/^-z 
 
 i^ 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 THE SOVEREIGN PEOPLE 12mo. NET, Sl.OO
 
 BOLSHEVISM AND 
 SOCIAL REVOLT 
 
 BY 
 DANIEL DORCHESTER, JR. 
 
 THE ABINGDON PRESS 
 NEW YORK CINCINNATI
 
 Copjrright, 1919, by 
 DANIEL DORCHESTER, JR.
 
 HX 
 
 D 72 - 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CBU.PTER PAGE 
 
 I, Pre-Bolshevism 7 
 
 II. Bolshevism and Kindred 23 
 
 III. Russia's Problem the World Problem 49 
 
 IV. Economic Force and the Social Order 76 
 V. Property and the Social Order 106 
 
 Index 123 
 
 152.185'3
 
 CHAPTER I 
 PRE-BOLSHEVISM 
 
 The Origin of Anarchy 
 
 Social revolt is as old as society. Ac- 
 cording to the Bible, there was war in 
 heaven; Satan and his angels rose in rebel- 
 lion against the celestial government. Simi- 
 lar stories are found in other religions and 
 traditions. Examples of daring revolt 
 against power and authority have always 
 had a strong fascination for certain minds 
 and been a stimulus to like deeds. Bakou- 
 nine, the great Russian anarchist and Nihil- 
 ist, admired Satan as "the eternal rebel," 
 "the first freethinker and emancipator of 
 the worlds," "the unconquerable enemy of 
 absolutism," whom "the proletariat should 
 worship as his patron saint." There has 
 been a rebellious spirit in man from the be- 
 ginning. The passion to be free, to live 
 one's own life and in one's own way; the 
 
 T
 
 8 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 lust for power and pelf and the determina- 
 tion to gratify it in defiance of all restraint, 
 have persisted in all ages and conditions. 
 
 Human government is inevitably defec- 
 tive and has always been mixed with more 
 or less injustice. Whole races and classes 
 have at times been cruelly kept in subjec- 
 tion. Hegel, in his Philosophy of History, 
 after declaring that the goal of humanity is 
 "the realization of freedom," states that 
 among the Orientals "only One is free and 
 the freedom of that One is caprice," which 
 was often expressed by "brutal recklessness 
 of passion." Among the Romans "some 
 were free, but not man as such." Even the 
 freedom-loving Greeks had slaves, "and 
 their whole life and the maintenance of their 
 splendid liberty was implicated with the in- 
 stitution of slavery." 
 
 The Machiavellian Conception of ihe 
 State and Anarchy 
 
 For the last two centuries the Machiavel- 
 lian conception of the state has dominated 
 the most of Europe. This theory was based 
 upon the generally accepted idea that there
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 9 
 
 must be some power superior to all other 
 powers which can command the obedience of 
 all and thus become a protection against the 
 enemies of order within and without. This 
 power is lodged in "the Prince," that is, in 
 some person of royal blood. Out of this 
 despotic idea grew monarchies of irresponsi- 
 ble power, with unlimited sovereignty and 
 arbitrary decrees, which have trampled upon 
 human rights and strangled the life of peo- 
 ples. 
 
 Thackeray, in his Four Georges, gives a 
 single example of how peoples and their 
 property were subject to the will of the 
 ruler to be disposed of as he saw fit. "The 
 Duke of Hanover sold to the seniory of 
 Venice six thousand seven hundred of his 
 subjects, of whom only one thousand four 
 hundred ever saw their homes again, the 
 proceeds of the sale being devoted to the 
 satisfaction of the royal duke's sensual pleas- 
 ures. 'Round all that royal splendor lies 
 a nation enslaved and ruined ; there are peo- 
 ple robbed of their rights — communities laid 
 waste — faith, justice, commerce trampled 
 upon and well-nigh destroyed — nay, in the
 
 10 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 very center of royalty itself, what horrible 
 stains of meanness, crime, and shame! . . . 
 This is going on all Europe over."^ 
 
 The countries of Europe were ruled and 
 exploited by a despotic few who claimed to 
 be chosen by God and under no obHgation 
 to make concessions to their subjects be- 
 cause it was just to do so, but only as an act 
 of grace. Not until the nineteenth century 
 was the odious practice of treating the peo- 
 ple of a territory as chattels wholly discon- 
 tinued. Down to this great war, notably in 
 Germany, Austria, and Russia, the rulers 
 persisted in the exercise of irresponsible 
 
 * "The experience of three centuries has demonstrated 
 that, far from insuring respect for the rights of all, the 
 principle of the balance of power resulted merely in causing 
 the powerful states to concede that every acquisition of ter- 
 ritory made by one of them might justify equivalent ac- 
 quisitions on the part of the rest. . . . Powerful to intro- 
 duce peace and justice into international relations, it has 
 veiled with specious and virtuous pretexts unjust ambitions, 
 baleful wars, and veritable operations of brigandage" 
 (Charles Dupries, L'Equilibre Europe 'en, p. 86). 
 
 "It takes no account of any other motives of state policy 
 than the personal aggrandizement of rulers and the terri- 
 torial extension of states. It distributes provinces and 
 rounds off the boundaries of kingdoms without regard to the 
 wishes of populations and their affinities of race, religion, 
 and sentiment" (Lawrence, Principles of International Law, 
 p. 129). 
 
 Both these quoted by Brown in International Realities, 
 p. 208.
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 11 
 
 power, acknowledging no law of right 
 higher than the necessity of the state and 
 its aggrandizement. For its own ends, in- 
 dividuals and communities were organized 
 and utilized much like tracts of land under 
 intensive cultivation for what they could 
 produce. Wars were often waged, in which 
 the aristocracy were enriched and the peo- 
 ple impoverished and sacrificed. Force was 
 the compelling means and justification in 
 the acts of state. In all the supreme mat- 
 ters of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of hap- 
 piness" the state was virtually supreme. 
 The people had only limited rights; those 
 who were servilely obedient were profited 
 and promoted; those who were disobedient 
 and rebellious were ostracized and punished. 
 The old fable of the Lion and the Beasts 
 is a true description of the rule of absolut- 
 ism. "Thus did the Lion prepare a feast 
 for all the beasts of the field; even the field 
 mice and the moles had their seat and share 
 assigned, each strictly according to its in- 
 trinsic merits. But then at the feast the 
 Lion took his Lion's share." 
 
 Against such irresponsible, oppressive,
 
 12 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 cruel rule the fierce hostility of the anarchist 
 has much justification. The Nihilism of 
 Russia and the present revolutions in Aus- 
 tria and Germany are the natural, if not 
 the logical, outcome of the crushing despot- 
 isms of the Romanoffs, the Hapsburgs, and 
 the Hohenzollerns. Grinding despotism and 
 savage brutality provoke fierce outbreaks. 
 The oppressed often strike blindly, wildly, 
 and madly to throw off these shackles. The 
 law of action and reaction operates in the 
 social sphere just as truly and sometimes as 
 remorselessly as it does in the physical. 
 Revolution follows oppression; violence re- 
 venges itself upon violence. When the 
 state, the church, and allied institutions are 
 known only as instruments of oppression it 
 is not surprising that the victim should ciy 
 out for their destruction. The readiest and 
 most effectual way to liberty for a people 
 who have been in religious, political, and 
 economic bondage is revolution. Only by 
 revolution the anarchist thinks; only by 
 "anarchy," only in "a perfect amorphous 
 society," can there be "a complete manifesta- 
 tion of unchained popular life" and the
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 13 
 
 "development of liberty, equality, and jus- 
 tice." 
 
 The Principles of the Anarchistic 
 Revolution 
 
 Thus reasoned Michael Bakounine, the 
 father of Nihilism, who with a remorseless 
 logic formulated "The Principles of the 
 Revolution" which have been and are now 
 being carried out with a savage fanaticism. 
 "Admitting no other activity than that of 
 destruction," he says, "we declare that the 
 forms in which that activity should express 
 itself may be widely varied: poison, poig- 
 nard, running noose. The revolution sancti- 
 fies all means without distinction. . . . The 
 revolutionist is a man under a vow. He 
 ought to have no personal interests, no busi- 
 ness, no feelings, no property. He ought 
 to be entirely absorbed in one single interest, 
 one single thought, one single passion — the 
 revolution. . . . He despises and detests 
 existing morality. For him everything is 
 moral that helps on the triumph of the revo- 
 lution, everything is immoral and criminal 
 that hinders it. . . . Between him and so-
 
 14 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 ciety there is war — war to the death. . . . 
 Nevertheless, he must Hve in the midst of 
 society, feigning to be what he is not. He 
 must penetrate everywhere, among the 
 upper classes as well as among the middle 
 — into the merchant's shop, into the church, 
 into the government offices, into the army, 
 into the literary world, into the detective 
 force, and even the imperial palace. . . . To 
 attain to 'pan destruction' the first requisite 
 is a series of outrages and of audacious and 
 mad enterprises, striking terror into the 
 powerful and arousing the people till they 
 believe in the triumph of the revolution" 
 (Principles of Revolution. Revolutionary 
 Catechism). 
 
 Anarchy Suicidal 
 
 Such an infernal program is as indefensi- 
 ble as the tyranny from which deliverance 
 is sought. If carried out to its inevitable 
 bloody catastrophe, it would erect upon the 
 ruins of civilization "an inverted Czarism" 
 which would be far more tyrannical and 
 base than any the world has ever known. 
 The destruction of religion and "all exist-
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 15 
 
 ing morality," the overthrow of the ethical 
 institutions which the goodness and wis- 
 dom of humanity have been preparing 
 through the ages, would degrade society 
 into a menagerie of wild beasts. The sweep- 
 ing condemnation of "all government by 
 man as oppressive," as Proudhon declared, 
 and the conception of the state as necessarily 
 external and hostile to man, overlooks the 
 fact that the state rose out of disorder and 
 violence. With all its imperfections it has 
 rendered man an immense service as a means 
 of protection and development. The an- 
 archist's conception of society without gov- 
 ernment, "its harmony being obtained not by 
 submission to law or by obedience to any 
 authority but by free agreements," is with- 
 out any warrant in history or reason. The 
 "State of Nature" in which man was free, 
 in full possession of his natural rights, is an 
 assumption : it never existed save in the mind 
 of Utopian dreamers. Even in the simplest 
 and most primitive conditions there were 
 restraints upon freedom. Brutal passions 
 were constantly bursting forth into deeds 
 of violence; there were collisions of individ-
 
 16 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 ual and tribal interests which made the crea- 
 tion of the state imperative. While the st^te 
 primarily was based upon force and has been 
 maintained partly by force, it has also been 
 in some degree the expression of the will of 
 the community and the work of the moral 
 order of humanit5\ As civilization advances 
 the state conforms more and more to the 
 pressure of the moral order; it becomes a 
 social organism, growing with the growth 
 of humanity and perpetually ministering to 
 its needs. 
 
 Deodorized Anarchism 
 
 There is a deodorized form of anarchism 
 which makes its appeal "from the might of 
 rulers to the sense of right in the individual ; 
 from the coercion of the state to the con- 
 science of the citizen; from the law that is 
 penally enforced to the law that is volun- 
 tarily accepted." It makes a distinction 
 "between society and the state — between 
 voluntary groups of human beings united 
 by cooperation for the promotion of com- 
 mon interests, and the organized state with 
 its agencies for compelling individuals to
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 17 
 
 live according to certain rules whether they 
 approve of them or not." That great move- 
 ment known as Individualism is a part of 
 such social revolt; and conspicuous leaders 
 like Shelley, Emerson, Ibsen, Tolstoy, and 
 others have lent their genius to such appeals 
 and distinctions. 
 
