to prove that this assumption is not true, that man's struggle against man for life's necessities prevented human progress from advancing for thousands of years. However, Hecht calls attention to the fact "That in neither the modern human biologic nor eugenic concep- tion of human fitness, is there room for the doctrine of. "On the Natural Inequality of Man." U 'The Survival Of The Fittest/' made classic by Spencer. It has been proven by many good observers such as Balfour and others, that human mental defectives tend to increase in number and life expectancy. Then, in the terms of the bare biologic survival standard of fitness, the defectives would prove themselves the more fit." It is a notorious fact that epileptics breed as readily if not more so than normal human beings. This is true of many other kind of defectives. The main contention of the Spencerian Philosophy and others of the old school is, that in the struggle for existence man must necessarily be pitted against man for the necessities of life, and only those that can fight, crush, kill or grind others of their kind to death or slav- ery, shall continue as the only real worthy human sur- vivors of the fittest. Huxley, in one of his essays entitled, "On the Natur- al Inequality of Men" holds with Spencer and others, that the struggle for existence is due to over population, and that this over population must continue to struggle against each other for the necessities of life. Huxley saying, "According to him (Huxley referring to the great philosopher Hobbes) the total habitable and cultivatable land amounts to a definite number of square miles, which, by no effort of human ingenuity, at present known or suspected, can be sensibly increased beyond the area of that part of the globe which is not covered by earth and water; and, therefore, its quantity is lim- ited. But, if the land is limited, so is the quantity of trees that will grow on it ; of the cattle that can be past- ured on it; of the minerals that can be dug from it; of the wind and water power afforded by the limited streams that flow from the heights. And if the human race were to go on increasing in number at its present rate, the time would come when there would not be 12 Surviving Man's Superiority? standing ground for any more ; if it were not that, long before that time, they would have eaten up the limited quantity of food stuff and died like the locusts that have consumed everything eatable in an oasis of the desert.'' The position that Spencer, Huxley, Woodruff and others assume with regard to this question, is based upon the false assumption, that surviving man's superi- ority depended, in the past, on man's competition with man, and that from this false assumption conclusions were drawn, that future man's superiority must depend upon man's struggle against man. The cry for over fifty years by some of our greatest thinkers, has been that the struggle for life has been due to over popula- tion. Isn't it a remarkable fact, that men fought each other, when there were hundreds of thousands of culti- vable acres for each man, if they would have only known how to use them? Isn't it a remarkable fact, that in the last 75 years the world has doubled in population; and, yet, at the present time most every one can be fed, clothed and sheltered easier and with greater security than ever before known? The time when the earth cannot produce sufficient to feed this supposed over population, has not yet ar- rived ; yet, we continue to fight like animals for our necessities. When that time of actual human over crowd- ing comes, if it ever does, man, with his remarkable in- telligence, will easily be able to regulate the population, by regulating the births, so that there will be more than plenty for the needs of every living individual. If we should admit that the future holds in store danger to the race from over population, would an intelli- gent modern people permit such overcrowding, where murder and starvation would be the remedy for such ills? Would the common sense of modernism permit an excess of human offsprings to come into the world to Murder, Strife and Human Progress. 13 suffer degeneration, by men fighting, murdering and de- grading one another, in a wild scramble for the food that was not sufficient to go around? Would not the future generations of mankind out of self preservation regulate human population by sane, safe and harmless scientific measures, so that murder and constant strife would not be the instruments used to get that food that was found to be insufficient for all. For every human seed that reaches its destiny in becoming a living being, millions are lost that never reach that goal. Would it not then be reasonable to suppose, if de- struction from over population threatened man's exist- ence, that it would be wise for him to regulate even that seed ? Would not this kind of regulation in the end pre- serve those living and develop a human race well worthy of the name? Many states have already started to regulate births by passing laws preventing unfits from further propa- gating. It has been proven over and over again that the unfit degenerate mental and physical, propagate more freely than the highly developed, even when no means are used to prevent conception by the developed. The present millions of unfits who now propagate so freely and without any hindrance whatsoever could very easily be prevented from doing so. There is a simple operation which if performed law- fully and under proper medical supervision, that would prevent millions of unfit from propagating. The method used is harmless to the individual so treated. W T ar, at times, has made it necessary for nations and races, for self preservation, to sacrifice many millions of their men and women. Whether this tremendous loss of life in the past was entailed thru those who at- tacked others, for the sake of conquest, greed or glory, or whether the loss was entailed bv those who were com- 14 Human Fitness and Disease. pelled to protect their lives and homes from the be- siegers, is irrelevant. The purpose of the foregoing statements is to show a simile of what would occur if the future would threaten intelligent races with destruc- tion or extinction from over crowding. While science would try by even* means possible to increase the food supply of the future ; yet, if there were not sufficient food to preserve all humanity, then all thinking men must agree that it would be better to prevent the seeds of mankind from developing into too mam- beings, than it would be for war, murder, pestil- ence and famine to prevent and regulate them, as it has done in the past, and does to a great extent at present. In other -voids, if an excess of population would not be permitted, the alread}- developed beings would not be compelled to kill or starve others for existence. If the subject, that the excessive population of our world is the cause of man to man struggle for existence, is analyzed, there will be found more than sufficient evi- dence to prove that such a hypothesis is false. One may just as well assume that, in order to be fit to live. it woud be better for mankind to run the gauntlet in the struggle for life, by subjecting himself to the infection and contagion of all diseases, without doing anything to prevent them; drink foul water, eat diseased cattle. adulterated food, disregard hygiene and sanitation, pol- lute the system and subject the body to every infection, contagion and danger as primitive and savage man did unconsciously for thousands of years. Let competition by disease, without human intelligent interference, kill and carry off the weak, so that only the strong and fit shall survive! Such is the false, absurd and dangerous analog}- many would have you believe is necessary today in our human industrial world, where the masses are en- gaged in the struggle for the actual necessities of life. They tell us that this ignorant brute struggle is neces- The Strong and the Weak. 15 sary to produce a strong, efficient and intelligent race of people. They would have you believe, that in order for man to succeed, man must fight man for the necessities of life; and that waste, disease, neglect and ignorance are the weapons which are the instruments of nature, necessary to produce a virile, fit and God-like people. By their ignorance of the true facts, these people are not aware that in many cases, some of the strongest arid most intelligent of the human race, are carried off by disease and accidents very often in advance of those less strong and healthy. The insignificant act of filtering and boiling the water we drink, saves hundreds of thousands of lives every year, and among those thus saved, there are thous- ands who remain, for years, fit and useful members of the communities in which they live. Yet the very act of contracting any disease is a sign of weakness which would ultimately destroy millions, but who are saved by the application of the little knowledge we have of nature. If two men were walking along the base of a cliff — - one strong, powerful, good and intelligent,— and by his side walked another not so intelligent, good or strong; and then, by chance, a stone which had been loosened by the rain and wind was to fall suddenly from above and strike the good, strong and intelligent one, killing him,, while the weaker one by his side remained unharmed, — should we assume that nature permitted the best fitted to live, and the least fitted to die because the weaker re- mained unharmed ? Unless one has a perverted sense of reason, logic and knowledge of the actual facts of life, I do not see- how they can reconcile such fortuitous circumstances which are continually occurring, one way or another, among human beings, as determining, that because, those remaining alive, or those successful in life, are 1: Alien Life mi Man.. the most fit. Under other fortuitous circum- inces, those now considered fit. would become unfit, ad when may these circumstances affecting the indi- ivm :: n:e :::: ::me i'::v.: : A r.ev.- :r i rme :. seise :h is :he b -tonic :^. ' i::i:k m: kill m :he rong and powerful in many cases more quickly than e weak and sickly about them. It has been demon- rite i mmy times mm: :h : ":i-..- i::i:k::.: sm ires - ::: hm: time "ml in : 5: ex: : rm mm m mavs natural e: MIES. NOT MAN :r::::;- him it:: re lie e er 'rem: elopment of all human fevers ii as heart, liver, lung, kidney, bra :/-:: hm.m : mm :hi: hive :een :-.:: i poisoned wounds or indirectly acq 1 kmrs =-.: mi . '.; : ::; h -:m vay brought about, was and is all tl a infection by vegetable or animal bac -hich have produced by their at en::: 1 m : . : -1 h "5. :ii ;hmr/es in the znr.ning" : : s : e m: e Of aU tl vrntmer mm. mmmt mi: "" mteriil life. night for ever mmmA mi : he -; : mm: : it hi r imermmei : : iie the :::: 5: :m- e ever presence of : elements in mm d cell, single nerve .hi? -.vh:le ~-'r."i:zi. Conscious Knowledge. 17 From this basis of competition, I will try and prove that man's successful struggle against the past and pres- ent, has not been due to man to man competition, but in spite of it ; and that man's success as a race has been due to man to animal, man to vegetable and man to bacterial competition, with man remaining as the only conscious God-like survivor. It will be my endeavor to prove this proposition in the following part of this essay, and if I seemingly em- phasize certain statements by repetition of former re- marks, the reader will bear with me and pardon the same. HOW NATURE SELECTS LIFE. In order for the reader to understand what I mean in the following remarks, by competition between human beings, and the competition of human beings against other forms of life, we must necessarily deal with what is known as Natural Selection ; which for convenience of description can be divided into Unconscious Natural Se- lection, or Nature selecting life by the Laws of Chance, and Conscious Natural Selection, or those forms of life capable of selecting laws favorable to their existence, — known to us as consciousness, or conscious knowledge of laws pertaining to our existence. These expressions I will analyze further on. In studying the processes of Natural Selection, we must study how Nature selects those forms of life that are to live, and those forms which are to cease all con- tinuous living existence. Many of the great modern philosophers such as Darwin, Tyndall, Asa Gray, Spencer, Huxley and others, contended, that the manifestations of the natural laws are but the resulting products of force, matter and motion, producing in Nature a state of dynamic or static equilibration. In other words: every moving object is in a state of moving equilibrium, every motionless object IS Shape of Matter and the Cause. is in a state of resting equilibrium, or static equilibrium, both of these states are the result of the effects ■:: the laws of motion, matter and force upon motion, matter and force, and that neither the amount, direction or pro- ducts of force, matter and motion, are regulated by design. Spencer contends, that it is the regulation of force. matter and motion by force, matter and motion, that effects the dynamic or static position of all living and non-living matter, which in turn thus effects the ultimate physical or mental character of the smallest atom or largest body in existence, — whether it be an atom of hydrogen, a mountain range, an ocean, or a human being. Consequently, then the natural laws of force, matter and motion must then effect the physical character of the smallest living thing or of the highest developed human being, by regulating the position of the smallest or larg- est parts of its body. Then, according to these great philosophers, the change of position of any particle, or form of matter, no matter how small or large, is the basis of all natural law, which produces the infinite physical shapes and chemical varieties of all living and non-living things in the uni- verse. The natural laws pertaining to the living are Nature's methods of selecting those which are to live and those which are to die ; whether it be thru the process of one form of life living upon another, or thru the effects of mechanical action, or the effects of chemical changes upon living and non-living things ; all these laws are known to us as the Laws of Natural Selection. Thus, every living thing, animal or vegetable, whether large or small, owes its existence to the acts of matter, motion and force, which are the acts of Xature known to us in the study of biology as the Laws of Nat- ural Selection. Every- process in nature, such as the attack of bac- Soma Cells and Reproductive Cells. 19 teria upon other bacteria, or the attack of bacteria upon vegetable or animal life, or upon man, or the effects in any way conceivable of laws of motion, force or matter upon the smallest or largest living or non-living thing, — all these are processes of that one great struggle for ex- istence which has been designated as Natural Selection. As all living things are made up of parts, and each part is made up of cells, and each cell is made up of mole- cules, and each molecule is made up of atoms, we can- not conceive of any physical or chemical change in any part of any living thing, brought about by mechanical force, or by chemical nutrition, such as is produced by food products; as for instance, the transformation of al- bumen, (such as eggs, meat, etc.) ; hydro cabrons, (such as animal and vegetable fats) ; carbo hydrates, (such as sugars), which are finally assimilated into the blood and different tissues of the body ; or of bio-chemical poisons. — such as carbon dioxide, — which we exhale from the lungs and evaporate from the skin, or of any bio-chemical change ; which would not finally affect in some degree the molecular and atomic structures of any living thing, and thereby the position and physical characters of their smallest somatic cell structure, such as the ordinary skin, bone, nerve, muscle, or any parenchymatous cell in any organ of the body. It is reasonable to suppose that since the somatic cells are thus affected, that they in turn affect the char- acter of the somatic blood cells that feeds all the tissues of the body, and since the blood feeds and keeps alive the germinal plasm or reproductive cell, any chemical or physical change in the blood must affect the character of those cells. This is true whether the change is a slight or great one. While the blood cells are somatic, and do not pro- duce new beings, and are easily affected by extraneous conditions; germinal cells, or the cells of reproduction, are not so easily affected bv extraneous conditions, such 20 The Fabric of Life. as by bacteria, etc., yet, in receiving their nutrition from the somatic blood cells, the germinal cells, or cells of re- production, must also ultimately, to some degree, be affected by the blood cells that feed and keep them alive. All these slight variations in the chemical and physical structure of the blood, produced in many different ways, by environment, food, habits, breeding, etc., which affect the assimilation of food or the evaporation or execre- tions of any living thing, all these in turn will be re- sponsible for the countless varieties of physical and mental changes produced in all forms of life. According to Eccles, Minchen states, that chromatin and chromasoms are responsible for the up building of the protein cell molecule in all forms of life, and the pro- tein molecule is responsible for the living cell and all the different kinds of tissues in the human bod)', or in any living organism. In other words, protein is a combina- tion of substance without which we cannot -live, Protein is only found in living or what was living matter ; in fact, the protein molecule is the basis of all living matter. Eccles contends that the whole fabric of life in its warp and woof of connected species, shows this gradual grading of proteins with proteins, thru and thru every structure. At every point we get evidence of the almost infinitely minute selections of fitness. The special bio-chemical tests known as preciptin tests, demonstrates that the heredity qualities in every living thing come and go in quantitative degrees, so fine that they are only measurable as molecules. And so, in the great struggle for existence, if the protein substance of the living cells are affected by food, habits, environment, poisons, etc., we cannot conceive of the molecules of the cells not being affected ; or, re- versely, any change affecting the position of the protein molecules of a cell, whether thru increased or de- creased nutrition, whether thru chemical poisons af- fecting the chemical composition of the molecule, or Disease, Health and Natural Selection. Zl whether through bacterial poisons affecting the chemical arrangement of the protein molecule, or through any conceivable imagination we cannot conceive of any change chemically poisonous or chemically nutritive thus produced, that would not affect ultimately the protein substance of any cell. If the smaller parts of any sub- stance, living or non-living, are thus affected, we cannot conceive of their larger parts not being affected, and if the larger parts are affected, the physical appearance would be also affected or changed. For example : we cannot think of a broken bone, without thinking of the disturbance of the parts broken, or even of the bone cells themselves, if one has given the matter scientific attention. We cannot think of tuber- culosis without thinking of its detailed distructive effect upon the lungs, and the other tissues of the individual's body ; as, for instance, the action of each tubercle bacilli upon each cell that it might attack; until by reflection to our mind is recalled the various pathological and his- tological results from the various complications that arise from the different parts so attacked : such as, for ex- ample the action of the consumption bacilli in producing lung tubercles, diseased lymphatic glands, the resulting hemorrhages from broken down diseased arteries, which have been produced by coagulation necrosis, or death of the part. So each and every process is the cause or effect of some mechanical or chemical nutritive disturb- ance, which alter the chemical and physical characters of the cells, and by doing this there is produced a dis- turbance of the molecular relations of the cell and then of their cellular relations which in return ultimately affect their physical appearance. So natural selection re-arranges in disease or health the cellular parts, whether the change is for the good or injury of the individual. If the arrangement is beneficial we call it health ; if the arrangement, by natural selec- 22 Development. tion, is of such a character as to be non-beneficial or harmful to the individual we call it disease. Man's Physical and Mental Development Not Due to Man to Man Competition. Thus., in Nature, man's development, in the main, has not been due to man to man struggle. The struggle for existence between man and all other forms of life, not human, is responsible for his present development. It has been the continuous struggle to get the necessities of life from other forms of life, in the way of food, suf- ficiently to maintain life and to avoid destruction from disease, that has produced a human race, or any other form of living being, not human. If man were to spare the other forms of animal and vegetable life upon which he feeds and lives today, it would take but a very short time, indeed, for him to die of starvation and disease. Animal and vegetable parasites exist everywhere to plague and destroy mankind, or any other form of life upon which they can live. Those forms of life alien to man. and constantly dangerous to his very existence are ubiquitious. Only those types of human beings who acquire chemical characters in their blood and tissues, and through these, physical ones, antagonistic to the wel- fare of other forms of life not human, have been per- mitted by Nature to remain alive and develop their kind. Darwin called these fortunate creatures. ''The Survival of the Fittest." Through the process of what man calls CON- SCIOUS NATURAL SELECTION and UNCON- SCIOUS NATURAL SELECTION, man and all other forms of life are selected to live, through those laws of Nature that are favorable to them. Natural and Political Rights. 