 The True Conception of the State 
 
 Even Individualism, however, is a partial 
 philosophy, and has broken down in prac- 
 tice. When it is without moral or spiritual 
 polarity, without any higher sanction than 
 individual choice, or any rule of action other 
 than self interest, it is just as truly destruc- 
 tive of society as the fiercer anarchism. The 
 strength of anarchism is in its protest against 
 Machiavellianism; it has little force against 
 the true conception of the state as prac- 
 tically identified with humanity and bound 
 up in the moral order of the world. "The 
 human state," as Von Hiigel says, "is based, 
 if not upon brotherly love, yet neither upon 
 force, but upon consent — the seeking and 
 finding of some inchoate justice and interde- 
 pendence, with force as its aid and sanction.
 
 18 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 The state can and does have an end, a re- 
 sponsibihty, a repentance, while aHve in its 
 connection with human beings. It is under- 
 standable, judgeable, improvable, indeed 
 tolerable, only when thus apprehended and 
 operative in its true nature, not as a ruth- 
 less machine, but as essentially human, 
 springing from man, leading to man — man 
 who is man only, everywhere only as a crea- 
 ture of flesh and of spirit, of force and of 
 justice, and even of love" (Von Hiigel, The 
 German Soul, pp. 65, 66). 
 
 The state is a divine institution just as 
 truly as the church. As Shakespeare says: 
 
 "There is a mystery — with whom relation 
 Durst never meddle — in the soul of state, 
 Which hath an operation more divine 
 Than breath or pen can give expression to." 
 
 It is this "mystery," this Unseen Presence 
 and Informing Spirit, which gives a nation 
 a character, makes it a part of the moral 
 order, and thus disciplines the race to noble 
 service. When this Divine Spirit is 
 quenched the nation loses its sanctity and 
 unity ; it becomes an aggregation of warring
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 19 
 
 interests which seek to estabhsh their preda- 
 tory rule. 
 
 Revolution and Evolution 
 
 Froude, in his Short Studies upon Great 
 Subjects, makes this wise observation: "In 
 every country there exist two parties: that 
 which wishes to conserve what is, or even to 
 reestabhsh what has been; and that which 
 seeks to reform and sometimes in its im- 
 patience to destroy everything. Just as the 
 motion of the earth is the resultant of centri- 
 petal and centrifugal forces, so society 
 moves on under the combined action of the 
 spirit of conservation and the spirit of re- 
 form. Try to suppress them, and you pro- 
 voke alternately revolution and reactions. 
 Give them free play, and progress will be 
 fulfilled by means of a series of compromises 
 and reforms, as in England, Belgium, and 
 Switzerland." 
 
 As Froude intimates, there are in the 
 party of reform these two main tendencies 
 — revolution by violence and evolution by 
 peaceful and political methods. The line of 
 cleavage has not always been maintained.
 
 20 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 Revolutionists and reformers have sometimes 
 bitterly opposed each other; at other times 
 both have become opportunists and worked 
 together for a common end, the transforma- 
 tion of society by means of the class strug- 
 gle. Karl Marx based his philosophy upon 
 social antagonisms as the great outstanding 
 fact of history. "Freedman and slave," he 
 writes, "patrician and plebeian, lord and 
 serf, guild master and journeyman — in a 
 word, oppressor and oppressed — stood in 
 constant opposition to one another, carried 
 on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open 
 fight, a fight that each time ended in a revo- 
 lutionary reconstruction of society at large, 
 or in the common ruin of the contending 
 classes." 
 
 Marx — Bakounine — Hertzen 
 
 This fact of inevitable class struggle, when 
 promulgated by Marx as a doctrine, was re- 
 garded as revolutionary and was a slogan 
 with his followers. But Marx was a scholar 
 and combined the spirit of a social phi- 
 losopher with that of a revolutionist. He 
 reasoned that "at a certain stage of develop-
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 21 
 
 ment capitalism brings forth the agencies for 
 its own dissolution." There is "a transforma- 
 tion of individual means of production into 
 concentrated ones, of the pygmy property 
 of the many into the huge property of the 
 few, the expropriation of the great mass of 
 people from the soil and the means of pro- 
 duction. The number of capitalists de- 
 creases, but the number of the proletariat 
 increases, organizes against their oppressors, 
 and substitutes a socialized system of pro- 
 duction for capitalism." 
 
 Marx broke with Bakounine, the great 
 Nihilist, on account of his violent methods 
 and expelled him from the International. 
 This produced a schism in the forces of 
 social revolt, which has continued until this 
 day. The followers of Marx have in the 
 main been mindful of the dictum of Engels, 
 his associate and collaborator, that "appeals 
 to violence tend to obscure the real develop- 
 ment of things." Hertzen, who with 
 Bakounine believed in the formula, "The 
 spirit of destruction is the spirit of recon- 
 struction," later renounced revolutionary 
 methods and bent his energies to change
 
 22 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 men's sentiments. Largely by his writings 
 many reforms, social and political, were ac- 
 complished in Russia. His last letter to 
 Bakounine is full of warning and wisdom, 
 which advocates of violence may well heed: 
 "We dash forward following the unknown 
 God of Destruction, and we stumble over 
 broken treasures, rolling confusedly amid 
 the ashes and ruins of all things. But even 
 when the powder shall have blown up the 
 bourgeois world, after the smoke shall have 
 cleared away and the ashes shall have been 
 removed, the world will appear again, modi- 
 fied perhaps, but still bourgeois. And why? 
 Because we are not ready; because neither 
 the constructive mind nor the new organiza- 
 tion is sufficiently prepared."
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 23 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 BOLSHEVISM AND KINDRED 
 
 Bolshevism the Caliban of Politics 
 
 Bolshevism has been termed the "Cali- 
 ban of Pohtics." It is a queer compound, 
 Mke that strange creature, which Shake- 
 speare describes in the Tempest as "servant- 
 monster, half man, half beast, plain fish, and 
 no doubt marketable." That "servant- 
 monster," coming into contact with 
 Stephano and Trinculo, the dregs of civiliza- 
 tion, and drunk with "their glorious liquor," 
 becomes fired with a sudden passion for 
 freedom; he shifts masters and conspires 
 against Prospero, who seeks to establish law 
 and order on that imaginary island. Bol- 
 shevism is anarchism, socialism, and democ- 
 racy — Czarism in a depraved form, and 
 "marketable." It carried out the nefarious 
 schemes of Germany as Caliban did the dirty 
 work for his criminal masters. It is as far 
 below anarchistic idealism as Caliban was
 
 24, BOLSHEVISM 
 
 below the honest Gonzago, who dreamed of 
 a Utopia in which there would be 
 
 "... no name of magistrate; . . . 
 . . . riches, poverty, 
 
 And use of service, none; contract, succession, 
 Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard none; 
 
 No sovereignty 
 
 »>i 
 
 Bolshevism and Socialism 
 
 No severer condemnations of Bolshevism 
 have been made than by Socialists and Labor 
 leaders. Those of the right wing at least 
 have always opposed the use of violent meth- 
 ods in carrying out their social program. 
 Morris Hillquit, reaffirming the great prin- 
 ciple of Engel's that "appeals to violence 
 tend to obscure the real development of 
 things," declares that whenever any group 
 or section of labor movement has embarked 
 upon a policy of breaking the law or using 
 "any weapons which will win the fight." 
 whether such policy be styled "terrorism," 
 "propaganda of the deed," "direct action," 
 "sabotage," or anarchism, it has invariably 
 
 ' The Tempest, Act II, Scene 1.
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 25 
 
 served to demoralize and destroy the move- 
 ment, by attracting to it professional crimi- 
 nals, leading the workers to needless and 
 senseless slaughter, and ultimately engender- 
 ing a spirit of disgust and reaction. It was 
 this advocacy of law breaking which Marx 
 and Engels fought so severely in the Inter- 
 national and which finally led to the disrup- 
 tion of the first great international parlia- 
 ment of labor, and the Socialist party of 
 every country in the civilized world has since 
 uniformly and emphatically rejected that 
 policy."^ 
 
 Samuel Gompers, in a recent strike, while 
 attacking industrial autocrats, opposed all 
 Bolshevist methods: "All of you who know 
 me or know of my attitude in regard to 
 labor conditions know my absolute opposi- 
 tion to Bolshevism in theory and to Bolshe- 
 vism in fact. ... In theory Bolshevism is an 
 impossibility. In fact, if it were put into 
 operation, or could be put into operation, 
 it would mean the decadence or perversion 
 of the civilization of our time. To me the 
 story of the desperate Samson who pulled 
 
 'New York Call, November 20, 1911.
 
 26 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 the temple down on his head, is an example 
 of what is meant by Bolshevism. I am not 
 willing that all the genius of past ages should 
 be flung to the winds. And I am not willing 
 that the little service that I may have been 
 able to render during the long years that I 
 have attempted to improve conditions in a 
 constructive way should be destroyed by 
 maddened desperation. And so I may say 
 to you that it is well for us to see now that 
 our own house is kept in order." 
 
 Bolshevism and Revolutions for 
 Liberty 
 
 The Bolshevist conspiracy in Russia is 
 radically different from the democratic revo- 
 lutions in England, France, and America. 
 Instead of supporting the nascent political 
 democracy it has strangled freedom by 
 means of the army corrupted by German 
 gold as ruthlessly as Czarism ever did. It 
 is Czarism in a depraved form and has put 
 in the place of the old regime the dictatorship 
 of the proletariat, without any of the sanc- 
 tions or safeguards which mitigated in some 
 degree the old intolerable tyranny. As
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 27 
 
 Lenin unblushingly said in April, 1918: 
 "Just as 150,000 lordly landowners under 
 Czarism dominated the 130,000,000 of Rus- 
 sian peasants, so 200,000 of the Bolshevik 
 party are imposing their proletarian will 
 upon the mass, but this time in the interest 
 of the latter." Lenin insists upon dictator- 
 ship, political and industrial, upon military 
 conscription and the suppression of the 
 press. "We are going," he says, "to smite 
 the journals with fines and shut them up, 
 to arrest the editors and hold them as hos- 
 tages." 
 
 The only resemblance between Bolshevism 
 and the revolutions for popular liberty is in 
 the red froth of terror which neutralized 
 their good effects. Lenin, however, in his 
 incendiary appeal to American working men 
 thus justifies his murderous policy: "Have 
 the English forgotten their 1649, the French 
 their 1793? Terror was just and justified 
 when it was employed by the bourgeoisie 
 for its own purposes against feudal domina- 
 tion, but terror becomes criminal when 
 workingmen and poverty-stricken peasants 
 dare to use it against the bourgeoisie.
 
 28 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 Terror was just and justified when it was 
 used to put one exploiting minority in place 
 of another, but terror becomes horrible and 
 criminal when used to abolish all exploiting 
 minorities, when employed in the cause of 
 actual majority in the cause of proletariat 
 and semiproletariat ; of working class and 
 poor peasantry. The bourgeoisie of inter- 
 national imperialism has succeeded in 
 slaughtering ten millions, in crippling 
 twenty millions in its war. Should our war, 
 the war of the oppressed and exploited, 
 against oppressors and exploiters, cost a half 
 or a whole million victims in all countries, 
 the bourgeoisie would still maintain that 
 victims of the world war died a righteous 
 death and those of the civil war were sacri- 
 ficed for a criminal cause." 
 
 It would be difficult to pack into so few 
 sentences such gross perversions of historic 
 facts and absurd reasoning. The English 
 revolution of 1649 resulted in the public 
 execution of Charles I, than whom Charles 
 James Fox said a hundred and fifty years 
 afterwards, "It is not easy to imagine a 
 greater criminal, . . . for Charles, to a de-
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 29 
 
 gree which can scarcely be exceeded, con- 
 spired against the hberty of his country." 
 Associated with that execution for high trea- 
 son, and justifying it, are the great names 
 of Algernon Sidney and Oliver Cromwell, 
 who organized the most salutary and endur- 
 ing democratic movement of modern times. 
 Parliamentary government, equality of 
 rights, equity and law — reforms so essential 
 to human welfare — received a tremendous 
 impulse and were established without any 
 such usurpations and atrocities as those of 
 which the Bolsheviki have been guilty. 
 
 There is a striking parallel between the 
 French Revolution of 1793 and the Russian 
 Revolution, not in its first inception, but 
 after it came under the control of the Bol- 
 sheviki. The arbitrary rule of a revolution- 
 ary committee, the Reign of Terror — the in- 
 discriminate slaughter and confiscation; the 
 horrible irreligion and immorality — all these 
 excesses of the frenzied French revolution- 
 ists have been repeated by the Bolsheviki. 
 But these crimes have never been justified 
 by the French, but reprobated by them and 
 by the world. Such horrors are an awful
 
 30 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 warning of the retribution which is sure to 
 overwhehn the Bolsheviki, even if their cause 
 were much better than it is. 
 
 A dictatorship of the proletariat, which 
 scraps the time-honored checks of besotted 
 power and destroys the safeguards of per- 
 sonal liberty, has always been such an in- 
 tolerable tyranny that the masses have risen 
 against it and been content afterward for 
 a time to bow their necks to the yoke of 
 their old oppressors. 
 
 Bolshevism Breaking Down 
 
 Lenin has discovered that neither Bol- 
 shevism nor its kindred forms of social 
 radicalism can provide food for a starving 
 people. He won over a part of the peasants 
 by appealing to one of their strongest pas- 
 sions, land-hunger, and incited them to acts 
 of spoliation. They took the land from the 
 rightful owners and divided it among them- 
 selves. But neither Lenin nor Trotzky in- 
 tended that the land was to be privately 
 owned; it was to be socialized and the peas- 
 ants were to work it under severe discipline. 
 The peasants are becoming disillusionized.
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 31 
 
 There have been frequent uprisings, and 
 they are only kept in check by the army and 
 by the fear of the return of the old oppres- 
 sive order. Some day they will exclaim with 
 Caliban : 
 
 "What a thrice double ass 
 Was I to take this drunkard for a god 
 And worship this dull fool !" 
 
 The industrial program of Bolshevism has 
 already broken down and is facing the grim 
 facts of bankruptcy, famine, and plague. 
 Lenin, though a professed follower of Marx, 
 is crying out for the old despised capitalism 
 and for bourgeois experts, offering them 
 high salaries to help him bear his crushing 
 burdens. "In every socialist revolution," 
 he says, "the main task of the proletariat and 
 the poorest peasantry consists in the posi- 
 tive and constructive work of establishing 
 an extremely complex and dehcate net of 
 newly organized relationships, covering the 
 systematic production and distribution of 
 products which are necessary for the exist- 
 ence of millions of people. The possibility 
 of socialism will be determined by our sue-
 
 32 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 cess in combining Soviet rule and tlie Soviet 
 organization of management with the latest 
 progressive measures of capitalism." 
 
 Lenin, however, does not explain how 
 Bolshevism and capitalism, wild exploita- 
 tion, and the economic system evolved 
 through generations can ever be combined, 
 much less work together. 
 
 Bolshevism a Plague 
 
 Bolshevism spreads like a plague; it is 
 even more destructive and deadly, for it 
 destroys the soul. It is propagated, not by 
 microbes, which can be killed by disinfec- 
 tants, but by ideas and lies that inflame the 
 imagination, poison the thought, and cor- 
 rupt the morals of a people. In Russia it 
 has already broken down the red corpuscles 
 of social health, honor, faith, loyalty, free- 
 dom, and produced a moral lassitude and 
 brooding melancholy, which makes the peo- 
 ple easy victims of their new oppressors. 
 Lenin says: 
 
 "In order to spread our ideas and our in- 
 fluence to the Allied countries we need not 
 wage open war against them nor invade their
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 33 
 
 territories; the very existence of a Soviet 
 Republic in Russia, based on dictatorship of 
 the proletariat, will serve as an example 
 prompting emulation as a clarion call to 
 arms. . . . 
 
 "Capitalism carries on a more effective 
 propaganda for us among the masses than 
 we ourselves could even hope to achieve by 
 our own efforts. The international prof- 
 iteer is our best propagandist. It is true 
 we owe much to war, but I do not fear peace, 
 for the incurable avidity and corruption of 
 the capitalist classes will survive it and 
 paralyze its healing effects. The cost of liv- 
 ing instead of diminishing is still increasing 
 steadily in most countries. The lust of gain 
 of international exploiters, bourgeois finan- 
 ciers, manufacturers, and tradesmen is still 
 unslaked, and they are conspiring to prevent 
 return of normal conditions, totally uncon- 
 scious of the fact that they are preparing 
 their own destruction." 
 
 The idea of taking over the wealth of so- 
 ciety, its lands, factories, mines, railways, 
 etc., to be the property of the masses, and 
 immediately entering into possession, is one
 
 34 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 to conjure with. And never did the lure of 
 expropriation have more power than in these 
 tumultuous times when the old oppressors 
 have been overthrown and the crushing 
 burdens of their folly and wickedness have 
 been shifted upon the people, plunging them 
 into greater depths of misery. The state 
 and the church have become infamous, in 
 Russia and in other countries. War with 
 its ruthless destruction of life and property 
 has blunted the sensibihties of many people 
 and made them callous. Conditions are 
 chaotic; everything is in a state of flux. 
 Plague and starvation stare many people 
 in the face. Out of the older order of state 
 sovereignty and capitalism came the great- 
 est of all wars with its yeasting horrors : why 
 not, say the Bolsheviks, have a world revo- 
 lution, invert the old order and enthrone an 
 industrial democracy in which the workers 
 shall rule? 
 
 Emerson said that at Concord in the be- 
 ginning of the American Revolution "the 
 embattled farmers fired the shot that was 
 heard round the world." But that Revolu- 
 tion was a mere skirmish in comparison with
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 35 
 
 the war which has overthrown four great 
 autocracies and precipitated the social up- 
 rising which is shaking every nation on the 
 face of the earth. The tidal wave of Bol- 
 shevism in Russia with its bloody froth of 
 terrorism is rolling westward. Political 
 crises and paroxysms of class hate are mak- 
 ing European society heave like a raging 
 sea. Every Cabinet in Europe is fighting 
 for its life; parliamentary government is 
 under fire; the industrial structure has al- 
 ready suffered great changes; and greater 
 changes will surely follow. The atmosphere 
 is lurid and portentous. It is freely said, 
 "Either a League of Nations or chaos." If 
 lawless, class selfishness has so broken down 
 the supports of European governments that 
 they are so weak as. this statement implies, 
 a League of Nations will be a vain reliance. 
 If the nations in the Peace Conference are 
 not strong enough to keep their own houses 
 in order, how can they in their collective 
 capacity keep Europe in order? If the 
 League be not a moral evolution instead of 
 a mere compact; if it be not a Federation 
 of that which is best, and only that which is
 
 36 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 best, in the nations, how can it keep the worst 
 elements in subjection? The Allies have 
 been strong enough to defeat organized, ir- 
 responsible power; are they strong and 
 good enough to overcome the foes of their 
 own households, those selfish, disintegrating 
 forces which are already sapping their 
 strength? 
 
 Bolshevism and America 
 
 America, in spite of herself and against 
 much revered advice, has been drawn into 
 "entangling alhances" with Europe. Our 
 noble dead are there and bind us to the serv- 
 ice of whatever vitally concerns humanity, 
 though not to interfere with its domestic 
 quarrels. Humanity's enemies are our ene- 
 mies. Europe is with us, bone of our bone, 
 blood of our blood, soul of our soul. Its 
 enemies are here. Fourteen millions of for- 
 eign-born citizens are domiciled among us. 
 Some of these have contributed immensely 
 to our growth and strength. They have 
 helped us win this war. Others are still 
 aliens in every respect; they speak no other 
 language than their own^ read no other news-
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 37 
 
 papers. Some have taken the Delbiick oath 
 of fealty to a foreign power and were ac- 
 tively hostile to us in the war. Three mil- 
 lion cases of persons suspected of treason- 
 able practices have been investigated by the 
 United States government. There were 
 many convictions of conspiracy. But only 
 a very few were deported. Of the thous- 
 ands interned during the war, many are now 
 out on parole. The citizenship of only two 
 overt traitors has been revoked. Some two 
 million or more less offensive traitors are in 
 our midst, who are enjoying the freedom 
 of the country with the fullest opportunity 
 to poison the very currents of our national 
 life. We have strenuously insisted upon the 
 incorporation of the Monroe Doctrine in the 
 Covenant for the League of Nations, bar- 
 ring any foreign power from setting foot 
 upon the American continent, but have 
 freely admitted red-handed Anarchists who 
 are now conspiring to overthrow our repub- 
 lic and establish Bolshevism upon the ruins 
 of democracy. 
 
 America has a peculiar and intimate rela- 
 tion with the Bolshevist movement. It
 
 38 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 started on the East Side, in New York, a 
 city in which government is as mild as was 
 ever known, and where the people enjoy a 
 perilous degree of freedom. There is free- 
 dom of assembly and discussion for Bolshe- 
 vism and all isms, however foolish or dan- 
 gerous, provided no crimes are committed 
 against the freedom of others. Five hun- 
 dred speakers are engaged in the propa- 
 ganda of Bolshevism and fifteen thousand 
 persons are actively spreading it. Several 
 hundred thousand dollars have been received 
 from the Bolsheviki in Russia to promote the 
 cause of the Reds. 
 
 Bolshevism has its creed, its catechism, 
 and carries on systematic courses of instruc- 
 tion. At its meetings this doxology is sung 
 as lustily as the Marseillaise by the French : 
 
 "All hail to the Bolsheviki ! 
 
 We will fight for our class and be free. 
 A Kaiser, King or Czar, no matter what you are, 
 
 You've nothing of interest to me; 
 If you don't like the red flag of Russia, 
 
 If you don't like the spirit so true. 
 Then just be like the cur in the story 
 
 And Hck the hand that's robbing you."
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 39 
 
 There are similar groups of Reds all over 
 the country. A New York State senator, 
 who is a member of the Joint Legislative 
 Committee to investigate Bolshevism, de- 
 clares "that there is a thoroughly organized 
 plan worked out by the Russian Bolsheviki 
 to seize the reins of government in this coun- 
 try. And the heart and brains of the Red 
 Terror is right here in New York city." 
 
 Boudoir Bolsheviki 
 
 The Bolsheviki of New York city are not 
 by any means confined to the underworld, 
 although from time immemorial every move- 
 ment that promoted revolution has swept 
 along with it large numbers of the prole- 
 tariat and criminal classes. The Board of 
 Investigation has facts in its possession im- 
 plicating possessors of independent income, 
 parlor radicals, and social faddists. There 
 are many persons who are more or less in 
 sympathy with the movement that talk and 
 write on this wise: "I am not a believer in 
 Bolshevism, but" — then follow remarks, 
 partly disapproving and partly justifying, 
 with wild assertions concerning the slavery
 
 40 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 of the masses and the necessity of indus- 
 trial revolution. Anarchistic philosophy is 
 taught under the guise of the "Psychology 
 of the Emotions." The higher and the 
 lower instincts are put on the same plane; 
 neither is to be suppressed, not even if im- 
 moral. Freedom from all authority, divine 
 and human, is the ideal good; and to attain 
 this we must "be prepared — to seem un- 
 patriotic, un-American, unreligious, and un- 
 moral." Lectures along this nefarious line 
 are given in a certain school whose aims are 
 defined as "a new trend in social uplift." 
 It has been aptly suggested that a better 
 name for this school would be "The School 
 of Breaking Things Up without Building 
 Them Up." 
 
 Members of the Legislative Committee 
 have information showing that "one wing of 
 the Socialist party, the I. W. W.'s, and the 
 Bolsheviki of New York city aim to over- 
 throw the government." There seems to be 
 "a well-concerted plan on the part of the 
 Reds to oust Samuel Gompers and other 
 prominent labor leaders from the trades 
 union movement and place revolutionaries in
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 41 
 
 control." With the control of the labor 
 unions and the support of millions of dis- 
 contented workmen; with the stoppage of 
 supplies for the community the Bolsheviki 
 would secure a strangle hold upon society. 
 