23 FAVORABLE AND UNFAVORABLE NATURAL LAWS. If the Natural Laws are unfavorable, new forms of life are never produced. NO DEVELOPED FORM OF LIFE is created spontaneously; new varieties of old forms are being produced continually. If the Natural Laws are unfavorable to those forms already in existence, they degenerate and die. Conscious Natural Selection as used by man has pro- duced many millions of fit beings for survival, who other- wise would have been unfit to survive. Just as Nature is doing the reverse today among human beings by de- stroying them through diseases, the causes of which mankind is ignorant. So today Nature is producing mil- lions of degenerates and ignorant human beings by the manner of their bad economic environment and faulty education, who become a hindrance to human development, happiness and progress. Man can only develop as a highly organized social creature thru his intelligence of the laws of Naiture. This is proven and reproven daily by man, who uses Con- scious Natural Selection, in a certain degree, in the cul- tivation of nearly all the things upon which he lives. For example — the production of fruits, vegetables, cereals ; the breeding of animals for human consumption, or their hides for protection or adornment. In an essay by Huxley, entitled "Natural and Polit- ical Rights," he tells the story of a man, who found him- self, like Robinson Crusoe, wrecked upon a lone island, and who, in order to preserve his life, was compelled to kill what game he could for food. He then tells of another man who had been simultaneously wrecked, and cast upon the opposite shore ; there they were, both on the same island, but unknown to each other. Suppose now, he states, that one of these men, in quest of food, happened to be stalking some wild animal, preparatory to shooting it at the first opportunity, and then all of a sud- den to be confronted by the other man, who by chance was 24 Ignorance, Disease and Civilization. also hunting the same animal. Huxley then asks the ques- tion, that if two men followed the dictates of the com- monest common sense, would thev not at once agree to unite in PEACEFUL COOPERATION WITH EACH OTHER TO KILL THE ANIMAL THUS HUNTED, FROM WHICH TO GET THEIR FOOD AND FOR EACH OTHERS MUTUAL COMFORT AND PRO- TECTION. If such cooperation is beneficial for two be- ings why would it not be good for a thousand, million or a hundred million of people ? Conscious Natural Selection is being used more and more by man in the treatment and prevention of dis- eases. Some 70 years ago a German by the name of Pollender interested himself in the study of the blood of different animals. V. C. Yaughan, President of the American Medical Association in a recent article entit- led/' The Influence of Disease on Civilization," says that Pollender made himself first familiar with the appear- ance of the normal blood of man and animals in health and disease. He found that the blood of cows, sick with anthrax when examined under the microscope showed minute red like bodies, which he never found in the blood of the healthy cow. Pollender finally concluded that these red like bodies in the blood of sick animals had some- thing to do with the disease from which they suffered, he wrote about his observations at the time, but they attracted little or no attention. Some years later Devaine took up the same line of work and confirmed Pollender s observation. Devaine was then followed by Pasteur, Virchow, Koch and many others who were enabled with the introduction of the compound microscope to develop the Science of Bacteriology. The knowledge of disease from this time forth de- veloped in leaps and bounds from the empiricism of the past, into a clear and definite understanding of their causes. Preventitive medicine then became such a great Animal Morality and Human Morality. 25 factor in the preservation of human life that in the space of a few years the world has doubled in population. We know today that germs are the cause of almost every disease from which human beings suffer. We are begining to understand more and more that human diseases like human poverty is humanely im- moral, because man unlike other animals has the power to prevent disease and poverty. The bacteria that at- tack man in order to get its food and a place to breed and feed its progeny though they kill their unluckly host, commit no crime in doing this. As far as they are con- cerned their act reflects their own morality, for in doing so they are committing acts that feed themselves and give birth to their own kind, thereby fulfilling their destiny, though in doing so they kill their host. Their host, man, in turn, commits daily upon other forms of life, the same acts in order to live, as the bacter- ia do that live upon him. The killing and eating by man of other forms of life for the purpose of self preserva- tion, is considered by man as a moral act. Those human acts that result in the opposite of human preser- vation become inhuman or immoral acts, because the human being has developed the power of choosing con- sciously those acts that will benefit or injure him. Such diseases as pneumonia, typhoid fever, diph- theria, cholera, yellow fever, bubonic plague, infantile paralysis, and hundreds of others, too numerous to men- tion, including all pus forming diseases, are all caused by animal and vegetable bacteria or their poisons upon the minute and molecular parts of our bodies, which have caused to be produced in us, thru the countless cen- turies of time, slight chemical and physical changes, until from all these myriads of variations, there has been built thru these processes of Nature, ail the won- derful complicated organisms, such as the eyes, ears, brain, extremities, heart, liver, kidneys, etc., possessed by man today. Those wonderful instruments of man, 26. The Human Hands and Civilization. such as the brain, eyes, ears, nose, feet, hands, etc., have all been produced in some way by the competition be- tween man and alien forms of life. Those wonderful fingers possessed by man, have made possible his genius, : and are the cause of man's superiority over all other forms of living things. Without the development of the hand, man would, undoubtedly, be still among the lower brutes. We must not forget THAT THE HANDS WERE NOT DEVELOPED 'THRU HUMAN COMPETITION BETWEEN MAN AND MAN, BUT WERE DEVELOPED AGES BEFO'RE MAN EVER BECAME A SAVAGE, AND LONGER vSTILL, INDEED, BEFORE HE EVER BECAME A GREGARIOUS SOCIAL ANIMAL, PRODUCING THINGS FOR HUMAN CONSUMP- TION AND WEAR. BEFORE MAN EVER EN- TERED INTO COMPETITION WITH HIS OWN KIND IN THE PRODUCTION OF FOOD, WEAR- ING APPAREL, OR THE BUILDING OF SHELT- ERING SUPPLIES, HE HAD ALREADY DEVEL- OPED THE HAND AND FINGERS. .WHEN MAN, AS A BRUTE, GOT HIS UVING BY KILLING AND EATING OTHER CREATURES, OR BY LIVING OFF THE WILD GRASSES, FRUITS AND NUTS HE COULD FIND, AGES BEFORE HE LIVED IN COMMUNI- TIES, BUILT CITIES, DEVELOPED ANY INDUS- TRY, LITERATURE, ART, OR EVEN AN ALPHA- BET, HE DEVELOPED THOSE WONDERFUL IN- STRUMENTS, THE HUMAN HAND AND FING- ERS; AND ONCE STARTED IN THEIR DEVEL- OPMENT, THE ADVANTAGE GAINED WAS SO GREAT OVER OTHER FORMS OF LIFE, THAT MAN TOOK EASY LEAD AND RAPIDLY DREW What is Hand-Brained? 27 AWAY FROM THEM, DUE TO THE DEVELOP- MENT OF HIS BRAIN, WHICH, UNDOUBTED- LY, THE HAND MADE POSSIBLE. THE CON- TINUED AND HIGHER DEVELOPMENT OF THE BRAIN IN TURN MADE POSSIBLE EVERY IN- VENTION TODAY IN HIS POSSESSION, FROM PRIMITIVE MAN'S ACT OF FIRST MAKING FIRE BY RUBBING TWO PIECES OF W r OO must if anything weaken their corporate power, thereby weak- ening their defense and their ability to withstand attacks from enemies, in the form of disease producing bacteria,. | and the elements of nature unfavorable to them. I ! 48 Human Beings No Exception. Human beings are no exception to this rule. The ignorance, poverty and the exploiting of one class of human beings by another, is the cause of 90 per cent of the present human misery and degradation. Xo system man can devise will ever produce perfect human condi- tions., but from what we see of life today we know man could produce better human conditions, thru a common- wealth, where all industries were owned and operated by - the people co-operatively for common use, instead of - profit. Under such an industrial commonwealth, by eliminating poverty, disease and their concomitants, — crime and insanity — human conditions would then be- come ideal, as far as it is possible for an intelligent class conscious people to make them. WHAT IS THE HOPE OF HUMAN ACHIEVEMENT? In the struggle for existence, if parents were to live off the flesh, blood and sweat of their own children, as the privileged capitalistic class of human beings are liv- ing off the flesh and blood of other men, women and children, whom they call so lightly in sermons "brothers and sisters/' man would, indeed, be still among the low- :: est savages. . But the development of human sympathy > and feeling, which has been brought about by the growth : of this very same family tie, has lifted the people beyond the brute state : but the ignorance of the great masses has prevented and still prevents them from exercising co-operatively their great latent powers for the general good of all mankind. Most people giving their efforts, as > a rule, only for the benefit of themselves or their : immediate families. This produces industrial chaos, with its tremendous waste, causing 90 per cent of all human poverty and disease. Education combined with the developed forces of human sympathy and feeling, would produce a human j Are Human Achievements For the Few? 49 I '! co-operative race, that would make future mankind ! ashamed of the past, untold times more, than man is ! ashamed of those animal acts- which he today as an in- I telligent being, would not commit in the presence of ] other human beings. If mankind is to create achievements, only for the purpose of benefiting a few parents and children of their number, and those few shall live in plenty and happiness by riding on the backs of the crushed, the bleeding, the ignorant, the lame and the weak; then, as Huxley says, "I do not hesitate to express the opinion, that if there is no hope of a large improvement of the condition, of the greater part of the human family ; if it is true that the increase of knowledge, the wining of greater dominion over nature, with its consequence, and the wealth which follows upon that dominion, are to make no difference in the extent and intensity of want, with its concomitant physical and moral degredation among the masses of the people, I should hail the advent of some kindly comet, which would sweep the whole affair away." The fierceness of the competition for existence be- tween unit members, groups, or classes of the same fami- lies or species, cannot be compared to the fierceness of the competition that exists between strange or alien classes of different genuses or families. To illustrate, — the great danger to the lives of human beings, who live in the North temperate zone, and who move, say, into Brazil, is not from other human beings living there, but the real danger is from certain bacteria, which attack the newcomers with fatal diseases ; for example, such as yellow fever, malaria, cholera, etc. If the strangers can overcome or neutralize the attacking germs, by co- operating and finding ways to destroy such human ene- mies, as thru the study of the sciences, which enable them to develop sufficient conscious knowledge to find means to destroy or neutralize the disease producing bacteria ; such as, for example, — the invention of a high 50 If They Do Not Still Compete. power microscope, so as to enable disease germs to be seen, and from this knowledge then the application of certain principles, drugs, or foods, as agents of bacterial destruction, when they have done this then these human beings have accomplished the greatest good for their pres- ervation, for if they do not still remain as competing animals, they can very easily obtain their food supplies by co-operating for their production. If men are so situated, and are kept so busy fight- ing each other for the mere necessities of life, and do not take the time to learn of the real dangers that surround them, there cannot be anything left, but for the great- est number of them to suffer, in some way, thru a con- flict that must produce poverty, disease and crime. If life's living, is only worth the hopeles hope, and the faithless faith, and the constant grind in work, is to forget our existence, then life as a God-like thing, is not God-like at all, for we are just as so many mechanical figures, living to forget that we are living, and forget- ting to live while w T e are living. HUMAN ACHIEVEMENTS SHOULD BE THE HERITAGE OF ALL MANKIND. The knowledge of the man who first made fire, by rubbing two pieces of wood together, down thru all the ages, to the last man who gave something useful to mod- ern mankind, each and every one of them borrowed, in some way, the knowledge necessary to do so, from some other being. If the first man who made fire consciously had not learned the value of fire from some of his pro- genitors, he would never have developed sufficient con- sciousness to have known the value of fire ; even if he had been fortunate enough to have made it accidently. So it is with every intelligent act performed by any human being in the past or present ; each and every one of them borrowed something, from someone else, which Priceless Treasures of the Past. 51 | made every discovery or invention possible, no matter I how little it might have been. The accumulation of such human heritages, that make possible our modern civili- zation, should be for the benefit of the whole human race. No man, or class of men, should be permitted to use,, for their own benefit, these priceless treasures of the past. The great discoveries of the world should be used for the benefit of all mankind. There can be no doubt that millions upon millions of human beings, from the earliest dawn of civilization, down to the present time, have added here and there, little by little, and bit by bit, the knowledge we possess, which has made pos- sible our human world today; and for less than 10 per cent of all mankind to benefit by this heritage is iniquit- ous, if there is such a thing we call human equity or justice among men. THE MERIT SYSTEM. The benefits of industry talent, genius, ef- fort and perseverance must receive its reward in some way under an industrial government, if that form of public commonwealth is to be permanent and success- ful. We must recognize this phase of the human posi- tion. Industrial governments that might be established by any race of people, must take this into account, for if they do not, such industrial commonwealths will be failures, and they will finally revert back to systems, where exploitation of the great mass will be the reigning factor again. Nature is ever creating new varieties of things, and the human being is no exception to the general rule. As we ascend in the scale of civilization, nature, by slight variations, is always producing some men who are more highly gifted with certain particular mental and physi- cal structures than others, and those of us who are not. equally as fortunate to be as well endowed, must recog- 52 Incentive nize that such deviations for the better should not be decried, but should be recognized by all men as being good for them ; for it sets a higher standard of human fit- ness, and creates incentive to imitate the better types. Therefore, in order for any intelligent industrial govern- ment to succeed, where, in such a commonwealth all the means of human production are to be commonly owned, for the common good of all, — providing each gives his best efforts for the common welfare ; — then, in such cases, such human societies must recognize the genius, talent, and effort of any individual, which is out of the ordinary, by publicly honoring such individuals; not as some would think, by presents representing mone- tary value, — for in such an industrial social state, mone- tary value will not count for what it does today; — but, the compensation to natural greatness and individual ef- fort, given for the benefit of the masses, must find its expression in the public approbation of the individual's act, by extending public respect and honor to those mer- iting such honor. For instance, any individual or indi- viduals who, by their personal power or extra efforts, give to the community greater comfort, happiness and security of healthful life, — those men and women, must signally be appreciated by the public. At the present time in most cases genuine effort is discouraged, and the masses are exploited by the few, who in return for such exploitation are taught to respect and honor those who rob and force upon them economic and moral ethics that are injurious to the largest majority of them. A very common question asked of those who advo- cate an Industrial Commonwealth. Who is going to do the dirty or menial work? The answer to that question is this. When the workers of menial and dirty labor be- come respected and honored for the great services they are rendering mankind, then very few, if any, wiB deem it a disgrace to do menial work, such as digging How Labor Becomes Respected. 