 Bolshevism and Labor 
 
 Although Socialists and labor-union lead- 
 ers have denounced Bolshevism, the left 
 wing of the Socialist party and members of 
 unions have been turning to revolutionary 
 methods and deeds of violence. They have 
 been actively lining up, as one organization 
 says, "with the revolutionary proletariat the 
 world over as at present represented by the 
 policies and tactics of the communistic party 
 of Russia (Bolsheviki), the communistic 
 labor party of Germany (Spartacans)." 
 Rebellion of workingmen against their own 
 trades-union officials is increasing, and 
 agreements between employers and em- 
 ployed have been broken by the latter in 
 spite of the protests of their own representa- 
 tives. 
 
 Labor was never so prosperous as now;
 
 42 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 it is better paid, works fewer hours, and in 
 more favorable conditions. Its right to 
 organize and strike is generally recognized; 
 the principle of collective bargaining is 
 widely accepted. Its contention for recog- 
 nition in the conduct of industry and a larger 
 share in a common product is winning in- 
 creasing support and has been granted in 
 many places. But there is still much resent- 
 ment against the present industrial order 
 and a growing impatience with mere reform 
 or with anything short of revolution. 
 Among the I. W. W. and the rebellious 
 members of the trades unions, in the under- 
 world of labor, revolution is raging. "Direct 
 action," "sabotage," "the general strike," 
 "the propaganda of the deed" — the weapons 
 of the Syndicalists are being used with ter- 
 rible effect. 
 
 Syndicalism 
 
 Syndicalism is trades unionism with a 
 soul of anarchism. It originated in France 
 when a group of anarchists who were being 
 hunted by the French government as out- 
 laws took refuge in trades unions. These
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 43 
 
 unions then turned to "the general strike as 
 a revolutionary weapon and the only one by 
 which capitalism can be destroyed. At a 
 given signal all members of the trades unions 
 are to leave their work and force others to 
 do so. Production will thus stop; society 
 will be compelled to submit to the domina- 
 tion of the workers, and a new industrialism 
 controlled by the unions will replace capital- 
 ism. The government will be in the hands 
 of the workers, and the state as we now 
 know it will pass away." 
 
 Georges Sorel, the Karl Marx of Syn- 
 dicalism, was a pessimist. He believed that 
 society was so evil that it could not be cured 
 by reforms. Optimism is a delusion and a 
 snare. When the optimist is in power he 
 forgets his mission to purge society of its 
 evils. He becomes content with things as 
 they are and lets them take their course. 
 The raging reformer becomes a defender of 
 vested interests and "sleeps down-pillowed, 
 deaf to moaning want." "Capitahst society 
 is so rich," writes Sorel, "and the future 
 opens up before it in such rosy colors, that 
 it bears fearful burdens without making too
 
 44 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 loud a complaint. ... A cowardly bour- 
 geoisie seeks the chimera of social peace." 
 
 Syndicalism and Makxianism 
 
 Miss Jane T. Stoddart, in her review of 
 Syndicalism, shows very clearly how Sorel 
 and Syndicalism diverged from Marxian- 
 ism. "Karl Marx believed that the present 
 order of society is destined to disappear in 
 a great catastrophe. The path of the de- 
 stroying angel was, to his mind, as myste- 
 rious as that of the secret, hidden forces which 
 produce the earthquake. As a student of 
 economics, he could only prophesy and wait. 
 The modern Syndicalist repudiates the mas- 
 ter's fatahstic doctrines. He is not content 
 with the thought that a slow vengeance is 
 gathering like a thunder cloud in some part 
 of the heavens. He wishes to hasten on the 
 emancipation of the toilers, and he sees the 
 remedy for their sufferings in the genera] 
 strike. The leaders of the new revolution- 
 ary party find no pleasure in the dreams and 
 visions of constructive Socialism. The so- 
 cialistic state, they say, would be an aristo- 
 cratic, or a bureaucratic government, pre-
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 45 
 
 cisely like the systems which have preceded 
 it."^ The Syndicahsts are carrying the same 
 old struggle against the Socialists that the 
 anarchists did. In their opposition to politi- 
 cal methods and democracy in general and 
 their reliance upon force Syndicalism and its 
 brother Bolshevism are headed for the same 
 fate which has befallen the anarchists. The 
 residuum of good sense in the masses makes 
 them naturally disinclined to be drawn into 
 the perils of the general strike and the desti- 
 tution it would entail. They will "strike on 
 the job," and practice sabotage, but they 
 will not respond to the call for an immediate, 
 violent revolution, save under intolerable 
 tyranny and in exceptional conditions as in 
 Russia. Despairing of winning over the 
 majority, the Bolshevist resorts to desperate 
 acts, which alienate the more enlightened 
 among his followers and arouse the opposi- 
 tion of the lovers of law and order which 
 finally compasses his destruction. 
 
 The Bolshevists at Seattle 
 Ther e have been such desperate appeals 
 
 ^The New Socialism, Janet Stoddart, George H. Doran 
 Company, Publishers, p. 199.
 
 46 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 and deeds here in America. At Seattle, 
 when the nation was putting forth its ener- 
 gies to the utmost to win the war, and where 
 there was the only adequate forest of spruce 
 for the making of aeroplanes, a general 
 strike was planned, which it was confidently 
 believed would precipitate a revolution that 
 would spread like Bolshevism in Russia. 
 The strike was not engineered by the leaders 
 of the trades unions. The American Fed- 
 eration and the International Council had 
 opposed this plan. "The I. W. W. boast 
 that the Russian Revolution was planned in 
 the office of a Seattle lawyer, counsel for 
 the organization, during the three over- 
 heated days when Lenin and Trotzky tar- 
 ried in the city's midst, en route to Russia, 
 and that an American Revolution was 
 planned or at least discussed at the same 
 time." However this may or may not be, 
 tons of Bolshevist literature were distributed 
 containing this among other incendiary ap- 
 peals: "There is only one way out — a nation- 
 wide general strike, with its object the over- 
 throw of the present rotten system which 
 produces thousands of milMonaires and mil-
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 47 
 
 lions of paupers each year. The Russians 
 have shown you the way out." 
 
 These appeals were a part of a powerful 
 propaganda by imported agitators, which 
 so roused the animosities and blinded the 
 minds of the people that against their will, 
 as they have since confessed, one hundred 
 and ten Seattle unions voted a sympathetic 
 strike. For a time silence reigned. "Was 
 there going to be violence ? And if so, what 
 form would it take? — a peaceful, though 
 universal strike, or a revolution, machine 
 guns and Russia?"^ 
 
 Fortunately, by the prompt, resolute ac- 
 tion of Ole Hansen, the mayor, the revolu- 
 tion was averted. The working people who 
 had been "buncoed" were stupefied, amazed; 
 then, burning with righteous indignation, 
 they convicted and put in jail the conspira- 
 tors who had imposed upon them. 
 
 There have been many attempts to start 
 revolutions in America and so break down 
 the social order. Anarchists and the vicious 
 classes have done their worst. There have 
 
 * "They made liS strike," Saturday Evening Post, April 
 12, 1919.
 
 48 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 been times when cities have been in their 
 power. But whenever the sober common 
 sense of the people has been aroused they 
 have overthrown their foes and vindicated 
 the strength of popular government. Our 
 institutions when sustained by a prevalent 
 moral life are invincible and have a large 
 vitality amid all corruptions.
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 49 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 RUSSIA'S PROBLEM THE WORLD 
 PROBLEM 
 
 The war has dramatically demonstrated \ 
 that hmnanity is one vast social organism, ) 
 and that "if one member suflPers, all the \ 
 members suffer with it." So long as any 
 
 nation is diseased and the arterial circulation ) 
 of good will, common interests, and goods v 
 ceases to flow to and from any other nation, / 
 the organism does not function well, its 
 health is impaired, and its life endangered. 
 
 Russia and the Commonwealth of 
 Nations 
 
 Scarcely any member of the world com- 
 monwealth of nations is more essential than 
 Russia. She covers one sixth of the earth, 
 includes within her boundaries one hundred 
 different peoples with a population of more 
 than one hundred and fifty miUions. In 
 normal times she is one of the greatest pro- 
 ducers of raw materials and foodstuffs. The
 
 50 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 cutting off this supply is now most severely- 
 felt. Her contributions in literature, art, 
 and music have also been of immense value. 
 The safety and welfare of the world are 
 inevitably bound up with Russia. The head 
 cannot advance so long as the feet are in 
 chains. Her tragic horrors are full of warn- 
 ing. The sinister forces which are more or 
 less hidden and camouflaged in other coun- 
 tries are staged in Russia and shown in their 
 naked deformity and devilish ferocity. The 
 conspiracies which worked in darkness and 
 under surveillance elsewhere swept on to 
 their awful consummation in Russia, with 
 little or no check and indeed by the active 
 support of a treacherous bureaucracy. 
 While the Russians were fighting against 
 half of the German army and nearly the 
 whole of the Austrian army on a front of a 
 thousand miles, this Germanized bureau- 
 cracy was corrupting the Russian generals 
 and destroying munitions. Yet against these 
 overwhelming odds the Russians fought for 
 three years, and their dead outnumber those 
 of any nation in the war. Potentially the 
 richest of nations, Russia is now financially
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 51 
 
 bankrupt. Her industries are paralyzed; 
 her currency has depreciated ahnost beyond 
 recovery, even under a sane government. 
 Other nations have lent her vast sums and 
 are so short of raw materials and foodstuffs 
 that they will be compelled to help Russia 
 rehabilitate her industries and develop her 
 enormous resources to supply their own and 
 the world's needs. 
 
 Bolshevism an Autocracy and a Uni- 
 versal Menace 
 
 \ 
 Bolshevism in Russia is a universal men- > 
 
 ace, like a raging plague anywhere in the ) 
 world. The infection spreads and strikes \ 
 nearer and nearer the heart of humanity. ^, 
 As a theory, it is absurd and wicked. In f 
 practice, it is like a certain leg of mutton \ 
 on which Dr. Johnson dined, and which he 
 declared to be "as bad as bad could be; ill ^ 
 fed, ill killed, ill kept, and ill dressed." The { 
 Bolsheviki betrayed their country, crushed 
 the Russian Revolution by killing or driv- 
 ing out of the country its friends, compelling 
 them to seek safety in exile. Lenin and 
 Trotzky hated democracy and bent their
 
 52 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 energies to establish a communist state under 
 their dictatorship, which should wage relent- 
 less war upon all capitalist states. 
 
 Bolshevism has the vices without the vir- 
 tues of autocracy. Its rule is even more 
 absolute and ruthless. According to its con- 
 stitution the following persons are disfran- 
 chised: " (1) persons who employ hired labor 
 in order to obtain from it an increase of 
 profits; (2) persons who have an income 
 without doing any work; (3) private mer- 
 chants, trade and conmiercial brokers; (4) 
 monks and clergy of all denominations." 
 Thousands of persons belonging to these 
 classes have been slain and an enormous 
 amount of property confiscated and de- 
 stroyed; agriculture and industry are pros- 
 trate. Religion and morals are flouted. 
 Absolutism in its most virulent form now 
 holds Russia in its grasp and without any 
 stable or refining influences. The retribu- 
 tion which after many years destroyed the 
 Romanoffs will make short work of the Bol- 
 sheviki in accordance with that inexorable 
 law so significantly stated by Shakespeare in 
 his play of Troilus and Cressida:
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 53 
 
 "right and wrong . . . 
 Should lose their names, and so should justice too. 
 Then everything includes itself in power, 
 Power into will, will into appetite; 
 And appetite, an universal wolf. 
 So doubly seconded with will and power, 
 Must make perforce an universal prey, 
 And last eat up himself." 
 