53 trenches , building and cleaning sewers, domestic work, etc. A splendid example showing how social labor, which is very menial and dirty, becomes valuable and respected' when exalted in the eyes of the general public, is the work performed by nurses in the hospitals and private homes. The pus, blood and filth they have to handle is far dirtier and more dangerous, than almost any other kind of work of which one can think. Yet, owing to this work being held respectable it is now deemed an honor to be engaged in such a calling. The dirt, dtc, is lost sight of when the public and the nurses view the matter in the light that work that is now considered hard, menial, dirty and under- paid is so valuable to society. Under the workings of an Industrial Commonwealth, those younger members of society in general, while re- ceiving their education as Engineers, Doctors, Mechan- ics or whatever trade or profession they may choose to follow, will have to serve an apprenticeship in their re- spective callings for a certain period of time in doing the menial and dirty work. For example, those young men and women desiring to practice medicine during their course as students, will have to serve an apprenticeship as nurses, orderlies, or whatever else might be found neces- sary for them to do. Those desiring to become en- gineers will have to serve an apprenticeship of a certain period of their schooling as trench diggers, or street cleaners; so with the plumbers, architects and every other vocation in life. We must not forget that under an Industrial Commonwealth most all of the hard, menial and dirty labor will be effected by mechanical contrivances. For example, — street cleaning will not be done as it is at present, but will be more thoroughly ac- 54 If Too Many Engage in Certain Callings. complished by machinery : the same will be true of cleaning sewers, etc. However, when the apprenticeship is finished of those preparing for their chosen callings., there will then be others to take their places. Those graduating in any trade or profession will be placed in higher positions of public trust, directly, by the people or appointed to higher positions by those men and women who have al- ready earned the confidence of the people, and who have been chosen as managers or directors of industries or utilities because of their knowledge and efficiency. If. however, it is found that too many of the people are striving after certain trades or profession, such call- ings shall then become limited in number, and only those after proper examinations found to be the best fitted, shall be chosen, and the apprenticeship in the lower po- sitions of life will be continued for a longer time. Those men and women of greater learning and ability will get the higher places. This will be the incentive for man and woman to do their best in striving for the higher posi- tions of trust and honor. Instead of labor in it various phases being consider- ed as something the aspiring should avoid, such labor will then in reality be respected, and will become the stepping stones to positions of honor and trust among the people., such as managers., supervisors, foremen, etc. Those members of society who will prove ineffici- ent, or those that have refused the opportunities that the new system offers for advancement, by neglecting and wasting their school periods, or those that refuse to learn, these members will be prevented from attaining the higher position of life, much more than they are todav. Not Perfection. 55 No matter how imperfect the new system may prove in certain respects, the benefit to the human race will be untold times greater than the present wasteful one. SLAVE CO-OPERATION OF INSECT LIFE DUE TO THE DIFFERENCE IN THEIR PHYSI- CAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL CHARACTERS. It is true that the honey bees have a peculiar slavish state of society, yet live co-operatively; but the bees are so constituted physically and physilogically, that such a slavish co-operative state of society answers best, in a measure, for their peculiar characters. The Queen, and there is only one queen permitted to rule a hive, differs from the workers, females of the hive, in being larger than the workers and having ovaries that are not sterile, but on the contrary the queen is very prolific and fer- tile, laying as many as 120,000 eggs in a few weeks time, while the female worker seldom if ever lays an egg that is fertile. The worker compared to the queen bee is much smaller in size, with the exception of its brain, which is much larger and more developed than that of the queen. Here it is clearly seen that the function of the two are altogether different ; yet, neither live at the expense of the other, for the function of both, for the propagation of the hive, is of the utmost importance. A peculiar and most remarkable type of the honey bee in the hive, is the male or drone. He does not share in any of the work, but lives from the labor of the fe- male workers. On those warm and sunny summer days, if these lazy drones do leave the hive and fly from flow- er to flower, it is not to bring back honey and pollen, but it is to selfishly eat and gorge themselves with the sweet 56 Human Parasites — What Are They? delicacies they find, with never a thought of bringing as much as a speck of the good things back to the hive. The female workers of the hive must surely in some way recognize this selfishness of the male, for a -long time after the queen has laid her eggs, and the time of the year has grown late, with flowers gone and the cold hard winter approaching, their kindness to the males begin to diminish, until, on a certain day, as if premedi- tated by all the workers, of what is absolutely necessary to save themselves from starvation, and the new unborn brood from destruction ; the workers, as if by command, fall upon the lazy, lounging males, who up to this time did nothing else but gorge themselves with the choicest foods from the hive unmolested. The wicked and lazy drones now must pay the pen- alty for the crime of being parasitic, by living off the work of others ! They are led into the various galleries of the hive, each surrounded by three or more workers, and put to death by being torn to pieces. Among human beings, however, it is different. Those parasitic rich who have gained their power thru inheritance, the greatest number of whom never do any- thing of value, and who by their wealth control the de- stinies of nations and races, are not treated so by the workers, (for we are not that inhuman as to desire that they should be dealt with as the workers deal with the bee drones.) Bat if the paristic rich were made to work and produce, or starve, the world indeed would be a bet- ter place in which to live. Poverty, preventable dis- eases and crime among human beings would almost be entirely abolished. The physical distinctions that exist among bees, do not exist among human beings. It is a notorious fact that among mankind, those oftimes the most poorly fed and nourished, and those subject to various incur- able diseases, are the most prolific in producing their Distribution of Labors' Products 5? kind ; even if it is an inferior kind. For example, epilep- tics are notoriously prolific. The propagation of inferior human beings is due, in most cases, to the system of exploitation of the workers. The unsystematic co-operation of the masses and the un- just distribution of the products of their toil, pre- vent them from receiving the proper necessities of life, which in turn, prevents them from giving suffici- ent time to the education and physical development o£ their young. GREATER NEED FOR SYSTEMATIC CO-OPERA- TION, AND MORE JUST DISTRIBUTION OF THE PRODUCTS OF LABOR, BY ESTAB- LISHING AN INDUSTRIAL COM- MONWEALTH. The products of labor will be shared in proportion to the labor, and the value of that labor as it is benefic- ial to mankind, in every endeavor of life, by the estab- lishment of a democratically managed co-operative in- dustrial commonwealth, where the necessities of life will be produced for the purpose of use, and not for profit. It is of the highest importance, and of the ut- most necessity, if mankind is to progress along those highly conscious lines which they have already reached, that an industrial commonwealth be established. In the end such a commonwealth will greatly eliminate graft in all its phases, as it is carried on by our private indus- tries and political factions today. The laws of evolution are true, and have been dem- onstrated to be true over and over again, by the material manifestations of everything within the range of our ex- istence; from the development of the simple or homo- geneous cell, such as the amoeba, to the development of 58 Human Coop erative Development, the most complex, or heterogenous arrangement of brain cells contained within the skull of the human being. The wonderful complicated growth of cell struc- tures, whether the simplest nerve cell in the body, or the harmonious symetrical growth of simple structural cells, such as a nerve ganglion, or the higher complicat- ed, closer assimilated nerve cells of the brain, and other body organs, — all these developmental growths are the prototypes for the future development of a new social and industrial order among human beings. The fusing together of the ideas that will bring about such a class conscious order among all classes and nations of men, are being crystallized by our economic struggle today. Human co-operative development in every line of endeavor has become more marked than ever be- fore in the world's history. There are in the world but few great human groups or nations, in com- parison to what there were at one time. We have to- dav only the English, Teuton, Slavak, Latin. Hindu, Chinese and a few other races. Not so very long ago, when men were savage and barbarous, thousands of different and distinct racial types, nations and tribes lived during the same period of time. These thousands of different tribes, while contemporaneous, many of whom lived in close proximity to each other, spoke different tongues or dialects and had different cus- toms. Custom, as it has been developed since time immemorial bv thousands of different tribes and na- tions, whether social, political, religious or economic, "has been in a great measure responsible for the slow progress of civilization. The present day capitalism, is continually stretch- ing out its hands over the world for more profits. While in doing this it is exploiting the worker, yet at the same time it is bringing the workers from all over the world in closer sympathy with each other, by a bond of com- The Demands of Modern Civilization. 59 mon understanding. This bond of common understand- ing is daily being increased, due to the intelligence which capitalism requires of the worker, in order to carry on its extensive operations in the effort to get profits. Modern advanced custom demands higher intellect- ual effort from the workers in the production of the world's necessities ; and the workers, growing more in- telligent, are demanding a just share, or the equivalent, of the commodities they produce, so as they, in turn, can enjoy, not only the mere necessities of life, but as well, some of the luxuries which modern civilization forces upon man. The workers are beginning to demand that they and their families be assured the necessities of life ; that their children be properly schooled, clothed and fed ; and that the fear of poverty, in old age, sickness, the fear of non- employment, or the fear of insufficient wage, be remov- ed, as the ever night-mare that every self respecting man and woman continually dread, who try to lead decent and self respecting lives. When the fear of poverty, the fear of want in time of sickness and old age, the fear of non-employment and the loss of earning power in time of disability; when these burdens and fears are removed from man, by a just compensation for the efforts which he gives in labor to the production of the world's necessities — then, and then only, can man devote all his energies in building an empire of human civilization, thru intelligent labor, such as the world has never before known. 60 Exploitation Must Cease WHAT CONDITIONS ARE NECESSARY TO BRING ABOUT BETTER HUMAN AFFAIRS? In a civilized society, in order for mankind, in gen- eral, to enjoy the fruits of their labor, and prevent their exploitation and robbery by the few, which the present capitalistic system forces men to do, it is absolutely necessary to abolish all private industries, wherein ne- cessities for the public welfare are produced. All these private industries should be turned over to the people to be democratically managed under an industrial com- monwealth, and to be regulated according to the merit system, where only those willing and able to work shall be happy. Those who give greater effort than usual, or give something of benefit to the nation or communi- ty in which they live; these men and women shall re- ceive honors and distinctions from the public, befitting the services which they render. It is gradually dawning upon most men of civilized countries, that the production of the necessities of life by the workers, shall not go to enrich the few and en- slave the many; but that justice and equity, nay, life itself, demands that the exploitation and robbery of the worker shall cease; and that those physical and mental workers who produce or help to conserve man, or the necessities of life, must receive as their compensation, a decent happy living' with the opportunity of feeding, clothing, sheltering and properly schooling their chil- dren 'to an age, at least, where the education of those children will be effective in making them conscious of their usefulness, their necessity to themselves and their kind, so as they again in turn can direct public affairs and the education of their young, so as to safe-guard and hold precious the advanced civilization which they have conquered. Only under such a system, where private Mass Action. 61 ownership of public utilities is abolished, can mankind ever hope to be able to follow honestly the golden rule of, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Under the present system, the brotherhood of man and all that that implies, is impossible. MASS ACTION AND THE WORKERS. In the present great struggle for better living con- ditions, it seems at times that the great working classes become demoralized thru the economic power used against them by the capitalistic class, and by the ignor- ance and false teaching brought to bear on their already heavy burdens. Yet, these seeming periods of retrogres- sion,' are only the backward or retarding steps, that are to bring the great class of intelligent workers again forward. The next step will be the step of acceleration, which will bring greater liberty and progress than before. Tom Mann, the great labor syndicalist, speaking of the present labor movement, states that it is not necessary for all the workers to be class conscious in order to make their movement effective, but, that if only 20 per cent of them are class conscious, and act in soli- darity, the spirit of mass psychology, which would follow any action of that 20 per cent, would be sufficient in overcoming all difficulties, and would finally result in their winning their labor battles against the capitalists. Mr. Mann speaks of the spiritual essence, or the im- buing the spirit of mass action into the workers for the gaining of labor victories. We must, however, not forget, that the capitalistic class combined with the great bourgeois, or middle class, who are, in a sense, the retainers of the capitalis- tic class, comprise about 20 per cent of all the people, who are well organized by the power of money, numbers 62 False Religious, Political and Industrial Leaders. and situations of power advantage, such as militia, police, etc., who in times of differences between this class and the workers, prevent the workers from produc- ing or using the necessities of life, so as to sustain them long enough to become victorious in their struggle against the upper 20 per cent. Even when the great mass of workers have an opportunity of winning their fights, there are always a certain number of workers, who, either thru ignorance or the fear of starvation are usually added to the already well fortified upper 20 per cent, by being bought over to the classes in power in some way, either thru fear, false promises, or the false teachings of their political, industrial and religious leaders. So, the great labor problem is not a problem to be solved alone, by enthusing the workers with the "spir- itual essence" of illiterate mass action. While mass ac- tion is absolutely necessary, in the way of industrial organization, for the workers to win; yet, if that mass action is not based upon a class conscious intelligent knowledge by the workers, their victories will not be of long endurance. The result of the mass action of the French revolution has proven this. Many will tell you that the masses are more intelligent today than they were during that period, and that mass action victories by the workers, will be more staple and enduring. Many hope this to be true; but, alas, those staple victories do not occur as frequently as they would, were the great mass of workers more intelligent and class conscious. Working Class Tactics. 63 THE NECESSITY FOR GREATER INTELLIGENT MASS ACTION BY GREATER CO-OPERA- TION OF THE WORKERS ON THE IN- DUSTRIAL AND POLITICAL FIELD. Working class tactics should not be so bigoted as to destroy the value of any form of education, valuable in opening the eyes of the workers; whether the tactics are political or industrial. Unquestionably, intelligent mass tactics on the industrial field would be more im- portant and effective than on the political field, as the fight is then carried on at the point of production; but the present psychology of the working class, it seems, is not sufficiently developed to take advantage of the power they possess, if they would act in mass on the in- dustrial field. If political action has not been as successful, as it was hoped at one time it would be, it, nevertheless, has played a role in developing many class conscious work- ers to the fact that the ultimate goal of working class action, is to be an industrial commonwealth ; and that every time they are sold out on the political field, it helps all the more to emphasize the necessity for grea- ter co-operation on the industrial field. Political action is already an action, the psychology of which is possessed by a very great number of the workers, and as a valuable educative factor, should not by any means be destroyed ; but should be used to show its weakness, and to derive any advantage, moral or otherwise, that might accrue from its use. 64 More Co-operation. GREAT NECESSITY FOR GREATER SOLIDARI- TY AMONG THE UNIT WORKING MEM- BERS OF HUMAN SOCIETY. The unit workers of human society, thru necessity, are being brought together by bonds of the same inter- est, into closer harmony with each other. The unit workers of society, if they are to continue to exist as unit members, must lose some of their independency of action; or otherwise, instead of advancing and freeing themselves, as they would under a co-operative common- wealth, they will, one by one, and group by group, be- come entwined in the coils of that class that now con- trol them, until they in time will finally become abject slaves, without the privilege of even breathing the words hope and liberty. The individuals of the working class will be com- pelled to co-operate by organizing more and more, if they would preserve their liberties. Then individual movement, in a sense, will become restricted; but in a broader sense, greater movement, in the mass, will be produced, which will ensure and guard the existence, more than ever, of the majority of those single mem- bers of human society that make the total of mankind. This state of affairs is readily demonstrated by the different combinations and the efforts at greater organ- ization, which we see being daily attempted among the working classes. The capitalistic class, by their co-operation, have al- ready formed trusts, which are not only national in scope and character, but which are becoming daily more and more international. If co-operation is so beneficial and necessary for a certain class, which increases its profits by eliminating waste in the production of human necessities, by a better systematic method of producing commodities ;howmuch more necessary is it for the world's workers to build The Value of Their Work 65 upon the present productive methods, by carrying on the co-operative plan a step farther than it has at present reached ; that is, by taking over all the great private in- dustries and running them for the benefit of all the work- ers. If the people of the United States can build a Pana- ma Canal, they can also build railroads, and own them. If the people can build fifteen million dollar war ships, they can also build factories, homes — and own them. WHY WORKING CLASS CO-OPERATION AND ORGANIZATION IS DISCOURAGED. Under the present system, capitalistic society co- operates to increase its profits, and by so doing exploits the workers. While the capitalists co-operate them- selves, they discourage by every means possible within their power, the co-operation of the workers from form- ing effective industrial unions. One does not need to go far to find the reason for this, for the co-operative capitalist knows, that if general co-operative industrial union of the workers take place, that the co-operative capitalist will be exterminated as a class, and that they will be compelled to enter the great class of workers as real physical and mental producers; and that they will- only receive in excess those benefits and honors, that the amount of their energies will bring them ; and not as at the present time, where one in many cases receives ten thousand times as much as another, who is not even de- serving of once the share of the humblest worker. No matter what the value of a man's physical or mental work may be, he should not be permitted to draw fifty million dollars a year, as Carnegie and some other millionaires do. Many men contend that while one worker may do things better than another, the value of their work is not worth one thousand dollars, while the other worker receives only a dollar or two. It is very apparent to any observer, that any industrial system, 66 Individualism. that permits of such an uneven distribution of the pro- ducts of labor, must eventually result in great harm, and danger to the many, by the wealth and power finally becoming absorbed by the few. These few upon dying, leave this wealth and power, by the man made in- heritance law, to their children, most of whom, in turn, never attempt to do anything useful, and who discrim- inate against the great world of workers by their ineffic- iencies and ignorant arrogance thru the power that has been left to them, until the great masses are forced to cry out in agony and distress at their suffering. HUMAN CO-OPERATION IS OPPOSED TO HUMAN ANARCHY. Independent unit action of unit individuals, living and acting entirely independent of all other human be- ings, is a beautiful idealism. To conceive of all the mil- lions of individuals doing the world's work, simply be- ing guided to the duties of each, without human guid- ance or direction, without loss of time, energy or differ- ence of opinion ; with each single individual doing his work in such a highly intelligent manner as to be almost, if not entirely, automatic — is an ideal well worthy of the loftiest dreamer. This philosophical anarchistic idealogy is a beautiful mental state of which to conceive : it can be favorably compared to the orthodox theolog- ian's idea of heaven. As much as we would like to see these ideals come true, we must not deceive ourselves, for the laws of nat- ure are the facts which stand in the way of the con- summation of such a perfect human ideal state. True individual freedom is based upon the power which permits of the free action between human individ- ual units. It is not the independent action of the indi- vidual, but rather, the cohesive attraction of intelligent units to each other and for each others benefit. Such Economic Freedom 67 independent cohesive attraction of individuals for each other, cannot attain their highest development under the present pernicious anarchistic industrial and soc- ial repressive methods, which stifle human development in the great majority of people. The liberation of man can only be effected by making men not only politi- cally free as many suppose, but economically free. Such real human freedom can only be brought about by an industrial commonwealth, where human energy and merit will take the place of privilege. The present law o£ property rights, real and personal, which now is transmissible by inheritance from one to the other, will in time be abolished to such a degree that proper- ty, such as real estate and industries of any kind produc- ing public necessities, will be owned and operated by the public commonwealth for the public's benefit.. Such an intelligent industrial commonwealth will produce in us ,as Jacobi has so beautifully said, "That free obedi- ence which makes the calls of unlovely egotism subord- inate to the interests of all alike," and which Mr. Holmes so well and aptly says, produces in us "activity, versa- tility, imagination, sympathy, a wide and free outlook, charm of manner and joy of heart." INDIVIDUAL ANARCHISM. Certain individuals today believe in the utmost free- dom of individual action ; among these are the philo- sophical anarchists who lose no time in propagating their theories. On the other hand, we have another class of men, our capitalists of today, who are also prac- tical anarchists, who do not propogate their views the- oretically, but practice them openly under the guise of capitalism. When one, a dozen, or even a thousand men are permitted by the masses thru the present so called legal and ethical methods to acquire billions of dollars^ 68 How Leaders Usurp Intrusted Power. by the control of public industries and utilities, to the direct detriment and welfare of almost all the people, we then have in our midst the effects of practical anarchy, with a vengeance, where individual action in gathering power is as free as it is possible for it to be, in a state of human society. Savages, in all their animal ignor- ance, would never permit among themselves such ine- qualities when it came to gathering in the fruits of their labor. In the beginning of man's supremacy, those individ- uals who became sovereign in power, did so because the masses desired such sovereignty or leadership for their guidance and protection. But, invariably, such sover- eignty or leadership, even in these modern capitalistic times, whether king, politician or labor leader, did not subordinate itself to the will of the people, which made them sovereign for the welfare and guidance of them all alike. These leaders, after getting power, which in the be- ginning was bestowed upon them, as a rule, for the pro- tection of the tribe or nation, and themselves as well, did not descend, nor do they descend today to the level of the masses, who are the ones supposed to be benefit- ed by such leadership ; but under the past and present forms of government, they ascended, and elevated them- selves into exalted and different social states from that to which they formerly belonged, and for which they were used as guides, for their own protection as well as the ones they helped to protect. From the first primitive communism, when men fought to protect themselves from their enemies, those men endowed with the greatest strength fought beside their brothers of weaker strength, for the protection of all alike ; and it was only when those of greater power became aware of their strength, whether it was in the handling of a club or in the cunning of trickery, that they then drew aloof from their fellow men, and produc- Class Distinction. 69 I ed class distinction, and arrogantly defended their new positions by oppression and hatred of the class forced below them, which class made their very leadership and j existence possible. So ever resulted the desire for in- i dependent individual action. It has mattered little i whether the individual was an emperor over millions, re- j ligious representative of God, or later day anarchist, | who professes belief in absolute independent individual- ism; these are all the same type of men produced and moulded in the great struggle for existence. The laws of evolution have taught us that our solar system is in a state of integration, or in a state of combin- ation and contraction, and man can be no exception to that evolutionary movement which must affect him, if he is going to develop as a race. The tendency of humanity is to develop from the single or simple to the complex. We have not yet, as a living, supreme successful race of beings, attained that maximum compound social state, capable of being reach- ed under the natural conditions which surround us. If we have reached that maximum stage of human develop- ment, then pity all mankind; for dissolution and disin- tegration of all the human social forces are beginning to take place, and man is doomed to idiocy, imbecility and animalism, — the state from which he came ! Those people, however, who have learned to think and reason, feel assured that no such catastrophe is in store for the human race ; and if anything, human suc- cess for the general masses is now more assured than ever before. 70 Co-Operative Development. THE TENDENCY IS TO DEVELOP THE CO- OPERATE SOCIAL, AND NOT THE INDI- VIDUAL ANARCHISTIC STATE. The tendency for man to develop from the simple to the complex co-operative social state is illustrated by the following: Take for example the hermit, who lives in the wild- erness, far removed from the coercion of any other hu- man being. The hermit's position, so far as his person- al actions are concerned under these solitary conditions, is one of full independence. If he has found a road or cut one thru the forest, he has no human opposition as to when or how he shall travel over that road ; he owes no obedience to any human coercive law, for he is the law. Whatever he determines to do, he has no human antagonistic forces to stand in his way. But suppose, now, into this wilderness come other men, seeking new homes, or driven there by flight for purposes of safety; these new-comers then take up their abode in the forest with the hermit. The strangers find a road leading per- haps to some cool spring, river, sheltering cave or other place, — quickly use what they find. If the hermit who lives in this district, and uses these vehicles for his use and comfort, should object to the strangers using them, he must either by force, prevent them from being used, or yield to their common use. In case he does neither, he then removes himself from those things and places, which he used before unobtruded and alone. If he should prevent, by force, the use of his road, cave, spring, or whatever it might be, he either kills the intruders, or subjects them to his ruling, which very rul- ing reflects itself upon him ; for he then constantly has to uphold his own law, and to do this he surrenders part of his freedom, by being compelled by constant watch- ing to keep in subjection those who would force this arbitrary power from him. Basis of Law, Criminal, Civil and Moral. 71 Again, if he yields and agrees to share in common the road, cave, spring, or whatever it might be, he then subjects himself to the loss of his independency of action, by permitting the strangers to drink, while he awaits his turn, etc. He cannot use that part of the road which he does not occupy, and which is occupied by another, except by certain forms of power; either by destruction of the opposing force, or by forcing a change in their position. This change of position is the funda- mental basis of all human law,— criminal, civil and moral. Again, if the hermit agrees to share in common the use, say, of his cave with the stranger or whoever it might be, then the position of the hermit in relation to the others with whom he shares part of the cave, is this : He cannot use any part of the cave, except that part which the others are not occupying — For if he desires to use or occupy the space which the others are using, he must either force them away by physical power, or gain their consent to obey him without being ^physically forced to do so. Thus, in human society, one form of restriction after another is imposed upon each and every individual who would continue to live within the sphere of social exist- ence. It matters not whether it be m the city, country or wilderness. There is a cohesive and coercive attraction in the evolution of human society, that prevents the unit indi- vidual from acting independently of those laws of force and matter, that effect the aggregate of human society. iSiince a single human being is but the result of the aggregate of two human beings, that single being must and always will be subject to the positive and neg- ative actions of those sociological and biological laws, which have made the existence of every human individual in this world possible. The fundamental sociological law is the mutual interest two beings have, 72 Co-operation and Security. who bring into the world, a third, in keeping it and them- selves alive. Therefore, the more numerous and higher develop- ed human society becomes, each individual unit, in order to protect and guard itself, must give up certain forms of its individual repressive and competitive measures, in return for that greater security from danger, vouchsafed in the better protection for each, by the aggregate, of two or more of its individual members. This fact is not only true of human beings, but is also true of all forms of life if they are to succeed. Gregarious animals find greater security, greater movement and less difficulty in supplying their wants when living in groups, herds or flocks. A lone animal has to confine itself to certain defin- ite limits, but when animals travel in groups, for ex- ample, like a pack of wolves, the individual wolf receives the benefit of the larger movement, which the aggregate units of the pack permit. In other words, the pack of wolves move further and safer than the individual wolf would by itself. When the individual unit moves with the pack, its movement is as great as the pack, and, therefore, greater than its movement would be, were it alone. In giving this illustration, we are not taking into ac- count what effect a highly organized force of superior intelligent beings, such as man, would have on lower forms of organized animals. Man by co-operation is cap- able of capturing or destroying any combination of in- ferior animals, no matter in what way they may live. Less than 150 years ago, the plains of the United States alone, supuuoruted from 2 to 300 million buffalo. Yet. man by his superior power, all but exterminated them. Taking away the danger of being destroyed by man, — the wolf, buffalo or any other developed animal, living or traveling in groups, is safer and better fit tc survive than if thev lived alone. Solitary Life. 73 There are few forms of life, if any, that are strictly solitary. The tiger lives in the jungle, which is the place best suited for him in the present development of animal life. He has great strength and can conceal himself easily to catch his prey ; yet, by his forced non- gregarious mode of living, he is limited to certain con- stricted areas of land, and has not developed that free- dom of motion which gregarious or social forms oflife^ develop : whether it be the groupings of such gregarious animals and insects, as the buffalo, ants, bees, man, or any form of life of which one can think. It has only- been those forms of life that live in groups which develop the best. An eagle seeks safety on the high mountain tops- of non-inhabited regions. It gets its living by preying upon other forms of life; and man, in order to protect: himself, and those domesticated and other animals, upon-t which he lived, was compelled to destroy and drive; away the eagle, because it was directly dangerous to? him or to those forms of life upon which he himself lived. The eagle chose the lone peaks, mountain tops and sides of high precipices of the Andes, Himalyas, or Rock- ies, not so much that it loved the altitude of the moun- tains, but because it was forced there by man. What is- true of the eagle in this respect, is true of the lion, tiger, ; panther, puma and other wild animals in the choosing of their lairs. Man could never domesticate these fe- rocious animals so that they could be of service to him.. He had to destroy or drive them away to protect his life. But in the true analysis, these solitary forms of life are not solitary, for they live in districts best suited for their preservation, mate very readily, and rear their young, not far from each other, which shows a form of grouping that is closely related to gregarious forms. Due to certain factors that have been developed thru natural selection, such as, for instance, the development. 74 Brain Capacity. in the eagle of great strength, powerful talons- wings and beak, it is able to defend itself singly from the at- tacks of other animals, finds easy security by living in inaccessible places, and when not having man to contend with, gets its food easily. Eagles, tigers, lions and other such powerful ani- mals, would, however, have fared better could they have lived gragariously, or in groups, but they could not ; for that higher conscious gregarious animal, man, would have developed or invented something thru his ability to •produce weapons and other instruments by means of his wonderful hands, which would have destroyed these animals more easily and in greater numbers at onetime. So, these animals developed solitary habits by being forced to live in inaccessible places. This was the only protection left for them, for were it otherwise, man would have destroyed them entirely ; as he did by killing off millions upon millions of American buffalo, until they were all but exterminated, Man, therefore, who is a highly developed conscious being, contains within himself the intellectual capacity for such knowledge, that if acquired and used by him, would protect him from the dangers that arise from the elements, such as cold, floods, draughts, animals, diseases, etc. Man's fight should be directed against the elements, and those strange forms of life- such as certain animals and germs, that are the cause of nearly all human ills. If man only used his brain and body in fighting these natural enemies, he would have enough to keep busy, and would develop the best traits in him. As it is now, we have to wait for the law of chance to produce better and brainier beings. If human intelli- gence were properly applied, man's struggle would be the competition of physical and mental merit against physical and mental merit, and not as it is now in most cases, the competition of those who have been fortunate -enough to have been left the power of wealth by inheri- How to Increase Human Efficiency. 