 Bolshevism everywhere is following the 
 same fatal policy which has always dug the 
 grave of besotted power. It recognizes no 
 higher law than its own greed and no re- 
 sponsibility other than to itself. The collec- 
 tive force of the proletariat, when despot- 
 ically exercised, is just as tyrannical and 
 subversive of social order as the will of an 
 absolute monarch unless restrained bj^ law 
 and with due regard for the welfare of the 
 social whole. Class warfare, which has been 
 so much glorified in certain quarters, and 
 which at times has been and is justifiable 
 against the usurpations and oppressions of 
 capitalism, is not an unlimited right and may 
 be as treasonable to the community as Ger- 
 many's assault upon civilization. 
 
 Syndicalism, for example, is the applica-
 
 54 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 tion to labor of the Machiavellian doctrine 
 of the state which has so often drenched 
 Europe in blood. In its handbook it de- 
 clares: "When a class issue of any import- 
 ance is raised, Might makes Right always 
 and everywhere." 
 
 Bolshevism and the Universal Strike 
 
 The use of the "universal strike" as the 
 weapon to paralyze the entire economic life 
 of a nation — stopping the production and 
 distribution of food, the running of trains, 
 the mining of coal, etc., until the demands 
 of the workers shall be met — would, if suc- 
 cessful, be far more cruel and disastrous than 
 anything Machiavelli ever contemplated. 
 Nothing would be more fatal to the cause 
 of labor and to the laboring classes. Kaut- 
 sky, the eminent Sociahst, who has written 
 so ably and sympathetically concerning the 
 social revolution by evolutionary processes, 
 condemns the universal strike: 
 
 "We must not forget that a general strike 
 does not put a stop only to capitahstic pro- 
 duction; while it lasts it puts a stop to all 
 production.
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 55 
 
 "Now, it is much more in the interest of 
 the workers than of the capitahsts that pro- 
 duction should go on; for the capitahsts are 
 not only in possession of the means of pro- 
 duction, they also have at their disposal all 
 the great supplies of objects of consumption. 
 Therefore they are able to bear a general 
 stoppage of production much more easily 
 than the workers can. The workers are 
 completely powerless to starve them out" 
 (La Greve Generale, p. 224). 
 
 When a general strike was imminent in 
 France and the French working class, under 
 the instigation of anarchists, were tempted 
 to stake everything upon one mad rush 
 against the established order, Jaures, an- 
 other great Socialist, gave this impressive 
 warning: "Toward this abyss . . . the 
 proletariat is feeling itself more and more 
 drawn, at the risk not only of ruining itself 
 should it fall over, but of dragging down 
 with it for years to come either the wealth or 
 the security of the national life. If the 
 proletarians take possession of the mine and 
 the factory, it will be a perfectly fictitious 
 ownership. They will be embracing a
 
 56 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 corpse, for the mines and factories will be 
 no better than dead bodies while economic 
 circulation is suspended and production is 
 stopped. So long as a class does not own 
 and govern the whole social machine, it can 
 seize a few factories and yards, if it wants 
 to, but it really possesses nothing" (Quoted 
 by Hunter: Violence and the Labor Move- 
 ment, p. 270). 
 
 Bolshevism and Lawlessness in America 
 
 Abraham Lincoln foresaw the dangers 
 that might result to American society from 
 lawless passions. He said: "If the destruc- 
 tion of the American repubhc ever comes, 
 it must spring up about us, it cannot come 
 from abroad ; we, ourselves will be its author 
 and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we 
 must Kve through all time or die by suicide." 
 Lincoln said that this self-destruction would 
 come if at all from "this increasing disre- 
 gard for law which pervades the country; 
 the growing disposition to substitute wild 
 and furious passions for the sober judgment 
 of the courts and the worse than savage 
 mobs for the executive ministers of justice."
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 57 
 
 Lincoln uttered this warning in 1837. 
 But lawlessness has since grown immensely 
 among us. The lowest class of immigrant 
 labor has poured in upon us like a flood, and 
 for a time with little or no check or restric- 
 tion. The I. W. W., who were the forerun- 
 ners of the Bolshevists in this country, came 
 with the polyglot crowd, and found in its 
 drifting, suspicious, sullen masses a ready 
 response to incendiary appeals. These 
 workers were oppressed by unscrupulous 
 employers and compelled to live and work 
 in disgraceful conditions. When these 
 miserable toilers in mill and mine were told 
 that the worker should use any weapon 
 which will win his fight, "Since the present 
 laws of property are made by and for capi- 
 talists, the workers should not hesitate to 
 break them," it was like scattering "the 
 liquid fire of Jacobinism" among the seeth- 
 ing masses of the French Revolution. 
 
 The Spoiler of Labor 
 
 There was nothing to counteract this 
 nefarious propaganda. No one cared for 
 their souls or for their bodies. Even labor
 
 58 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 unions for a time neglected them altogether, 
 and even now leave most of them outside 
 their ranks. It is not surprising that, goaded 
 to fury by their grinding conditions and 
 by unscrupulous agitators, they struck, 
 sometimes bhndly and madly, carrying out 
 the schemes of their leaders, rather than 
 helping themselves. W. J. Burns, who 
 brought the MacNamaras and other con- 
 spirators to justice, says that "they waged 
 a war of anarchy under the mask of labor." 
 
 It is among these ignorant, susceptible, 
 misguided toilers, who are working the most 
 hours, doing the dirtiest work and in the 
 worst conditions for the least pay, that Bol- 
 shevism is spreading like wildfire. This 
 enemy of the nation and spoiler of labor 
 must be fought by the most drastic methods. 
 But this great mass of workers upon whom 
 the nation so vitally depends must be reached 
 by a determined friendliness and such minis- 
 tries as shall most effectively safeguard and 
 promote their physical, moral, and spiritual 
 
 well-being. 
 
 Lynching 
 
 But lawlessness and Bolshevist practices
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 59 
 
 are by no means confined to the lower 
 classes. They are in the upper stories of 
 society as truly as in the basement. The 
 crime which makes us most traduced by 
 other nations and is our foulest blot is the 
 barbarous practice of lynching. It is prac- 
 ticed in the older section of the country, 
 where courts are strongly established, where 
 juries are more than willing to convict of- 
 fenders of a hated race. Several victims of 
 mobs this last year were burned and others 
 tortured before death. Only fourteen of 
 these were killed for alleged attacks on 
 women, and fifteen persons met death who 
 were innocent. These lynchings took place 
 while thousands of Negroes were fighting 
 and dying in Europe for their country and 
 winning the admiration of the Allies for 
 their heroism and noble service. Little or 
 no progress has been made toward the pun- 
 ishment of the lynchers, which is a damaging 
 reflection upon the community. But at this 
 writing there is a National Conference in 
 session at which there are delegates from the 
 South, to take measures to put an end to 
 this monstrous barbarism, which, like all
 
 60 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 forms of lawlessness, breaks down the sup- 
 ports of society and produces the conditions 
 in which Bolshevism thrives. 
 
 Frenzied Finance 
 
 On the high seas of "frenzied finance" 
 civiHzed piracy for a time flourished with 
 little check. Under the leadership of men 
 of wealth and guided by astute lawyers, cor- 
 porations were formed which got a strangle 
 hold upon the industries of the country and 
 exacted a tribute from the community. 
 There has been a most effectual reaction and 
 the broken defenses of honest business have 
 been partially repaired. But the moral 
 damage has been terrible. Such colossal ex- 
 amples of predatory wealth in high places 
 have lent a flattering unction to the inflam- 
 matory appeals of anarchists and social agi- 
 tators. A tremendous impetus has been 
 given to the will to wealth and power, and 
 the determination to get quick, easy, big 
 money at whatever cost or consequences to 
 others. It is a common remark that it is 
 useless to enact certain laws because they 
 cannot be enforced; that is, obedience to
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 61 
 
 laws, though passed by the state and essen- 
 tial to society, will not be rendered and can- 
 not be compelled. Evasion of law by cor- 
 porate interests, and sabotage openly advo- 
 cated by Syndicalists — doing as little work 
 and as badly as possible — are breaking down 
 the morale of society just as truly in Amer- 
 ica as Bolshevism is in Russia. 
 
 The Sovereignty of Law the Prime 
 Essential 
 
 The prime essential of Society is the 
 sovereignty of law. Conflicts of classes and 
 interests are inevitable. If these are not 
 mediated and settled by reason, as embodied 
 in law, mob violence follows. Liberty has 
 never been achieved save by the concessions 
 of individuals and classes to give up certain 
 privileges and even rights when they in- 
 fringed upon the liberties of others. Democ- 
 racy rests upon the assumption that the peo- 
 ple are intelligent, reasonable, and moral, 
 and that their composite judgment carries 
 with it a compulsion which cannot be rightly 
 evaded without impairing the integrity of
 
 62 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 the state. The verdict of the majority may 
 not always be right, and, indeed, may be un- 
 just, but, as Lincohi said, "A majority held 
 in restraint by constitutional checks and 
 limitations and always changing easily with 
 deliberate changes of popular opinion and 
 sentiment is the only true sovereignty of a 
 people. Whoever rejects it does of neces- 
 sity fly to anarchy or despotism." 
 
 Law is something more than a body of in- 
 flexible rules and regulations. It is the ex- 
 pression of the will of the community and 
 is continually taking the form and pressure 
 of that will. The growing enlightenment 
 and the ripening moral sense of a part of 
 the community at least are continually at 
 work to make and adjust laws to meet the 
 ever-increasing social needs. "Law is 
 mighty, mightier still is need," is a current 
 maxim and one in harmony with the growing 
 sociological concept of jurisprudence. The 
 gift of "conservative innovation" is the best 
 safeguard against the reactionary tendencies 
 which seek to perpetuate predatory rights 
 and it is also the best means of securing a 
 progressive, ordered freedom.
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 63 
 
 V'^ 
 
 \ Liberty and Character 
 
 Liberty depends far more upon charac- 
 ter than upon rights and privileges or upon 
 social conditions. It may be good or evil 
 according to the dominant disposition of 
 those who use it. Edmund Burke in his. 
 Reflections upon the French Revolution, 
 and the Red Terror which accompanied it, 
 said: "Men are quahfied for civil liberty in 
 exact proportion to their disposition to put 
 chains upon their own appetites ; in propor- j 
 tion as their love of justice is above their) 
 rapacity; in proportion as their soundness 
 and sobriety of understanding is above their 
 vanity and presumption; in proportion as 
 they are more disposed to listen to the coun- 
 sels of the wise and good in preference to 
 the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist 
 unless a controlling power upon will and 
 appetite be placed somewhere, and the less 
 there is of it within, the more there must 
 be without." 
 
 Humanity since the time of Burke has 
 made much progress toward the promised 
 land of liberty which he contemplated. It
 
 64 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 has broken awaj^ from some oppressions; it 
 has crossed many a Red Sea of revolution, 
 but there is still a long journey before it 
 and many enemies to be conquered. Some 
 nations have more freedom and are much in 
 advance of others. But no backward peo- 
 ple or peoples can safely be left behind, 
 much less exploited or oppressed. Such 
 peoples have often overturned society and 
 shifted "the balance of power." In 1815 the 
 Congress of Vienna, consisting at first of 
 Russia, Austria, and Prussia, formed a 
 Holy Alliance to govern for "the protec- 
 tion of religion, peace, and justice," and "the 
 reconstruction of the moral order." But in- 
 stead of establishing a new order the Al- 
 liance sought to strengthen the old absolut- 
 ism and crush the rising forces of liberty 
 and nationahty. But these forces grew and 
 were reenforced in a most unexpected man- 
 ner. Napoleon, needing money, sold to 
 America the territory now known as the 
 Louisiana Purchase, declaring that he had 
 thereby raised up a competitor to England. 
 But Canning, the English statesman, had 
 a truer vision, when in 1823, speaking of the
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 65 
 
 rising power of America, he declared that 
 "the New World had come in to redress the 
 balance of the Old." 
 