75 ance, and who compete with such power against the millions of poor. Many who inherit such wealth power are weaklings, mentally and physically, and use such unearned power against the many millions, pre- venting them from getting even one chance in a hun- dred to develop properly. The many millions of ignorant and oppressed, as I have said before, contain the capacity for physical and intellectual development many times greater than their present status. If this intelligence were properly and consciously used, it would produce a world of better, healthier and happier human beings, than we have ever known. When man competes with his own kind for exist- ence, he loses, thru competition, the best and strongest part of that energy, which he possesses, and which if directed and used co-operatively, under an industrial democracy, would produce greater human efficiency and happiness than we are aware of today. Under such a system it would, indeed, be possible to look and hope for that "brotherhood of man" of which the present sys- tem makes a farce. Today, human efficiency, as viewed in the light by civilized people, runs from 3 per cent in such countries as Russia, China, Japan, India and the oriental countries to about 20 per cent in the United States, which country unpuestionably shows a greater percentage of intelli- gent and well-to-do, or those that live well, perhaps with the exception of Germany. To increase this percentage of human efficiency from 3 or 20 per cent to 50 per cent or more* is the aim of those that advocate a co-operative Industrial commonwealth, or what is more commonly known as government ownership of all the industries where pub- lic necessities are produced. Whether it be food sup- plies, iron or coal mines, oil fields, forests, etc., or the machinery necessary to produce and transport such com- 76 Why It It So Difficult? modities, such as factories, railroads, telephone, tele- graph, or any instrument or means used for the produc- tion or transportation of public necessities; all these socially produced necessities must be socially owned and DEMOCRATICALLY MANAGED by the people, if they expect to safe guard life and produce greater human happiness than we have today. It is absurd, many people will tell you, to attempt to bring about such a new social order. They point out instances where attempts were made to produce such conditions, and that they miserably failed. They for- get, or do not know, in telling you this, that where such conditions have been tried in spots, that the cause of fail- ure, in every instance, has been due to the hampering affects of the present pernicious commercial and politi- cal system, which crushes and ruins every endeavor of those who attempt to produce publicly owned industries and utilities. Those that attempt these changes cannot withstand for the present the pressure of the financial powers, who use every means or influence political, religious, finan- cial and social, that money can buy, to thwart the public from getting control of industrial institutions. This is the main reason why many attempts at public ownership or public direction of semi-private industries and utili- ties have been discredited and defeated. Yet, many un- thinking individuals will tell you that the people are too selfish or ignorant to run an industrial commonwealth ; and that such a social order if brought about, would not produce perfect conditions. No intelligent human being, if he has studied the laws of nature, pretends that the new social and industrial order will produce perfection. It is provoking to hear those say, who should know bet- ter, that if an industrial change should be brought about in our economic situation, such as the public ownership of all those industries necessary to feed, clothe and edu- cate efficiently the present and future generations, Who Expects Human Perfection? 77 there would always be people who would not work ; that others would be selfish as to want more than what they were entitled to; and that, in fact the new conditions would be anything but perfect. No sane, intelligent human being expects an indus- trial commonwealth to make human perfection ; for, ac- cording to the most rabid religionist, no human being can ever be perfect. But if 60 per cent or 80 per cent of human efficiency is not better than the 3 or 20 per cent as we have today, then nothing in life is worth striving after, and according to our kind and charitable friends, it is just as well, if not better, to have the great masses nearer the animal line, than to have them develop into what the words imply, real human God-like creatures. The greatest criminals today in the world are those men and women who control the economic power, and thru this, the educational and religious, who pervert the beneficial influences of such power to the most degrad- ing and degenerate uses, and who are responsible for the greatest amount of human misery and suffering in the world today. FALSE CLAIMS GIVEN TO THE VALUE OF MAN TO MAN COMPETITION FURTHER DISCUSSED. I cannot but again repeat what I have said before, that mankind has developed primarily not thru man to man competition' but thru the competition between man and all those other forms of life not human; AND THAT MAN'S DEVELOPMENT HAS BEEN IN SPITE OF MAN TO MAN COMPETITION. If man had not developed those chemical changes which he possesses in his blood, such as the anti-toxin and anti-body power to fight disease germs and their poisons, he would never have lived to be here today* 78 —If— If man had not been developed by slight variations and chemical changes that produced physical changes, which finally resulted in the development of all the dif- ferent organs of his body, especially the fingers, he would never have become a highly socialized human being. If it were not, after man became a gregarious con- scious being, one borrowing from the other, the knowl- edge of the past, as it was handed down in its crude way to each ; man would never have developed into a highly conscious socialized being. If it were not for the less waring and competition today, compared to the direct competition by war in ages and centuries passed, man would still be a savage. If it were not for the peaceful pursuits of life, noth- ing of human cultural welfare would be produced. The great masses of people cannot think to develop mental- ly, when engaged righting each other for the mere ne- cessities of life. They can only think to kill and crush. A few get control — and control means slavery and ignor- ance for the masses. History contains the facts of the retarding influences of man to man competition, for the necessities of life. The people were thwarted from ad- vancing for thousands of years, by man, tribe, nation and race fighting each other for the things they could all have acquired easily. There has been more human progress during the last century than in the previous hundred centuries. If during the last hundred years of comparative peace, man has been able to accomplish as much as he has under a poor system of co-operation — what is pos- sible for him to accomplish under a better and greater system of co-operation, such as an industrial common- wealth would be. In order to drive the lesson home, I cannot help but repeat again, lest the reader has forgotten what I have already said before, that it has only been the ability of the human race to kill or render harmless those small Adding Man to Man Struggle. 75 and large forms of life, dangerous to man's welfare, that he is in existence today. Human ravages by bacteria that cause smallpox, tuberculosis, pneumonia, scarlet fever, diphtheria, measles, and hundreds of other diseases too numerous to mention, all are the result of man's eternal struggle for existence against other forms of life, except his own kind. By adding the man to man struggle, the fight weakens him instead of making him stronger and more fit to survive. When man possesses communicable or infectious diseases, he then becomes dangerous to his fellow-man. How many people would enter a home not their own, knowing that small pox or some other pest was present there? Most people, it is sad to say, have not the least idea what the real dangers to life are. It is due to this general misunderstanding and ignorance that people suf- fer so much physically, from diseases, and from miser- able industrial conditions, that produce disease and poverty. The great majority of people are hampered to such an extent, in trying to make a living, that they never have an opportunity to learn. It has been demon- strated by able socioligists that 90 to 95 out of every hundred normal people have equal brain capacity; that is, one may make a good tailor, but a poor plumber, while the other w T ould make a good plumber but a poor tailor; and so it would run thru the whole 90 per cent. But under our present educational system, it is very questionable if 20 per cent of that 90 per cent are ever developed to become good tailors, plumbers, doctors, teachers, etc. I again repeat that man in fighting 'man for a liv- ing NEVER DEVELOPED THE HAND AND FING- ERS. He possessed these physical instruments, ages before he began to fight himself. Can you imagine any nation of men and women, all without hands and fing ers, producing any wonderful invention? What othet animal beside man has produced any great mechanical SO The Cry of the Masses. contrivance? It has been the development of the sense : :ouch and the ability to manipulate objects with the fingers which developed the human brain to what it is today. Had it not been for this higher development, due to the hand, man would still be a prowling, beastial savaee. OUR EARLY PROGENITORS WERE FIRST HAND BRAINED, THIS IS NOW GENER- ALLY ACKNOWLEDGED BY ALL STUDENTS OF ETHNOLOGY. S : thru the processes of natural selection, conscious -and unconscious, man has developed all the physical and mental characters of which he is possessed today. And it also is true beyond doubt, that thru conscious natural selection, or what we call today human intelligence, man has been enabled to preserve mam- more millions of his own kind to live and procreate themselves, than has evei before been known. In other words, the fit instead of being made unfit by mans competitive methods against man, are developed under a human intelligent co-operat- ive ?; s:em, to live fit and procreate many more millions as survival of the fit. So, the cry today is becoming greater and greater by the intelligent masses of thinkers and workers the world over, for the establishment of nothing less, than an industrial commonwealth, where the tremendous waste of human life and energy will be greatly eliminated. Man. thru such a commonwealth will be enabled to establish a better educational system, rein millions will become educated instead of thou- sands. Then thru study and co-operation he will use those natural laws, which will redound to his welfare. There will be less fit brought into the world and less fit to eliminate, and a higher standard of fitness for each individual will be brought about consciously. In the past the fit were produced mainly thru the Law of Chance (in speaking of the Fit, I mean those mentally and physically capable), there have been manv who have been given wealth power thru in- -False Standard of Fitness. 81 heritance, who ruled and controlled the destinies of nations, but who were no more capable or fit to do so than a dog or an insect. We have thousands of like instances today among the many rich who have inher- ited wealth power, who are entirely unfit' and who thru the use of such power, degenerate and keep mankind in ignorance and misery. This class has pro- duced a false standard of fitness that is a danger to the human race. If the unfit rich could be eliminated as easily as the unfit poor are eliminated, then many of the human prob- lems would more easily be solved ; but the present sys- tem is controlled by a class that will not change that system to eliminate itself as a class. The present economic ethics of private ownership, of private and semi-public industries must be changed to the public ownership by the people, if they expect to produce a fit, happy and progressive human race. Since the great difference and difficulty that pre- vents better human conditions for the great majority of people today, is one of man to man competition, I can- not help but dwell further on this particular phase of the subject I can say almost prophetically that the great differences now existing between millions of people in religious belief, which help to create misunderstanding and misdirection in matters pertaining to supplying their material necessities and comforts of life, would be almost eliminated by the establishment of an Indus- trial Republic. Such a republic would greatly remove the degrading and degenerating influences of religious ignorance, re- ligious bigotry and human inefficiency with its tremen- dous waste on the industrial field. In place of ignorance, hatred and strife there would be established a more efficient system, with a better un- derstanding of all things beneficial materially and psychically for the human race. 82 Can We Overcome Poverty and Ignorance? Those differences on the industrial and religious field as they exist today would be looked upon as in- human, barbarous, and only worthy of rapacious and savage creatures. When men, in the past, continued to live by direct competition between each other for the necessities of life, by killing and eating one another, as the cannibals did, or by their sacrificing human life to their deities, or, by the killing of each other for the sake of false patriot- ism, or what we in later times were led to believe was bravery : mankind, then indeed, were few in numbers as compared with today. When, or wherever, ignorance forced man to depend unconsciously upon the natural laws for survival, whole tribes and races were extermin- ated, or nearly so, by the ravages of human wars, diseases and the inability to get or raise sufficient food to tide over times of draught, or other natural conditions unfavorable to human existence. Today, since superstition and ignorance is giving way to scientific intelligence — plagues and epidemics of diseases are prevented by the simplest processes; i. e,. the prevention of typhoid fever, dysentary, etc.. by filt- ering or boiling the water we drink, or by the building up of immunities against dangerous diseases like small- pox, by certain well known simple scientific methods of vaccination and injection. If we can fight disease so well by intelligence and a little co-operation, why cannot we fight poverty and ig- norance successfully? Surely these two latter conditions are well within the range of human prevention — indeed, much more so than the preventative knowledege we pos- sess with regard to human diseases. The theory, that man to man competition, for the necessities of life, was necessary to develop better and brainier men and women, is ridicuously false, if one only stops to analyze the matter. It has been scarcely a few hundred vears since North and South America was Shrewdness, Strength and Inventive Ability. 83 but a huge wilderness, peopled by few waring savages, who were continually murdering one another in their competition to get things, which all could have enjoyed without their butcheries. Enough of ingenuity to develop the highest type of man, was required in each individual in fighting the wild beasts, and other elements of nature. Cunning, shrewdness, strength and inventive ability, all were required to fight those things not human; but in the struggle, while developing means for overcoming wild beasts and other unfavorable elements — man, in his ignorance and savagery, turned those very means of his meager development against his fellow man, and the result was a terrible struggle between them for life. As man developed, the excuse for fighting and murdering one another was changed at different periods to suit those in power. At one time it was a religious excuse ; at another, patriotism for the fatherland; at another, capitalism advocating private ownership, to develop, as they would have you believe, under a cut-throat degenerating competition, the best that is in us. The pity of the whole thing was that the millions have actually believed that all these false inhumanizing agencies were necessary for man in his relation to God, to the State, to the Church, and to his fellow-man. At one time the religionist believed that God com- manded war and such similar acts of murder, and that it was a divine punishment to have sickness, poverty, fam- ine and all other kinds of human misery. Today capit- alism, with its private ownership of the means of life, would have you believe, that only the highest types of human beings can be produced under its wasteful, crim- inal and murderous system. The only reason today that such countries as North and South America have millions of human beings, in- stead of thousands, as years ago, is because the people are co-operating more in the production for their neces- 84 False Standards. sities than the savage did who formerly lived in those places, and who, to satisfy false standards of religious and patriotic ideals, were continually murdering one another. Take, for example, what has been accomplished on the continent of Europe in the last two hundred years, in the way of preserving and safe-guarding human life. Thru a better intelligence, countries that not more than 50 to 60 years ago, supported populations of 20 millions or less, now support populations of 40 and 50 millions. England, Germany and Austria are countries that easily show this tremendous increase of people, not to speak of the United States, which has increased its population in 150 years from 3 million to over 100 million. IF ONE WERE TO ASSUME THAT IF THE WORLD HAD NOT INCREASED IN POPULATION IN THE LAST 100 YEARS, AND THAT HUMANITY WOULD BE JUST AS WELL OFF WITHOUT THE PRESENT INCREASE, ASK THE ONE WHO THINKS AND REASONS THAT WAY, IF IT WOULD NOT MAKE AND DIFFERENCE TO HIM OR HER, OR THEIR PARENTS, BROTHERS, SIS- TERS, WIFE OR CHILDREN, IF HE AND THEY WERE EXTERMINATED OR SUBJECTED TO DEGENERATING DISEASES WHICH WOULD ULTIMATELY BRING THIS ABOUT? A fact is a fact, and the fact of the matter is, we are here as living human beings ; and if we, as intelligent be- ings, are to remain a free, healthy and happy people, se- cure to enjoy that life that has been thrust upon us, we must receive the benefit of those achievements which mankind is ever discovering and inventing. Humanity cannot receive sufficient of those benefits which accrue from great inventions and discoveries under the present wasteful capitalistic or private ownership methods. This can only be accomplished by the people taking over all Political or Industrial Directors? 85 the privately owned industries, and forming one huge corporation, with each special industry under the man- agement of a local Board of Directors, chosen from the workers, and these in turn to be directed by a general Board of Directors. In other words, a central Board of Directors, directing the affairs of decentralized indus- tries, each industry to be situated in that part of the country where it is best suitable, and these local or decentralized industries to be directed by effic- ient men, all of whom shall be workers who have been found trust worthy and competent to direct the produc- tion of public necessities ; and in turn the whole affair to be owned and operated by the people, for the purpose of use and not for profit. In fact, the establishment of noth- ing more or less than a democratically managed indus- trial commonwealth. If people today pride themselves on the fact, that they have the privilege of voting for, and electing those political officials, who are supposed to give expression to their desires and wishes in matters pertaining to the regulation of factories, mills, mines, railroads, child- labor and other things pertaining to their living and wel- fare, — how much more are the people capable of choosing directors, or what is the same — superintendents and fore- men, etc., from among the numerous workers, whom they know personally to be efficient and capable, or of those whom they have heard frequently on account of their ability and merit. In these decentralized industrial institutions, regulated by a central form of management, the workers would be much more capable of choosing their directors, such as superintendents and foremen, than the poor deluded voters are of choosing their pres- ent political directors, of whom they know little or noth- ing, and who are dominated by the capitalists to such an extent, that it often takes years to enforce the least public beneficial measure. 86 Financial and Judicial Oligarchy. Laws seemingly for the public benefit are continual- ly brought up by these political directors in the various legislative halls. Some that look very good, pass, — and if examined closely after they pass, are found to be good cripples of the healthy originals. Or, if by chance a law- passes that would be a public benefit, and it is found to interfere with the money power, it is soon laid to rest by constituted higher political authorities or directors, who find such a law or laws unconstitutional. Chief Justice Clark of the N. Carolina Supreme Court, had the hardihood at a recent meeting of lawyers and judges, to denounce the present system of judicial oligarchy and governmental control by the few. The following article clipped from one of Pittsburg's dailies of January 29th, speaks for itself : GOVERNMENT BY JUDGES. "Chief Justice Clark, of the North Carolina supreme court, is likely to find himself unpopular with the judicial system, what the man in the street calls "in bad." When a supreme court chief justice says right out, in a meeting of judges and lawyers, that all government in this country lies at the feet of a judicial oligarchy he is not taking a course that will add to his popularity among those who believe in the gospel of Whatever Is. But when he takes the next step, and warns this judicial oligarchy that its very power will prove its greatest weakness, that this autocratic position will in itself top- ple the oligarchy from its self-erected throne, he takes a radical and desperate plunge. In the eyes of the judicial oligarchy it is treason for a judge to even take his head out of the sand long enough to see the injustice of much that is passing with us under the name of law, but to forecast the downfall of the oligarchy means death to the traitor if the future is to be gauged by the past. Graft 87 Justice Clark says governmental control, as in all other countries, is in the hands of a few. The form of government we have learned makes no difference. The question is, where does the control lie. He answers his own question by replying, in the courts, since the day the supreme court usurped the power to veto any act of congress even after that act had been given the consid- eration and approval of the President as the legal and logical conclusion of the work of congress. This, says Justice Clark, was seized upon by special interests, and by all those who believe in the govern- ment of the many by the few. And it remains that way today. He repeated the warning to the United States supreme court of Justice Harlan, that the people will not submit to this usurpation — they will destroy the oli- garchy." Since such is the abominable but undeniable state of affairs that confront the people, would it not be safer and better for the public to destroy a system that pro- duces money and judicial oligarchies, and in their place establish an Industrial Commonwealth, wherein all private industries producing life's necessities would be abolished? When men will not be permitted to own public in- dustries, as railroads, steel plants, mines, forests, tele- graph and telephone lines and such other public neces- sities, or to acquire in any other way millions of dollars wrung from the blood and lives of the people, (the Morgans received 68 million dollars for organizing a steel corporation), graft to a great extent must cease, because the incentive to graft will be absent; for no man will be permitted to acquire great wealth. Would it not be safer and better for the public to take a chance with such an Industrial Commonwealth, tho it may not prove absolutely perfect, than to rely upon the present miserable, wretched, wasteful system? The workers in every endeavor under this new in- 88 The Good of Mankind. dustrial order would choose directors, such as their fore- men and superintendents, to manage their industries, whom they know to be intelligent and fit. They will choose them because they know them to be capable and trustworthy, because they have found them so daily in the shop, mine, mill, hospital, etc. The incentive to be- come a foreman, superintendent, etc., will be as great if not greater than it is today to become a mayor, gover- nor, etc. The chances under such a system for human better- ment would be a thousand times greater than the pres- ent political-capitalistic system now affords. The people now vote once a year or so, for those whom they know little or nothing about, and who are the men that regu- late those things by which they live. The people are awakening to the fact that the present political repre- sentatives or directors are compelled, under this system, in most cases, to do the bidding of those controlling the money power. Hobbes, that splendid thinker, a few hundred years ago said, "The aim of government is the good of man- kind." I, also, contend with Hobbes, that if human achievements are not for the purpose of bringing health and happiness to the great majority of mankind, that "It were better," as Huxley has said, ''that some kindly comet would sweep the whole thing away." But as this particular planet upon which we live has not been struck by any other planet or comet, within the memory of man, we presume that we are to remain here for sometime, and since this is the case, the solution of the human problems of disease, misery, slow starvation, murder and robbery on the industrial field, and prosti- tution on the social field, cannot and will not be solved by some passing star or comet. We are here as a people and must solve our prob- lems ourselves if they are going to be solved. If this is to be accomplished, the struggle, in a higher sense, Ince ntive to Emulate 89 must be % between man and those elements and forces of nature not human, and not thru the competition of man against man for the necessities of life ; rather the compe- tition of merit between man and man of the one who can achieve or give the greatest benefits to mankind. The inventors, miners, machinists, doctors, teach- ers or any workers of merit will have a higher place of fame and appreciation in the new industrial social order than they have today. Better and higher standards of worth and excellence will be established, and with an equal opportunity which all men and women will enjoy, the incentive to emulate those of proven worth and merit will be closely followed by the great multitudes. Many in the attempt to reach higher places, will be lifted to a higher general plane of human fitness, tho, they may prove themselves afterwards not to be as great as those they sought to emulate. COMPETITION BETWEEN MERIT AND MRRIT, AND NOT BETWEEN WEALTH POWER AND IGNORANT WEAKNESS. The running of a foot race between two college athletes, is not the competition between them for food and mere existence, for as a rule they have both had the best care and training, in order to be permitted to run against each other. SINCE A RACE IS RATHER TO DEMONSTRATE THE BEST DEVELOPED IN BOTH, WHO ARE PHYSICALLY FIT, THEN LET THE RACE FOR EXISTENCE BE A RACE OF COMPETITIVE MERIT BETWEEN CIVILIZED HUMAN BEINGS UNDER A CO-OPERATIVE IN- DUSTRIAL COMMONWEALTH, AND NOT THE COMPETITIVE ANIMAL RACE FOR EXIST- ENCE, WITH THE POWERFUL RICH AGAINST 90 Food. Clothing. Shelter and Education. THE IGNORANT, THE POOR, THE WEAK AND THE OPPRESSED. Any true lover of sport would be willing to tight, if he saw a miserable sick wretch, who could scarcely walk, much less run, and who never had received any training, pitted and forced to race against an athlete well fed and well trained; and then seeing this same fortunate -athlete, who had the benefit of good training that ■money power could give him, strutting about after win- ning such an unequal race, proudly boasting of his super- iority. If this same athlete had been pitted against -another athlete, who had had the benefit of good train- xsg — if he then had won, — then the race would have been one of merit, and the winner would be entitled to all the lionor that it would be possible to give such an individu- al, providing that such honor did not interfere with the rights ::' those things by which the loser afterwards is forced to live upon, such as food, clothing, shelter and education. The unequal race between the well trained, -well fed athlete and the untrained wretch, who was forc- ed to race against such a fortunate opponent, can be lik- ened to the present race in the great human struggle for existence today on the industrial field, where the power- ful rich boast of their superiority over those whom they never permit to rise, by proper training, so as they could really compete with them. Properly train the great masses thru education, and it would not be long before we would have races well v. ; rthy of intelligent human beings ; races based upon merit, where the real great would be appreciated and honored more than it is possible for those of real merit to be honored today. As it is today, the great masses are not sufficiently intelligent to appreciate the greatness of such minds as Darwin, Spencer, and many others like them. In most cases they take the word of some lectur- er, teacher, or preacher, that such and such a man was a 91 The Few Enrich Themselves. great man. Of the 15 hundred millions of people living in the world today, it is not far fetched to say, that not one per cent ever even heard of the world's best thinkers. The real human fit should survive. Today many an unfit thru the inheritance of money, holds power over millions preventing them from rising to stations worthy of developed and cultured human beings. IF THE UNFIT RICH, AS I HAVE SAID BEFORE, COULD BE ELIMINATED AS READILY AS THE UNFIT POOR, THEN THE SOLUTION TO THE GREAT HUMAN STRUGGLE WOULD NOT BE SO DIFFICULT. The recognition of human merit must ever prevail if mankind is to rise to noble stations of life, but the sys- tem that permits of the transmission of great power, in the way of money, land, industries or other wealth of such public nature, to those, who more often than not, are unfit for such power, degrades not only themselves but also lowers the standard of merit for the great masses, by the false standards which they mould and uphold. The majority of the people never having had the opportunity to properly educate themselves, try like monkeys to imitate such false leaders in social, political, religious and industrial customs, with the result that the few enrich themselves at the expense and stupidity of the many. 92 Why Civilization is Retarded. POLITICAL, RELIGIOUS, INDUSTRIAL AND SOCIAL CUSTOMS NOT ALWAYS CON- TROLLED BY REASON. Custom, we must not forget, links us to ways stronger than chains of iron and steel. While the religious symbols, the faith and knowl- edge of our early ancestors was a natural development of the mental growth of man, because these symbols repre- sented the first apperceptive knowledge of primitive man, yet those very symbols in turn became so arbi- trarily fixed within the minds of early races, that instead of continuing the growth of man rapidly to a higher con- scious development, they became mental instruments, for human oppression and slavery. While, as I have said before, the early symbols repre- sented the conscious growth of man, these symbols, be- came after a time, so arbitrarily fixed in the minds of the people, that higher symbolization was prevented under penalty of torture and death. This is one of the main reasons why civilization was so long retarded, and is kept back even today. As the totem pole, and human sacrifice, were holy symbols to the savage mind, so, in time, these became re- placed by symbols of altars, personal sacrifice and pray- er, a much higher conscious symbolic development than that which the savage possessed. So, man, once started in the symbolic or conscious development, began slow- ly to change the forms of the symbols that represented what he knew and what he worshiped. Today the honest thinkers are crying for a change of symbols that will represent man's nobler station in life. Instead of totem poles, human sacrifice, self mutila- tion, worshipping of idols in the presence of smoke and incense burning fires, holy wars, etc., the people are de- manding symbols such as up to date hygienic homes, Animalism and Humanism. 93 public play grounds, healthy recreation for young and old, schools to properly educate the masses, economic industrial changes, where the worker will receive in re- turn for his work a decent respectable living, secure from the privations of poverty, and the fear of want in old age. These are some of the symbols which the people are beginning to demand shall represent their higher mental development. Such symbols will never interfere with the belief of man in God or even the Devil if he choose to believe in such a being. Such new sym- bols, however, will exalt the faith of all men to the nob- lest and highest reverence for creation, and the respect of man for man thru reason, and not thru the dumb animal faith of our ancestors. Faith built upon reason is the science of the new religion. The custom of the savages, barbarians, and semi- civilized races, whether religious, political or social, were more fixed, arbitrary and tyrannical than any law written or implied by a modern civilized race. But primitive and savage man, perhaps, never felt oppression as civilized man feels it. While he felt and suffered physical pain, he did not suffer mental inconvenience. His ideas, as a rule, were first imitatively fixed, and he took for granted the customs and laws, whether writ- ten or implied, were a part of something of which he was connected, and over which he had no control. He thought by analogy or imitation, and did not reason by analysis as modern man does. He had no theories; he obeyed custom as fanatics, religious, politi- cal, economic and social obey them today. The savage, therefore, had no super-sensitive intellectual mental makeup, from which to suffer by thought the lowliness or animalism of his condition. When humanism had started to develop in the nerv- ous structure of the savage, he then became aware of his state gradually by his daily experiences and the activities of things about him. 94 Church Powers, and Economic Determinism. Finally, after man began to record his experiences, thru his archaic development, such as recording his customary sensations and observations on stone and wood, man then entered the first quarter in the devel- opment of a higher conscious being; and as he grew in this conscious development, customary habits in relig- ious and social life which were fixed and unalterable for centuries and centuries, in many instances, began to give way to this higher consciousness, and customs became more plastic and less conservative. When the human conscience thru its intelligence, reached that point that it reasoned by analysis instead of by imitation, then humanity began to make strides in civilization, which made possible human progress. The custom in Europe of religious thought, of pol- itical thought, of industrial thought, from the fourth or fifth century after Christ's time, until the fifteenth cent- ury, was so fixed thru ignorance on the one hand, and eco- nomic determinism on the other, that darkness and stag- nation covered the whole of Europe for twelve hundred years, until the darkness and gloom of those twelve cen- turies of ignorance began to be infiltrated by the light of modern science, which was brought about by the eco- nomic determinism which caused the rise of the great middle or commercial class against the nobility, and ec- clesiastical powers. The Church powers, or those that controlled the re- ligious thought, after conquering the minds of the great masses enjoyed peace and economic security. This very economic security and peace which the clergy felt a::er physically and spiritually or mentally conquering the nations of Europe during the middle ages, was in a meas- ure responsible for modernism. The Church became all powerful. It is estimated that during the 9th and 10th centuries it owned from one-third to one-half of all the valuable cultivable lands. Such a state of affairs gave to the ecclesiastical powers of the Church, physical and Mental and Physical Security. 95 mental security — physical security, by having mental cortfro^over millions of faithful followers, obviating the danger of revolution and over-throw of the Church by the masses ; — and mental security, in the benefits derived from the vast ownership of lands, and church taxes paid for their support and comfort by their faithful and ardent followers, the people. During this period in Europe there was constant warfare between the nobility; but as a rule, while the masses, under the instigation of the nobility and church leaders were killing each other, their fighting was sel- dom directed against the Church — but, in their ignorance against each other. The clergy possessed immense power and riches- They were the only class at that time able to read, write and think. They were responsible for keeping the mass- es in ignorance for twelve hundred years ; yet as peculiar as it may seem, they were likewise responsible for keep- ing alive the little knowledge then in man's possession. The prayers of the clergy were said in Latin, and they were the only ones able to read and understand them. The works of the great Greek philosophers, Ari- stotle, Plato, Xenophanes, and others, during the power- ful period of the Roman empire had been translated into the Latin by the Romans, and remained after the down- fall of the Roman Power as a rich heritage to the clergy- of the Christian Church. The clergy being rich, powerful and respected, many of them, thru the love of learning, took advantage of their security by studying and arguing, among them- selves, all sorts of metaphysical questions. As long as these arguments did not interfere with the dogmas of the Church, the Church did not forbid them. This period, known as the Scholastic period, kept alive the small and flickering light of what was to develop later into the flame of modern civilization. Such men as Descartes, Abelrad, Bruno, Copernicus, were affiliated 96 Heretics and Modern Civilization. with the church ; yet were splendid thinkers, and gave much that was beneficial to modern thought and science. The great lesson we learn from this period is this: The Catholic Church, struggling at first for a foot-hold, was in the beginning oppressed, and when it overcame opposition and became powerful, it in turn oppressed the great masses, by keeping them in physical and men- tal bondage. This state of affairs, as I have said be- fore, gave such security to the clergy, so much so, that many of their better thinkers gave themselves up to the pleasure of studying Greek speculative philosophy; and as the Greek speculative philosophy was the opposite of Christian theology, as it was based upon reason in- stead of faith — those men who engaged themselves in such studies began to reason beyond the faith and dog- mas of the church. From these better thinkers finally arose those heretics against the church, who gave so much to modern civilization. In the fifteenth century, twenty years after it was permitted to dissect human bodies for scientific pur- poses. Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood. This was the great discovery of the age, and gave a wonderful scientific impetus to modern medicine. From this time human development became so great, and the merchant class so powerful, that they began to replace the nobility of the church and state. Economic determinism forced the middle class to fight the church powers and nobility of that period for rec- ognition. This was the forerunner of the present pow- erful capitalistic class. In the analysis of these mediaeval social and eco- nomic conditions, I am not so much concerned with showing which class succeeded or which failed, as I am concerned in proving, that during what were peace- ful periods for the clerical class, the only class of that time who could read and think, that finding themselves Peace Finds Time to Learn. 