 "The New World to Redress the Bal- 
 ance OF THE Old" 
 
 That prophecy has been most signifi- 
 cantly fulfilled. The example of this great 
 and prosperous republic has given wonder- 
 ful inspiration and strength not only to those 
 whom the old absolutism in Europe sought 
 to crush but to oppressed peoples every- 
 where. In the last one hundred years eighty 
 constitutions incorporating democratic prin- 
 ciples have been adopted. And when 
 America came into this war by the side of 
 England, France, and Italy, the balance 
 of power so long in the grasp of absolutism 
 was shifted into the hands of democracy. 
 
 One epoch has culminated; another epoch 
 has begun. Another Peace Congress has 
 assembled and a League of Nations has been 
 formed to establish a permanent peace. 
 But what control will this League have over 
 the Central Powers and one hundred and 
 seventy millions of Slavs? May not they,
 
 66 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 representing three fifths of the population 
 of Europe, reverse the preponderance of 
 power, now happily possessed by the Allies, 
 and keep Europe in perpetual turmoil? 
 
 The vital bond of any Entente or League 
 is moral — the sense of right, which when 
 strong enough will hold men and nations 
 together as nothing else will. Only nations 
 which have a certain moral development and 
 are homogeneous in character can work to- 
 gether, no matter what their legal agree- 
 ments may be. Two hundred or more of 
 such agreements and treaties have been 
 made, but many of them have been broken 
 and wars have been frequent. 
 
 The Slavs and the New World Order 
 
 Much good is expected to come from giv- 
 ing certain peoples the right of self-deter- 
 mination, but democracy has never been a 
 sovereign remedy for certain ills. Can it 
 cure the millions who are burning with the 
 fever of revolution and torn with racial 
 hatreds and class antagonisms? Germany, 
 whether outside or inside the League, will 
 be a menace until she experiences a radical
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 67 
 
 change of spirit and character. What can 
 the right of self-determination do for the 
 Slavs without certain moral and spiritual 
 conserving forces? The Slavs deserve sym- 
 pathy and the best gifts of Western civiliza- 
 tion. Stung by cruelty, beguiled by Ger- 
 man lies, betrayed and bribed by the Bol- 
 sheviki, the Slavs are striking madly and 
 blindly as the French did in their Revolu- 
 tion. The Slavs have a sacrificial zeal for 
 liberty which for years has braved persecu- 
 tion, exile, and death. They have a man 
 power and resources which, if moralized and 
 spiritualized, would enrich and bless man- 
 kind immensely, but which, if left to their 
 wild passions and mobilized by the Bol- 
 sheviki or resurgent Germany, may become 
 more terrible than the hordes that under 
 Ghenkis Khan and Tamerlane laid waste 
 Europe. 
 
 The world is under heavy obligations 
 to the Slavs. They compelled Germany to 
 fight on two fronts for three years. They 
 have sacrificed millions of lives and billions 
 of wealth. How much we owe little Serbia, 
 who has earned the crown of martyrdom in
 
 68 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 the cause of the Allies ! The Czecho- Slovaks, 
 the countrymen of John Hus, have been 
 fighting our battles against the Bolsheviki! 
 There is Poland, also, the first and the great- 
 est martyr of the nationalist faith in Europe, 
 as France was the first evangelist. In all 
 the republican uprisings in Europe, and in 
 this war, the scattered Poles have fought 
 and died to win for other peoples the na- 
 tionality which has been denied them. 
 
 The Salvation or the Slavs 
 
 The safety of the world and Christendom 
 depends upon giving to the Slavs the saving 
 forces which have imparted to the Allied 
 nations whatever stable character they now 
 possess and which they must transmit to 
 others or lose their own souls. The peoples 
 of the four big democracies were once in the 
 stage where the Slavs are today. England, 
 after she broke with her despotic King John 
 at Runnymede, had seven hundred years of 
 desperate struggle before she achieved self- 
 government. If the English people, when 
 they were smarting under oppression, had 
 followed Wat Tyler, the Lenin of that day,
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 69 
 
 their liberties would have been wrecked. 
 But fortunately they were blessed with the 
 leadership of Wiclif, Latimer, Simon de 
 Montfort, and their apostolic successors in 
 church and state, to keep them from stum- 
 bling and to lift them up when they did 
 stumble. Our American colonies also in that 
 most critical period just after the Revolu- 
 tion and in several crises since would have 
 been torn asunder by sectional animosities 
 but for the restraining forces of the Chris- 
 tian religion and its regenerating institu- 
 tions. Every free people has climbed up 
 the same bloody, rugged road. 
 
 The Slavs are now on their altar stairs of 
 liberty. They are frantic with hunger, torn 
 with anarchy, and encircled by Bolshevism 
 as by a ring of fire. To leave them to their 
 destruction would be a crime against hu- 
 manity and a sin against God. That vast 
 Slavic region is the strategic center of the 
 world's politics and of Christendom. The 
 stability of both depends upon the recon- 
 struction and the regeneration of the Slavs. 
 
 Germany, with her military power broken, 
 will be all the stronger and able to turn her
 
 70 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 entire energies toward economic aggression. 
 Cut off from her former sphere of com- 
 mercial influence, temporarily at least; 
 shorn of her colonies; her maritime fleet 
 crippled, there remains Russia, the second 
 wheat-producing country in the world and 
 with natural resources sufficient to make any 
 nation that exploits them rich beyond the 
 dreams of avarice and a commercial power 
 of the first magnitude. Russia, dismem- 
 bered, disorganized, abandoned to inter- 
 necine strife, will be an easy prey to Ger- 
 many, whose masterly genius for organiza- 
 tion will find a tempting field for unlimited 
 exploitation. 
 
 Wherever Bolshevism does not rule recon- 
 struction is already going on, notably among 
 the Czecho-Slovaks and Rumanians. The 
 Russian peasants, who form a large part 
 of the population, are almost wholly anti- 
 Bolshevist. They are incurably religious. 
 The paralyzing grasp of the state church 
 has been broken; the pathetic reverence for 
 the "Little Father" has gone, but the sweet 
 simphcity of their faith in Jesus, the Gali- 
 laean Peasant, which led to the conversion
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 71 
 
 of Tolstoy, remains. Upon this foundation 
 of Christian faith, and upon the Russia of 
 Tolstoy, Turgenieff, and Dostoievsky, may 
 be built the gold, silver, and precious stones 
 of Christian character and a Christian civili- 
 zation. 
 
 The Church and God^s Kingdom of 
 Righteousness 
 
 God's judgment fires are already burn- 
 ing up much "wood, hay, and stubble." God 
 has more at stake in eastern Europe than 
 anyone. Those two hundred millions now 
 scattered and divided — bereft of wise lead- 
 ers — sustain a vital relation to the kingdom 
 of God, transcending church and state and 
 immanent in both, which has always been 
 cherished by Christendom. That ideal was 
 championed by the Roman Catholic Church 
 in the Middle Ages and for a time rendered 
 an immense service to humanity. It curbed 
 violence and established "a truce of God" 
 at a time when "bloody and disorderly 
 tyranny" was as rampant as it is now in 
 central and eastern Europe. Had that 
 church been true to this divine ideal, to bind
 
 72 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 nations and peoples in obedience to and love 
 of Christ, the world would have been spared 
 most of its wars and would need no League 
 of Nations to keep the peace. But in its 
 lust for temporal power the church antago- 
 nized every state it could not rule and de- 
 nied the divine mission of the state. It 
 ( trampled upon the rights and duties of the 
 /state as a part of the moral order of the 
 /world. As a consequence the state became 
 /degraded into a secular institution, which 
 ) recognized no higher law than its own neces- 
 j sity and no power other than military 
 ( force. It became Machiavellian, save where 
 (the spiritual life in humanity estabhshed 
 free self-governments. 
 
 On the other hand, by this alienation of 
 the state the church lost its distinctive char- 
 acter and its primacy in human affairs. 
 Since then there has been no united Chris- 
 tendom and no moral order of commanding 
 authority and power. Europe has been a 
 battle ground of shifting alHances and war- 
 ring kingdoms, vainly endeavoring by force 
 to preserve a balance of power and keep the 
 peace. But the selfishness of some nation
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 73 
 
 or nations has always tipped the balance in 
 their favor and brought on war. Out of that 
 fateful separation, not so much between 
 church and state as between a spiritual king- 
 dom and secular forces, backed by sinister 
 interests, have come this war and the pres- 
 ent international chaos. 
 
 It is a most humiliating fact that the 
 church, both Roman Catholic and Protest- 
 ant, has become so subservient to encroach- 
 ing secularism. In Germany and Russia it 
 has given pious sanction to policies and prac- 
 tices which were born in hell. In all coun- 
 tries the church has too often forgotten that 
 it has been invested with the keys of the 
 kingdom of righteousness and commissioned 
 to bind persons and nations into a spiritual 
 society and loose them from the lusts that 
 alienate and destroy them. We sing, "Like 
 a mighty army, moves the Church of God." 
 This is true of the church invisible, but not 
 of the church visible. It has no unified com- 
 mand, no proper subordination of sectarian 
 and secondary interests to an overmastering 
 purpose to carry forward the kingdom of 
 God. Would that the church had the power
 
 74 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 to speak in righteousness with one voice and 
 with that compulsive persuasion which the 
 Holy Spirit alone gives! 
 
 This is what the nations and humanity in 
 general are travailing in pain for: sure 
 spiritual guidance and control. In a most 
 critical period of the war, H. G. Wells 
 visited France and Italy, and met David 
 Lubin, who was at work upon the very per- 
 plexing problem of food supply and distri- 
 bution. "Their conversation drifted from 
 economic matters, from the ideas of national- 
 ism and faction and policy toward some- 
 thing else which is larger, which they found 
 in the minds of the people. 'The people,' 
 Mr. Wells said, 'are feeling their way to- 
 ward a bigger rule.' 'The rule of Right- 
 eousness,' said Mr. Lubin. Mr. Wells told 
 him that he had been coming to the idea of 
 the whole world as one state and community 
 and of God as King of that state. 
 
 " 'But I say that,' cried Mr. Lubin. 'I 
 have put my name to that. And it is here.' 
 He seized an Old Testament that lay upon 
 the side of the table and rapped its cover. 
 'It is here in the Prophets.' "
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 75 
 
 "That talk," Mr. Wells says, "was only 
 one of a number of talks about religion that 
 I had had with practical men who want to 
 get the world straighter than it is and who 
 perceive that they must have a leadership 
 outside themselves," the leadership of a God 
 of righteousness to estabhsh a righteous 
 world order.
 
 76 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 ECONOMIC FORCES AND THE 
 SOCIAL ORDER 
 
 Benjamin Kidd in his posthumous book, 
 The Science of Power (p. 53), declares that 
 "The story of creation up to and including 
 human savagery is simply the story of the 
 supremacy in the world of physical force 
 organized in the life of the efficient individ- 
 ual, or the efficient group, or the efficient 
 state. But the story of evolution above 
 savagery is nothing else than the story of 
 the gradual rise to supremacy in the world 
 of those psychic forces organized in civiliza- 
 tion which are subduing individuals or ag- 
 gregations of individuals, efficient in their 
 own interests, to those universal principles 
 which are making for the limitless efficiency 
 of civilization." 
 
 The Evolution of Efficiency 
 By efficiency is meant the exercise of en- 
 
 ' Published by G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York City. 
 