97 thus secure from want and poverty, found time to turn their attention to learning. Thus, many of the clergy, during what proved to be peaceful times for them, thru study, made many new observations, and discovered many new facts concerning nature and our existence, which they recorded and gave to man. Tho, the priest, Copernicus, was called to Rome to rescind his opinions of the solar system, and was afterwards sent by the Church to some far off village to be forgotten, yet, as an old man, on his death bed he managed to have his works secretly conveyed to a place of safety, where they could be given to the world for the benefit of man. Can any manner of logic or reason make an in- telligent, sane individual believe, that if the studies and efforts of Copernicus had been destroyed by the Church and lost to the world, that it would have been better for mankind? For in the instance of Copernicus, the danger to future mankind of the loss of his studies and observations was not from disease, lower ani- mals, or the inability to get food ; but the great danger to the priceless observations of this priest and others like him, was from a few men who comprised the military and church rulers, who at that time were bene- fitted by certain fixed customs in religious and economic beliefs, which had been in vogue for over a thousand years, and who, fearing for their power, tried in every way possible to stamp from the minds of men or pre- vent the minds of men receiving those great and fun- damental truths discovered by such men as Copernicus, Galileo. Spinoza, and others. The world can little rea- lize at the present time the retarding influences of those fixed and arbitrarv customs in economics and religious dogmatisms, influenced for the most part by economic determinism, that have kept human liberty and human progress in check for thousands of years. 98 Impetus to Human Progress Hampered. If thought has been given the subject, one can readily appreciate how man had to struggle to bring new facts into the world. Impetus to human progress and development was thus ever hampered by man to man competition which forced an aggressive minority class, whether military, religious, or otherwise, to op- press and retard mankind and civilization. The con- stant warfare of nation against nation, tribe against tribe, and man against man, by the brutal and animal competition for the necessities of life, believed by many today as necessary for human progress, has been and will always be degrading and harmful to the physical, mental and moral progress of the human race. THE SPIRIT OF AGGRESSION AND NON- AGGRESSION; RESISTANCE AND NON-RESISTANCE. The spirit displayed by the class in economic pow- er, as a rule, has always been an aggressive one against those whom they had in their power and forced be- neath them. If the subjection of the masses by the few was not one of actual physical slavery, it finally became, as much as possible, one of mental slavery, for the masses were taught from infancy to reverence ab- surd customs and pernicious orthodox teachings. This mental slavery during feudal times produced physical slavery. The masses became non-resistant to what was evil and dangerous to them, and were blind, willing tools, who sacrificed themselves on the altars of pa- triotism and false religious beliefs, for the benefit of their Kings, Lords or clerical masters. Those in power, as a class, never before the time of Christ, nor since then, practiced non-aggression against the masses. The spirit of the ruling class has always been one of aggression. We have had in- The Difference Between Resistance and Competition 99 stances of individuals giving their all for mankind's benefit) buit these cases were few and the exception to the rule. Those in power could never forego non-aggres- sion, because the great bulk of humanity, if they wfere not too stifled with the superstition of ignorance and religious dogmatisms and idolatries, threw off the chains which bound them and resisted physically and mentally the usurpations of those who ruled and made them slaves. As the intelligence of the people increas- ed, so their resistance increased against the evils of poverty, starvation and disease. Effective resistance of the masses was always more successful when they could think and act co-operatively against the dangers that threatened their existence. So, resistance, by the masses, to evil of any kind was not, or is not at the present time, the spirit of competition, as many would have you believe. It was the spirit of resistance against aggression. When the masses became so subdued by a few of their own kind that they could not alter their conditions, because either of mental or physical slav- ery, they then became more passive and less resistant. When man develops to that state that he will not have to resist his own kind, it will be because men will be intelligent enough to cease their aggression against each other, they will then act co-operatively in resist- ing all other things not human. This new social order will then afford security and happiness of life to all deserving it. The resistance of the down trodden against the aggressive rich, which many today mistake to be a just competition between man and man for sur- vival of the fit, in reality will be replaced by a form of human competition, based upon plenty for all deserving it, and the competition then will be the competition of merit for higher human development. Today we in reality have no competition between 100 The Spirit of the Middle Ages Here the great masses and the few who control them, for the few are so powerful that they permit of very little com- petition between themselves and the great bulk of people. The spirit of the middle ages is still with man. At one time the nobility made it a disgrace for one of their kind to fight a duel with one not of their class ; yet, this same nobleman would murder secretly or openly in a cold-blooded manner the plebian who dared to offend him, without suffering any inconvenience for his crime. The nobleman made the law and usually made it to suit himself. Can you consider such to have been com- petition between the nobleman and those whom he forced below him? Such is, in fact, the kind of com- petition in a way that exists today between the mon- eyed class and the great working class; if you can real- ly call it competition. To have competition one must compete, but in ninety cases out of a hundred the great working class are never permitted by the ruling class to compete with them. The spirit of man's resistance to the evils which the few inflict upon the majority of mankind, is not really the spirit of competition, as we understand it to- day. As man grows more intelligent, he learns that co-operation with his fellow man for the necessities of life gives him what he needs more easily. But under a system where proper and systematic co-operation is forbidden and defeated, the great majority of people are forced to become resistant to the evils forced upon them. The masses have always been forced out of ab- solute necessity, to practice resistance to certain forms of ethics and morals made for them by their conquerors and masters. Military conquerors and religious mas- ters established their rule and power by what they called Divine right. The Divine rights of kings became Divine Rights. 101 proverbial. The masses were taught that the king could do no wrong, and as all the nobility were simply the retainers of the king and benefited by his rule, and upheld the power of the king, they in turn, were pro- tected by his Divine Right. So in upholding each other, their own made law was sufficient to put them beyond the people who had little or no rights worth speaking of ; and when the people, under great oppression and suf- fering questioned the Divine Rights of the ruling class by something stronger than mere petitioning of greiv- ances, then the divine righters grew exceedingly wrath and murdered enough of their helpless subjects to quiet the rest, and enforce the sacred and holy belief in their divine rule and privileges. The government of Russia today is a splendid ex- ample of those w T ho still claim this Divine right of rule and privilege. The ruling class of that country from the King down uphold by their own made legalized edicts, their privileges to rob, oppress and keep the great bulk of 150 million peasants in the darkest ignorance. These millions of deluded peasants have been forced to believe in the divine rights of their Kings. To them, "the King can do no wrong," is holy. Those fearless men and women who attempt to tear away this veil of ignorance and lighten the heavy burdens of these millions of de- luded people, if caught in the act by the ruling class, suf- fer the penalty of a prison sentence, that is worse than death itself. And yet with all this vile and degrading civilization about us, we still have men tell us that there is a chance for every one who wants it. The spirit of non-resistance is a spirit that never ex- isted permanently in man, brute or plant. The spirit of resistance must be the force used against the spirit of ag- gression, because the spirit of aggression is ever being used by one form of life against another for its food or 102 Weaken Themselves. safety. These two opposing forces are ever present in the universe. The spirit of aggression and resistance is being practiced every second of every minute by one form of life against another. Man kills and eats other forms of life in order to live, and other forms live upon man. All forms of life live upon life, or what was living matter, Protein is the main constituent of any form of living matter, and only exists in living matter, or what was liv- ing matter, and without it as food, man or any other form of life would cease to exist. But those forms of life that live or try to live upon their own kind by ag- gression, weaken their corporate powers. The aggres- sion and competition of the savage against the savage is and has always been greater than that which exists be- tween the more civilized man. Savages as a rule, were almost continually at war with one another, thus killing each other directly for what they needed or wanted. Civilized man has advanced a step further; instead of kill- ing each other directly for what they needed as the sav- ages did, a minority class exploits a majority class under capitalism of today, as much as they can. As the actual acts of cannibalism for food and for human sacrifice in religious ceremonials have been abol- ished by human society, so the future society will abolish the kind of competition that exists now between men for the necessities of life. Men in the future will not waste their energies righting one another in the production of the things they need, but they will join hands to get and enjoy those necessities and luxuries which advanced civilization re- quires and demands. As lawful as private industries and labor competi- tive methods are today, the time will come when the in- dustrial chaos, as we have it now, will be considered as criminal, brutal and inhuman as we consider today can- Lawful Acts. 103 nibalism, murder, and the sacrifice of human beings in religrous rites, as performed by savages years ago. Not many centuries ago, savages believed canni- balism a holy rite, by which to honor and propitiate their Gods. The same, in a sense, was true of the Eu- ropeans during the middle ages, when they were steep- ed in the practices of the most holy religious rites ; then robbery, murder and chattel slavery were deemed lawful acts, by those who were in power. Men in pow- er fought and robbed the masses under all sorts of pre- texts. Whether it was the nobleman, in his strong fortress, robbing the people, or fighting and murdering his neighbors to gain more loot or territory ; or, wheth- er the Church blessed her sons and daughters who dealt in human slavery, or who gave special sanction and blessing to men during war times for murdering one another ; all of these acts, it makes no difference which, were acts once considered holy and respectable, but are now condemned by intelligent people as vile and inhuman. Today we consider any set of men who attempt to act as these ancient lords and barons did, as common thieves and murderers ; so will future man consider the present acts of capitalism as murderous, inhuman, and worthy of men only of the lower types. The bull dog man will give way to the watch dog man ; he will pre- serve for use, and not destroy thru savagery for profit. The non-resistance to evil, which (the Buddistic faith teaches has been practiced by its adherents for thousands of years. This religion has taught that evil was so supreme in the world, that man, by resisting evil, only created greater evil. As a people, the follow- ers of the Buddistic faith, developed a passive psychol- ogy, as the Christion followers did later, toward what was bad in the world. To resist evil, was evil. This false teaching made the many millions of India so pas- 104 Dogmatic Religious Slav ery. sive and non-resistant, that those who ruled them, did so without much physical effort. The ruling classes enslaved the people mentally, and controlled them by this method physically, so that uprisings of any kind by Buddistic followers for centuries and centuries, were very rare. These great masses of non-resistant people were so mentally enslaved and believed so thoroughly in such false teachings, that for centuries they lived in ignorance, filth and disease, and produced nothing of value for mankind's benefit, compared to their neighbors, the Europeans, who fought and resisted the evils of Kings and religious teachers who ruled them falsely. The beautiful idealisms of Brahma and Buddha were prostituted by the grossest religious idolatries and vilest ceremonialisms, by those in economic power, who thus kept the masses of India in mental stupor. The followers of Buddhism and Brahmanism thru thousands of years of animalism, have not profited by their belief in non-resistance to human misery and evil. Such stupid beliefs produced only evil and misery among them. It has only been by the reflection from the great radical resistant thinkers and workers of Europe and America, who fought and opposed human evil as created by man himself, that the people of India are beginning to awaken to the new realization of what lies before them in the way of industrial and religious freedom. While this new era has not yet made itself felt thoughout the whole of India, yet, this giant nation of three hundred and fifty millions of people, are slowly awakening from their long lethargy, of ignorance, disease and the stupid sup- erstitions of dogmatic religious slavery that have bound them hand and foot for centuries. Those forms of life that are to live successfully, whether man or animal, must do so by aggression and resistance to other forms of life, not their own. The Bird, Worm, Leaves, Parasites, Man. 105 robin lives upon the worm; the worm upon the leaves; the tree and leaves upon decayed matter, or what was once living animal or vegetable matter; so the spirit of resistance of the higher forms of gregarious life against danger or evil from out side sources or from other forms of life, produces and develops an intelligent spirit of co- operation to be used against all other forms and forces for their own benefit. + * It is the gathering of the individual units of one form of life into a co-operative mass that conduces to their better preservation. This co-operation provides better means for such a mass to destroy life other than their own for food purposes, or for protection, such as is done by man when he scientifically destroys pests, or uses other forms of life, such as the breeding of cattle, for eating purposes. Intelligent people, today, in order to exterminate pests of any kind, such as flies, vermin, bugs or mos- quitos, cry aloud thru their newspapers and periodicals; for greater co-operation. Those who learn the lesson and co-operate, gladly kill all the flies, mosquitos, roaches and rats that they can. We kill the diphtheria germ by anti-toxin injections, and have the greatest desire to kill all kinds of bacteria by the use of anti- septics, in order to save our lives from their attacks. We have not as yet learned to kill the tubercle bacilli directly, without killing the individual who has tuber- culosis ; however, when we can do this we will do so with the greatest pleasure and satisfaction. The rich are subjected to diseases over which they have no control as yet, such as cancer, goitre, diseases, of premature senility and others too numerous to men- tion. Show the cure for such diseases and see how quickly the rich will furnish money and procure the very best medical attention to help or cure their con- dition; but on the other hand, show the cause and cure 106 Constructive and Destructive Com: c .. for economic conditions that indirectly produce so much : ± :::rauce. iisease and misery o:::::vv the great major- ity of people, and you are called a crank We kill lawfully, today, oxen. cows, sheep, fowl and what not to live upon, and it is right and natural that r do this; but for man to live upon his own kind by o .ompetitive destructive system in the production of the necessities of life is inhumanly stupid, and in the r end weakens man himself and his progeny in the strug- §;le for existence While mans ::~:e:::::: against mother forms of life is constructive to himself, the com- petition between, man and man for vrhat they have con- quered and rmd more than sufficient for all. is destruc- tive and debasing t: society, and is suicidal and dan- gerous to human v.- el: are. CONCLUSION. In cmclnsiou v.-e v.-eulc say there is no question vhicic ::n:erns or shculi interest tee cereac masses :: coeole in the vvrli tc day. as much as the social and ^ -_-- = -'-.-- -evoriinr; the hi eh tost :■: living. It is the vital :o.esti:n of tee Stru ? ~le f:r Existence: so attlv exeresseo ev Valahus ani hioh. when reoi ':_-■- Pawm let:: him cut :: :to:s on: :e~noerment :n - scvercitt: researthes into the rlear too sunshine :: theuvlo: v.ohich consummated in his Survival of the Titles: It is undoubtedly true, that in order for any people to be healthy, progressive and cultured, the energy which they use in maintaining themselves must be less than the product of their toil. In other words, there must always be a surplus of food and social products from the energy used in acquiring them. Must Children Bear Poverty. 