 ■'i
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 77 
 
 ergy, resources, and opportunities to the 
 utmost, fulfilling the law of its being in the 
 conditions in which it is placed. In the climb 
 "up to and including savagery" physical 
 force is supreme and ruthlessly exercised in 
 the exploitation and extermination of others. 
 But even in the jungle, and still more in 
 human life, efficiency depends upon mutual 
 aid and sacrifice. "Those communities which 
 include the greatest number of the most 
 sympathetic members flourish the best," 
 Darwin says. Those communities are the 
 fittest and attain the highest development 
 of intellectual and bodily organization. As 
 life mounts upward to the higher levels, 
 "though the cruder elements persist with 
 fatal and appalling vigor," the altruistic ele- 
 ments gain immensely. Development is car- 
 ried forward by the power of ideals. It is 
 advanced by a steadily growing sense of 
 right and an ever-enlarging feeling of 
 responsibility which invariably becomes 
 mightier than force. There are whole 
 regions, and daily enlarging regions, where 
 "every animal feature is discredited, dis- 
 couraged, or driven away."
 
 78 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 German Efficiency and Barbarism 
 
 This greatest of all wars is an incident in 
 the much vaster, far more fateful struggle 
 of evolution from savagery. The forces of 
 an animal, barbarous, and pagan past have 
 warred against the growing soul of civiliza- 
 tion. By a one-sided, perverted application 
 of the Darwinian theory of the survival of 
 the fittest the law of the jungle in its cruder 
 aspects has been projected into human so- 
 ciety. Basing its right to rule upon this 
 law and buttressed by the Machiavellian 
 doctrine of the state, Germany has sought 
 to impose its Kultur, which is its standard 
 of efficiency, upon the rest of mankind. No 
 other nation has so effectually subordinated 
 religion, philosophy, and a submissive peo- 
 ple to its ruthless designs ; none has so com- 
 pletely crushed its idealism and spiritual 
 life by its idolatry of force and its lust for 
 power. 
 
 But, as Mr. Kidd says: "The pagan doc- 
 trine of force as the supreme test of efficiency 
 in the world, which has come out naked and 
 unabashed in modern Germany, had its
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 79 
 
 springs deep down in the tendencies of the 
 intellectual life of every leading Western 
 nation. . . . Since 1880 the Western na- 
 tions entered on the scramble for the world 
 outside of Europe, engaging in what has 
 been called 'the most rapid and vast career 
 of acquisition that the world has witnessed 
 since the days of Islam.' "^ The balance of 
 power, which ruled Europe for a hundred 
 years, was based, not upon reason or jus- 
 tice, but upon force and practices which 
 often outraged the moral sense of mankind. 
 
 Wah and Industrial Conflicts 
 
 Closely allied to this struggle between 
 nations for power and territory was the 
 determination within nations by individ- 
 uals and groups to get wealth by the 
 most effective methods, and often in viola- 
 tion of ethical laws. In war and in indus- 
 trial conflicts society is nearest to the bar- 
 barism from which it has emerged. In these 
 spheres the predatory instincts and practices 
 of a lower stage survive in their full vigor. 
 The altruistic feehngs, the ethical and spirit- 
 
 ^The Science of Power, p. 66, G. P. Putnam's Sons.
 
 80 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 ual powers, however, are less active and 
 when asserted are often flouted. They de- 
 rive their strength, not from a brute in- 
 heritance, but from the quickening of the 
 spiritual nature by the ideals imparted by 
 a slowly ripening social consciousness. 
 
 The system of capitalism, which domi- 
 nates industry, though an immense advance 
 in efficiency upon every economic system 
 preceding it and in its contribution to the 
 general material well-being of society, was 
 frankly based upon selfishness. It offered 
 a tempting opportunity to those possessing 
 the resources and tools necessary to pro- 
 duction to exploit labor. In the famous 
 debate between Schmoller and Treitschke, 
 when Schmoller said that the present social 
 order rose out of force and injustice, Treit- 
 schke replied: "What does force and injus- 
 tice arise from ? From the natural inequality 
 of men themselves. Nature made some men 
 stronger than others. Before we had an 
 organized society the stronger killed the 
 weaker. When we had a slightly organized 
 society, it made slaves of them. Now it uses 
 them as free laborers."
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 81 
 
 Capitalists in general, with none of the 
 obligations imposed by feudalism, seized 
 upon the economic advantage afforded by 
 the emancipation of serf labor, and used the 
 power which wealth gave, shutting out 
 ethical and humane considerations. They 
 adduced the ruling economics to justify 
 their practices. 
 
 The Science of Economics and Its 
 Perversions 
 
 But Economics as taught by Adam 
 Smith, John Stuart Mill, Alfred Marshall, 
 and others is not the narrow, unethical sys- 
 tem that those capitalists practiced. It be- 
 longs to a larger science, and the material 
 forces with which it deals are conditioned 
 by the psychic forces which give form and 
 pressure to society. Adam Smith was a pro- 
 fessor of moral philosophy and there is no 
 contradiction between the wealth of nations 
 and his moral teachings. Alfred Marshall 
 emphasizes the effect of the Reformation 
 in deepening English character, "reacting 
 upon their habits of life and giving tone to 
 their industry. . . . The isolation of each
 
 82 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 person's responsibility from that of his fel- 
 lows, rightly understood, was a necessary 
 condition of the highest spiritual progress. 
 . . . Holland and other countries shared 
 with England the great ordeal which was 
 thus opened by the spiritual upheaval that 
 closed the Middle Ages. But from many 
 points of view, and especially from that of 
 the economist, England's experiences were 
 the most instructive and the most thorough, 
 and were typical of the rest. England led 
 the way in the modern evolution of industry 
 and enterprise by free and self-determining 
 energy and will."^ Capitalism as it has been 
 practiced and as it is has been represented 
 by some critics is as far removed from the 
 true science of economics as the Machiavel- 
 lian doctrine of the state is from the true 
 conception of the state. Professor Marshall 
 speaks of "the many hangers-on of the 
 science, who had no reverence for it, and 
 used it simply as an engine for keeping the 
 working classes in their place. Perhaps no 
 great school of thinkers has suffered so much 
 from the way in which its hangers-on and 
 
 1 Principles of Economics, vol. i, p. 63, The Macmillan Co.
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 83 
 
 parasites, professing to simplify economic 
 doctrines, really enunciated them without 
 the conditions to make them true."^ In- 
 dustrial lords seized upon certain narrow 
 economic abstractions to lend a flattering 
 unction to their predatory practices in much 
 the same way that despotic monarchs used 
 Machiavellian maxims to justify their usur- 
 pations and aggressions. 
 
 Irresponsible power, exercised for indus- 
 trial aggrandizement, by its singleness of 
 purpose and concentration of force, like 
 other despotisms, was immensely successful 
 for a time. But later, by an inexorable law, 
 oppression generated the vices which under- 
 mined its strength and roused the opposition 
 which compelled the captains of industry to 
 bow to the will of an aroused social con- 
 science. The greed which forced men, 
 women, and children to work twelve to six- 
 teen hours a day, in mines and mills, in con- 
 ditions fatal to health and morals, produced 
 such a frightful amount of social wreckage 
 that the famous Factory Acts were neces- 
 sary to safeguard society. Wage-earners, 
 
 ^ Principles of Economics, vol. i, p. 35, The Macmillan Co.
 
 84 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 on the other hand, smarting under injustice, 
 used force to resist force, and by strikes, 
 sabotage, and other drastic methods have 
 wrung concessions from their employers and 
 enforced their claims to a larger share of a 
 common product. 
 
 The Dislocation of the Social Order 
 
 Thus was produced a dislocation of the 
 social order which has steadily widened. A 
 dualism between religion and business, 
 ethics and economics has prevailed, save 
 where it has been mediated by the altruistic 
 feelings and practices of individuals and 
 groups. In spite of beneficent legislation 
 and noble reforms to bridge the chasm, the 
 social cleavage has deepened and industrial 
 conflicts have become more formidable. 
 During the years immediately preceding the 
 war the portents of an approaching social 
 convulsion in England and on the Continent 
 of Europe became alarming. At the time of 
 the railroad strike in 1911 England was in 
 danger of starvation. The London Times 
 declared that the country was "facing the 
 decomposition of society." The settlement
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 85 
 
 of this strike instead of bringing peace stim- 
 ulated new forces of revolt, which projected 
 their offensive beyond local groups and into 
 whole industries. Trades unions and social 
 legislation, though increasingly effective, no 
 longer satisfied the demands of labor. A 
 sinister disposition to disregard the sanctity 
 of agreements became manifest and "legal 
 contracts entered into by labor were con- 
 tinuously violated as if they had meant noth- 
 ing at all."^ 
 
 Before the war Professor Marshall stated 
 that "if wealth were distributed equally, the 
 total production of the country would only 
 suffice to provide necessaries and the more 
 urgent comforts for the people, and that 
 as things are, many have barely the neces- 
 saries of life. . . . The average increase per 
 head in the United Kingdom, which was 
 about £15 in 1820, is about £33 now; i. e., 
 it has risen from about £75 to £165 per 
 family of five. There are not a few artisan 
 families, the total earnings of which exceed 
 £165, so that they would lose by an equal 
 distribution of wealth: but even they have 
 
 ' London Times, January 26 and March 27, 1912.
 
 86 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 not more than is required to support a 
 healthy and many-sided hfe."^ Though 
 the proportion per capita of wealth in the 
 United States is larger," the net output of 
 production before the war was barely ade- 
 quate to provide a proper measure of sub- 
 sistence and comfort for the whole popula- 
 tion even if it had been equally distributed. 
 In both countries it is estimated that in- 
 dustry attained only about fifty per cent of 
 its possible efficiency. There was much 
 wasteful and destructive competition be- 
 tween employers and between employers 
 and employees. Many "captains of indus- 
 try" were autocratic and self-sufficient, 
 wholly intent upon gaining their own ends 
 as they narrowly and selfishly conceived 
 them. This "dark spot" of selfishness 
 blinded them to the self-evident truths, that 
 no man has any more right to run his busi- 
 ness as he pleases than the Kaiser had a 
 divine right to rule and make war; that the 
 needs and grievances of labor must be recog- 
 nized and adjusted before there can be any 
 
 ^ Principles of Economics, pp. 45, 146, The Macmillan Co. 
 ^ The total wealth of the United States is estimatect at 
 $250,000,000,000, and the total income $50,000,000,000.
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 87 
 
 real cooperation which is essential to the 
 greatest efficiency. Trades unions leaders, 
 on the other hand, were chiefly exercised in 
 forcing concessions from employers and pro- 
 tecting their members from aggression. 
 Various methods of slowing up production 
 and sabotage were encouraged. Syndical- 
 ists were busy stirring up envy, hatred, and 
 hostility promoting craft interests instead 
 of a community of service, without which 
 the real welfare of labor cannot be advanced. 
 
 The Psychic Forces in Industrial 
 Efficiency 
 
 When the war broke out and England 
 was compelled to fight for her existence, she 
 was confronted at home by gross profiteer- 
 ing on the part of capitalists and by wide- 
 spread strikes by labor. Industries which 
 were vital to the prosecution of the war were 
 stalled. Then came the appeal to something 
 higher than the issues of class warfare, to 
 their common loyalty to a common country 
 upon whose salvation everything which these 
 classes held most dear depended. An in- 
 dustrial armistice was effected. Animosities
 
 88 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 were held in abeyance. The precious free- 
 doms and concessions which labor had 
 gained after years of bitter struggle and 
 sacrifice were temporarily surrendered. A 
 common allegiance was recognized. The 
 productive forces of the nation for the first 
 time were mobilized, not for profit, but for 
 the maximum output. England, the coun- 
 try of individualism, the battlefield of class 
 struggle, in order to match her whole 
 strength against Germany, the empire, 
 where politics, commerce, and industry had 
 been fused in a single conspiracy for world 
 domination, was compelled by her "Defence 
 of the Reahn Act," to commandeer private 
 factories and property for war purposes and 
 impose the most drastic regulations in re- 
 gard to the luxuries, the food, and many 
 activities of her people. 
 