107 This surplus in our day has been made possible by the ingenuity of man in adding contrivances, known as inventions, which help many fold his physical efforts. In these modern times we find that the production of human necessities by man's physical power alone, or by living- horse power alone, can never solve the problem of mankind's maintenance. Today we reckon the work of an inanimate engine in five or ten thousand horse power. Individual production has been almost entirely superseded by social production for this reason. Thru man's inventions which is nothing more than the practical application of his conscious knowledge to the laws of Nature, he has accomplished in the way of increased production of food, clothing and sheltering supplies, what, at one time, seemed to the superstitious and the ignorant, only miracles could accomplish. With all the conscious ability of man to easily pro- duce all the necessities he requires for the present, and security for the future, we still have many tell us, in spite of man's wonderful discoveries and inventions, that in order for man to succeed, he must and shall struggle thru ignorance, hardship, and privation, by the man against man competition process for his maintenance, and the maintenance of his children : and that his children must bear the fruits of his poverty and ignorance. They would have you believe that it is not possible to lighten man's struggle to live by any other way but what exists at present, and that man must produce first, for the pur- pose of profit, and not for use. They do not believe that an Industrial Democracy, or the common ownership by the people of all public utilities, industries, natural re- sources, democratically managed as you would manage a trust, or a gigantic corporation, is possible to be pro- duced. However, many millions of people believe more and more every day that such a new order of so- ciety, known as an Industrial Commonwealth, is possible 108 Religious, Political and Econom ic Bigots. and is bound to come, and that in such a new order there will be produced in the future man and women, a moral and ethical incentive, based upon human justice, which will lift the future idealogy of man above the brute, and will develop instincts of real justice, real morality, real ethics, in which those human expressions of human sympathy, feeling and kindness will not be like the mere brute or animal, turned only to its own young, but to all mankind, for all mankind's better preservation and happiness. In spite of all this, we hear daily, many intelligent but misguided men and women, ready to condemn any radical measure to help make human existence more comfortable. They say it is impossible for the great masses to live co-operatively; that man by nature is too selfish. They forget in their argument, that in the scale of human development the standard of progress is determined solely by the amount of co-operation the people use in every walk of life. Again, we have an ignorant and bigoted class, who would denounce any new deviation from custom, — re- ligious, political or industrial, as heretical or traitorous ; then, again, we have that class of wilful misrepresent- ers, who work upon the fears of the ignorant, supersti- tious and bigoted classes, just mentioned, and who keep the world blinded. Truly, by such a union the progress of mankind has surely been trammeled, until it is a great wonder that man has even thus far ad- vanced. Those religious, political and commercial bigots, tell us that the system of capitalism, as it is today, is best for man and must continue to exist, and that the common ownership of all the means of production is absurd and would be harmful to the people. They de- nounce such a future system with a splenic hatred, wor- thy of the reddest tailed devils, and condemn those ad- The Golden Rule. 109 vocatfng such principles as fiendish or wolfish, while in most cases they profess a Godly religion of compassion, tenderness and love, and advocate the Golden Rule of "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Yet they tell us in the same breath, without the music, that man is too selfish to own, work and share co-opera- tively all the means and results of human production. They do not tell the people that under such an Industrial Commonwealth, those very selfish human instincts that have been developed during the struggle for existence, would be best satisfied. Instead of preserving the lives of most all mankind thru selfishness, or what I would better call self-pres- ervation, by co-operation in the common ownership of all public necessities, these certain classes would have mankind believe, that human life is best served by suf- fering thru the man against man struggle for existence. Was anything ever more childish, harmful, absurd or brutal than such beliefs? These people either do not know, or forget to tell you, that human advancement, not only creates a de- sire for the ordinary necessities required for the day to day living, but that, also, human progress and culture demands the arts, luxuries and other refinements pro- duced by modern civilization. Human co-operation in every walk of life develops the best human instincts, such as sympathy, pity and kindness. Human co-operation not only preserves life, but by furnishing the necessities of food, clothing and shelter, brings happiness and produces incentives for greater co-operation and self-protection among all man- kind. Human intelligence and co-operation is greater today than it has ever been, as far as we know; and human conditions are better. If this were not true, time, space and energy in advocating a greater and better co- 110 Cooperation Continually Increasing. operation in the production and distribution of life's necessities would be useless and foolish. But the advocating of such better civilized methods is neither useless or foolish, and from what we know of the past we can be optimistic for the future. While such a new order in society would not produce per- fection, however, living conditions would be improved beyond imagination. As the years go by the great civilized nations are co- operating more and more. Mankind of the future will not be satisfied with the inefficient co-operation of today which takes in only the schools, public parks, fire engine houses, play grounds, the building of a Panama Canal, postal service, private corporation hospitals, cor- poration water companies, other corporations more or less private or public; all these at the present time car. be considered in a very unsatisfactory and inefficient development. While the present co-operative development and use of these various public, and semi-public institutions is good, there is only one draw-back that prevents their greater efficiency, and that is, as I have said before, that they are not co-operative enough. They can be mace a great deal better and more effective by extending the co- operative plan to the public ownership of all places where public necessities are either produced or trans- ported; such as, railroads, telephones, telegraph, mines, mills, factories, forests, etc. Under such a democratic system of industrial and social co-operation, the merit system among men would develop to the highest point. The race for human ad- vancement, which is closed to so many millions of people today would, thru the equal opportunity which su: system would afford, be open to almost all. Those who would neither strive or work, would be barred from ad- vancing more than they are today. Equal Opportunity Does Not Mean Equal Sharing. Ill A system of human society that would give such equal opportunity to its members, would be stirred to such depths, that ambition and incentive in the various walks of life, would produce a thousand or more great men and women to one as today. The race would be keener, safer, and the rewards would be crowned with enough for every one, and special honors to those worthy and more gifted in the various walks of life. Thus, human incentive based upon human nature,, past and present, would be instilled to greater efforts, and man would at last take the position for which his intel- lectual crown fits him. He would then be, indeed, a con- scious God-like creature. But many would have you believe that this newer and higher order of human existence can never be brought about, because man by nature is too selfish. They forget, or do not know, that self preservation or selfishness, can only be best satisfied by this greater co- operation in all the pursuits of life. IF CO-OPERATION IS GOOD FOR THE CAP- ITALISTS BY ELIMINATING WASTE AND PRO- DUCING MOORE PROFITS, WHY IS IT NOT THEN GOOD FOR ALL THE PEOPLE? I have said very little in detail of those great human ills, such as poverty, sexual diseases, criminality, insani- ty, and alcoholism. It would take several volumes alone to deal with these products of capitalism. Over eighty per cent of all poverty, unquestionably, is due to the present capitalistic system. Poverty, in turn, breeds prostitution for profit ; prostitution, in turn, is the great- disseminator of sexual diseases, that infiltrate the whole human race, producing human degeneration with its, natural sequela, criminality and insanity. Insanity is re- sponsible for the greatest number of criminal acts per- petrated against the person. Eight out of every ten crim- inals confined in the United States and English prisons,. 112 Crime and Prostitution. are criminals due to crimes committed against the pres- ent capitalistic system ; such as acts of forgery, stealing for the purpose of profit, or for the purpose of giving food, shelter and clothing to depending ones. Only ten per cent of all criminals, so classed as criminals, are real- ly criminals ; and that is because they are perverts, be- ing insane or partially so, and the greatest number of these ten per cent of perverted degenerates are the fruits of our capitalistic system, which have been in the making for two or three generations or more. This same present capitalistic system is reaping a greater and richer harvest of criminal degenerates and insane for the future than the world has ever known. Extreme wealth demoralizes mankind, almost, if not more than extreme poverty ; while poverty kills the masses by common diseases and mal-nutrition and breeds a race of unfits, the extreme wealthy, also, in turn, suffer from brain and spinal degeneration which produce physical degeneration and insanity thru their excesses in living, that also breeds another race of unfits. While alcoholism is an important adjunct to human depravity and misery, as a poison fed to the people, it could be eliminated in a generation or two, if alcohol and its various derivatives cease to be produced for profit under private ownership. Remove the cause — profit — which forces people to make and sell liquor, and the traf- fic would be exterminated in a short time. But as alco- hol is made and sold for the purpose of gain, there will always be men, under the capitalistic system, who will make and sell spirited liquors, even if they have to sec- retly make and sell it under a capitalistic prohibition sys- tem. In a word profit will be the incentive for doing so. But under an Industrial Commonwealth, liquors would be produced for medicinal purposes only, and would not be sold to the public, as a beverage. The drinking of wines, whiskey and other liquors, would The Industrial Commonwealth — How? 113 soon be forgotten by the great public, except, perhaps, for some few cases who become liquor or drug fiends in spite of the closest prohibition. The majority of the three hundred thousand cocaine and morphine fiends, in this country are produced by the illicit traffic for profit, which stimulates the sale of these drugs. Alcohol drink- ers in the U. S. number about fifty or sixty million, 80 or 90 per cent of which is due to the present capitalistic system which produces liquors and stimulates its sale for the purpose of profit. Industrial co-operation by the establishment of an Industrial Commonwealth to be democratically man- aged and owned by the people, is the only rational and logical solution for the great majority of these human ills, which retard the intelligent progress of man. That such an Industrial Commonwealth will finally come, there is no question ; but as to the exact methods that will bring his change about, no one can tell. Whether it will be by the government gradually buying up all the trusts and industries, and issuing bonds as payment, or by confiscating them without any payment whatever, or by the great mass of workers, who will finally take them over by direct action, I do not know. But when such an Industrial Commonwealth is finally brought about and made effective, woe betide the man or set of men who would attempt to destroy such a system! The great masses of Catholics, Pro- testants, Jews, Moslems, Buddhists, mental and phy- sical workers of whatever faith, creed, color or nation participating in such benefits, would act as one, and they would, without religious prejudices or other dif- ferences, decree the speedy extermination of such hu T man enemies. There was a time when men were like animals. They had to find their food by killing other wild ani- mals, The intelligence of man #\m wm y§ry \qw, and 114 Today and the Day Before. their necessities were the necessities of the animal. Al- most up to the time of the fifteenth century, the grea*- masses of people did not know what it was to have pic- tures, rugs, carved chairs, or any kind of ornaments in their homes. If there were such ornaments in the world, the nobility were the only ones who possessed them. The development of the arts was of such a low standard at that time, that it was a very rare thing, even for the nobility to possess such cultur- al decorations. The manner of living and the decora- tions of the home were, indeed, very crude, as the great masses of people were a little above the savage in in- telligence. It is not far fetched to say, that at that time* not one in ten thousand could read or write. Before Guttenberg invented the printing press, there were very few books, and these were done by hand. There were no newspapers with which to enlighten the people; no railroads, telegraph or telephone to bring them into closer communication; and those men and women who were born in a certain locality, as a rule, lived and died there. Today, things are greatly changed. We have won- derful inventions, almost beyond the belief of the wild- est imagination. Messages can be sent around the world almost as quickly as one can think. Railroads transport the people from one part of the globe to the other in the very shortest time. This intermingling and ready communication which the people can so easily accomplish, permits of a rapid radiation of knowledge. The people living in the United States today are al- most as well acquainted with what is going on in Eng- land as the Englishmen are and vica versa. The ordi- nary home today is ornamented with works of art which even those who lived in palaces in mediavel times, did not possess. The people today, thru their greater intelligence? What Intelligent Custom Dictates. 115 have acquired the habit of desiring those things which go to* make modern culture, and it is well that it is so. If it were not so, and they desired to live as they did years ago, they probably could, if they would undergo great privations and did not care for the contempt of their neighbors. But what intelligent house-wife, if she could help it, would permit herself and family to live in one or two rooms, while the basement of the same house was being used for sheltering and taking care of the cattle, as people formerly lived. What sane, modern, intelligent being would want to change to this old cattle way of living? Modernism does not ask you to live its way, but demands it of you whether you want it or not. Since that is the case, we have to find the way to live in the manner modern intelligent custom dictates; that means proper dress, up-to-date modern hygenic homes, paved streets, public parks, public playgrounds, and many other public necessities too numerous to mention. To the human race modern customs, as a whole, are better, saner and nobler than the customs of any civiliza- tion of which we have a history. As these customs are better and more civilized, and the requirements to live according to them are so many, we find that only a complicated, well arranged and sys- tematic method for the production and distribution of modern necessities can maintain what we have estab- lished. Today, the work of the laborer, or the researches of the greatest scientist is dependent upon some one else. The scientist, who studies bacteriology, for in- stance, is dependent for his work upon the dye maker, who produces the stains, the manner of making which, the bacteriologist knows little or nothing about, but which make possible his discoveries. There is not one surgeon in a hundred or a thousand, performing suc- cessful operations, who knows how to make the anaes- thetics and antiseptics that make their surgery a success. 116 The Struggle of Mankind and Ignorance, Without these instruments of help what wcuid surgery amount to? So, in every walk of life, today, from the moment we rise in the morning, until the time of retiring the beds in which we sleep, the bed clothes that cover s the soap with which we wash, the water and food we drink and eat, the streets and instruments of transporta- tion we use, — all are made possible only by the socialized work of millions of others. To carry on such a com: homed s::ml 5 -.-stem of living, and to have the many millions of workers re- - e sufficient to clothe and feed them properly, and to intelligently and erhiciently educate their children, there reus: be produced a better co-operative industrial system than we have today. In a word, individual in- cus::;.- reus: give way to moderr. socialized industries, owned and operated by ad :he people. As savagery was succeeded by barbarism, barbarism by civilization, so chattel slaver;.' was succeeded by feudalism, and feudalism bv capitalism: so in turn mus: capitalism be succeeded by the next social order, the Industrial Com- monwealth. After reading this little work, the reader may du- ally ask the question: — Is it not a fact that human competition, in the struggle for life, d : c- s exist an: that at present such a struggle is greater than the struggle Between man and the other elements not human: While the fact of man to man struggle cannot be de- nied, yet such a struggle has only been in proportion to the ignorance of the people. Where ignorance has given way to intelligence, so in proportion, has human competition for life's necessities given way t: closer :: -operation in their production, which has resulted in human life becoming more sacred, secure and happy in fulfilling its better existence. As barbarism was better for man 'than savagery, and civilization better than barabarism, so, in the cul- Greater Incentive 11? tural growth of human affairs, will an Industrial Com- monwealth, democratically managed by the people, be a step beyond the wastefulness of the present capitalistic system. The new human order will usher in a better human existence, of whose triumphal accomplishments, man will have cause to be proud and which triumphs will be the foundation for greater incentive, achievements, and human happiness. A memorable address by William Pitt on the "Abo- lition of Slavery," delivered over 125 years ago, teaches us that the virtues of his times are the crimes of today, and the crimes of his day were the virtues of the day before. His words, in part, are as follows: "Time was when white slaves were exported like cattle from the British Coast and exposed for sale in the markets. These men and wom- en who were thus sold were supposed to be guilty of witchcraft, debt, blasphemy or theft. Or else they were prisoners taken in war — they had forfeited their right to freedom, and we sold them. We said they were incapable of self-government and so must be looked after. Later we quit selling British slaves, but began to buy and trade in African humanity. We sil- lenced conscience by saying, "It's all right — they are incapable of self-government." We were once as obscure, as debased, as ignorant, as barbaric, as the African is now. I trust that the time will come when we are willing to give to Africa the opportunity, the hope the right to attain to the same blessings that we ourselves enjoy." Those in power today are silencing their con- sciences to the injury and harm being done the human 118 Birth of Greater Freedom. race by the continuation of the present industrial sys- tem. Why? Not that those in power have less love in their hearts than their fellow unfortunates, — but they are driven by a system that whispers, crush, grind, and get what you can. Make what profit you can from the exploitation of your fellowman. When, oh heavens ! will man become free, — free from the influences of a sys- tem, that debases, corrupts, and makes barbaric what could and should be a splendid, glorious and noble civ- ilization. While the stupidity and animalism of mankind made the capitalistic system a necessary step for man to free himself from chattel slavery, and the feudal slave system, it has outlived its usefulness, and has now be- come the great obstacle to the universal progress of man. From the womb of feudalism, capitalism was given birth. That birth meant the death of its parent. So from the loins of capitalism will come its offspring, 'The Industrial Commonwealth" which will mean the death of capitalism, and the birth of greater freedom for the human race.