 In the United States also the conduct 
 of industries and many of the activities of 
 the people were under public surveillance 
 and determined by the necessities of the 
 war. Here, as in England, there was a 
 general loyal response and cooperation. 
 Judge Edwin B. Parker, the Commissioner
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 89 
 
 of Priorities of the War Industries Board, 
 declares, that "in ninety-nine cases out of 
 a hundred there was a spontaneous and en- 
 thusiastic support. There is the exceptional 
 case of the man who is determined to 'run 
 his own business' regardless of the nation's 
 crisis and her most vital needs. But would 
 you call such a man democratic? It seems 
 to me that he has been a petty autocrat for 
 so long that he is unable to break the spell. 
 He has been using our precious resources, 
 employing human beings in his service, and 
 holding a natural monopoly perhaps in 
 some necessaries of life, and still for all this 
 he acknowledges no responsibility. He 
 represents the idea which America has set 
 out to destroy — the rule of the irresponsible. 
 . . . Before the war, the test by which the 
 continued existence of an industry was de- 
 termined was, 'Does it pay?' To-day our v 
 only question is, 'To what extent does it \^ 
 serve the nation's need.' We have to quit 
 production simply for private profit and be- 
 gin to produce for national use."^ 
 
 As a result of this new spirit of coopera- 
 
 '■ Quoted in The Great Chance, Charles W. Wood. 
 
 (
 
 90 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 tion many necessary economies and eiR- 
 ciencies were discovered and adopted. New 
 energies were released and a production sur- 
 passing all past experience was achieved. 
 In England "after two years, during which 
 four million men, or nearly one third of the 
 adult able-bodied male population, had been 
 drafted into the fighting services, while 
 something Hke two milhon more had to be 
 added for the special requu*ement of the 
 munition trades, the ordinary trades of the 
 country were still able to be carried on so 
 as to supply the material requisites of life 
 for the remaining civil population upon a 
 level not appreciably lower than before the 
 war. The production of material wealth as 
 a whole (inclusive of munitions and other 
 material war requisites) did not appear to 
 have been diminished by the withdrawal of 
 four million men."^ 
 
 During the war industry received a much 
 needed moral quickening and developed a 
 social conscience. The appeal of patriot- 
 ism goes deep into the very consciousness 
 of the people and stirs men more profoundly 
 
 ^ John Atkinson Hobson, Evolution of Modern Capitalism.
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 91 
 
 than economic issues. The loyalty to coun- 
 try, in which and by which people live, was 
 signally manifest long before modern in- 
 dustrialism. It is out of the souls of men 
 that the great changes of society and the 
 social evolution of mankind proceed. "Man 
 cannot live by bread alone." Still less can 
 he feed upon his self-interest and exercise 
 his economic advantage exclusively without 
 experiencing revulsion of feeling. When 
 his soul is stirred, he feels the moral forces 
 in the bosom of humanity, which though 
 often turned aside or smothered, always 
 have moved the world and always will. It 
 is only when the pursuit of gain is ennobled 
 by ideal aims and impelled by moral motives 
 that it commands man's best energies and 
 becomes a worthy vocation. 
 
 The president of a great steel company 
 said the other day: "When a man or a num- 
 ber of men for their own ends create a great 
 industrial unit they assume an obligation 
 towards the human elements of that unit 
 and through them to society in general, 
 which cannot be canceled or suspended arbi- 
 trarily." The human factor whose import-
 
 92 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 ance this steel magnate emphasizes is com- 
 ing to be recognized as the most potential 
 one in industry. Economic forces: capital, 
 material resources and processes, the ma- 
 chinery of production and exchange — these 
 are essential factors and are sometimes ig- 
 nored by reformers. But man, who is much 
 more than a component part of a big work- 
 ing machine ; man, made of flesh and spirit, 
 with a primal, divine urge in him to live a 
 fuller life and master conditions so as to de- 
 velop such life; man in his social member- 
 ment, upon which industry and society really 
 depend, determines the value and the char- 
 acter of industry. 
 
 Capitalism is constantly changing under 
 the pressure of the human factors with which 
 it is identified. It is an evolving system. 
 There was a time when the laborer was re- 
 garded as a commodity, subject like other 
 commodities to the law of supply and de- 
 mand. But there was such an impoverish- 
 ment of labor force and so much social 
 wreckage that considerations of even eco- 
 nomic efficiency compelled progressive busi- 
 ness to study the workman as a human
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 93 
 
 being. His physical and social needs, his 
 rights and aspirations, what will make him 
 contented and win his cooperation — ^these 
 became vital business problems, which press 
 for solution with increasing persistence. 
 
 Industry and the Social Whole 
 
 The vital relation of the industrial unit 
 to the social whole is also commanding in- 
 creasing attention. Industry depends for 
 its very existence and protection upon the 
 community. It cannot thrive in a lawless, 
 ignorant and vicious people, as the experi- 
 ment of Bolshevism in Russia has demon- 
 strated. All that is most essential to in- 
 dustry: power of brain and brawn, the 
 machinery of production and exchange, 
 science in its endless applications, the market 
 for its products— all these, with the psychic 
 forces which develop with the growth of 
 civilization, are furnished by the community. 
 
 Big Business More Human and Demo- 
 cratic 
 
 Big business is becoming not only more 
 human but more democratic. Collective
 
 94 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 bargaining, conferences and arbitration of 
 disputes, welfare work, profit-sharing, dis- 
 tribution of stock among employees, and 
 similar methods are attempts to give a larger 
 recognition to workers and a greater share 
 in the profits of business. But something 
 more than higher wages, fewer hours, bet- 
 ter working conditions, and a share in the 
 profits is necessary to satisfy workers who 
 are imbued with the democratic spirit. Their 
 fundamental grievance is that they are de- 
 pendents; they have no ownership; or if in 
 a few corporations they are stockholders in 
 a small way, they have in most business 
 concerns no voice in the conduct of the in- 
 dustry to which they give their energies and 
 often their lives. They are exposed to the 
 insecurity of a competitive industry with the 
 dangers of unemployment and poverty star- 
 ing them in the face. Things are regulated 
 for them as in an autocracy, and not by 
 them, or at least with their cooperation, as 
 a democracy requires. The only bond be- 
 tween them and their employers is "the cash 
 neoDus," in the form of wages. They have no 
 ownership or share in a common product
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 95 
 
 save in a few exceptional industries and by 
 a comparatively small contingent. Thou- 
 sands of workers have fought to overthrow 
 a political autocracy and free mankind from 
 the domination of irresponsible power. 
 They naturally feel hostile toward anything 
 which looks like Prussianism in business. 
 
 No Hereditary Industrial Autocracy 
 
 There is, however, no hereditary indus-/ 
 trial autocracy. Four fifths of the "cap-( 
 tains of industry" have risen from the ranks 
 and against more formidable obstacles than 
 now exist. To give one example among 
 thousands: Charles P. Steinmetz, the man- ( 
 ager of the General Electric Company, says 
 in his preface to his book, America and the 
 New Epoch :^ "When I landed at Castle 
 Garden, from the steerage of a French I 
 liner, I had ten dollars and no job, and could 
 speak no English. Now, personally, I have 
 no fault to find with existing society ; it has 
 given me everything I wanted ; I have been 
 successful professionally, in engineering, 
 and have every reason to be personally satis- 
 
 1 Harper & Brothers, Publishers.
 
 96 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 fied; . . . Even as crude and undeveloped 
 as the industrial corporation of to-day is, in 
 its social activities, if I were an unknown and 
 unimportant employee I would far rather 
 take my chances with the impersonal, huge 
 industrial corporation than with the most 
 well-meaning individual employer." There 
 is something in man that is superior to cir- 
 cumstances and there is something in the 
 hardships and hazards of industrial com- 
 petition which challenges and helps develop 
 men's powers. The prizes in the industrial 
 world as a rule are held by men who were 
 poor and have mastered its conditions. 
 
 SociaHstic communities, on the other 
 hand, where the competitive element has 
 been partly or wholly eliminated, have failed 
 to produce either men or wealth for anyone. 
 There are some sane principles of socialism, 
 however, which could be wisely applied to 
 the conduct of industry. Mr. Steinmetz 
 calls himself a Socialist and would extend 
 still more fully the principle of cooperation 
 which has helped make industrial coopera- 
 tions so strong and profitable alike to cap- 
 ital and labor, and which he insists is essen-
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 97 
 
 tial to enable America and England to at- 
 tain such a high degree of commercial effi- 
 ciency as Germany by the help of state So- 
 cialism achieved before the war. That state 
 Socialism, however, was a masterly combina- 
 tion of capitalism with pohtical and educa- 
 tional forces. 
 
 The men who are really doing the most 
 to democratize industry are not Sociahsts 
 or trades unionists, but those who are promi- 
 nently identified with the big corporations. 
 The beginnings of a representative democ- 
 racy, with constitutional rights and privi- 
 leges to all workers, have already been made. 
 The International Harvester Company, for 
 example, has a plan which provides for "a 
 works council" in which representatives 
 elected by the employees shall have equal 
 voice and vote with the management in the 
 consideration of matters of mutual interest. 
 "Through these councils any employee or 
 group of employees or the management may 
 at any time present suggestions, requests, 
 and complaints with the certainty of a full 
 and fair hearing." There are some twenty 
 articles in this industrial constitution, which
 
 98 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 was voted upon by thirty thousand em- 
 ployees in March of this year and adopted. 
 
 Beginnings of an Industrial Democracy 
 
 Other similar plans are in operation by 
 the Standard Oil Company. During the 
 twelve months that the plan introduced by 
 the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey 
 has been tried there have been eighty joint 
 conferences between the workers and the 
 management ; one hundred and nineteen dif- 
 ferent subjects came up for discussion and 
 all were amicably settled by the employee 
 and company representatives. Wages 
 have been increased, life insurance has been 
 placed for all the workers, and detailed plans 
 have been formulated for old age and serv- 
 ice annuities. 
 
 The Problem of Production for Capital 
 
 AND Labor 
 
 Industrial democracy obviously would be 
 doomed to failure, if it did not recognize and 
 keep in its administrative positions men of 
 demonstrated business ability and experi- 
 ence. Genius has its place and is entitled 
 to its rewards in business as truly as in art
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 99 
 
 and literature and science. The best So- 
 cialists recognize this, and also the economic 
 necessity of the promotion of workers for 
 merit instead of leveling them down. Cer- 
 tain economic laws have a sovereign sanc- 
 tion and validity. They cannot be sup- 
 planted by popular vote, nor can the con- 
 duct of business be safely put into the hands 
 of demagogues. The problem of sufficient 
 production to meet the increasing demands 
 of labor for higher wages, fewer hours, and 
 better conditions must be solved on economic 
 grounds. "The theory advanced by some 
 advocates of shorter hours of labor, that the 
 reduction of hours does not mean an equal 
 reduction in products, fails to apply to the 
 textile industries, because the work is done 
 largely by machinery. The work of the 
 laborers is to keep the machines supplied 
 with material, to attend to the machines, and 
 to remove the products. The machines are 
 already run at the highest speed possible for 
 good work. Consequently, the alertness or 
 quickness or willingness to work on the part 
 of the workers cannot increase the output of 
 the machine. ... It is impossible to run
 
 100 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 the machines with two or three shifts, be- 
 cause a large proportion of the workers are 
 women and children and the labor laws of 
 Massachusetts prohibit them from working 
 at night. A reduction of twelve and one half 
 per cent of working hours means a reduc- 
 tion of twelve and one half per cent of pro- 
 duct, but the overhead expenses remain the 
 same. So the cost of production per yard 
 is increased with every reduction of hours. 
 In those industrial activities, however, where 
 the individual factor is greater than the me- 
 chanical, the theory that the volume of pro- 
 duction can be maintained with a shorter 
 working day, holds true." 
 
 Labor has reasoned that if values are de- 
 termined by the law of supply and demand, 
 then the less the work performed the more 
 valuable labor will be, the more continuous 
 the work, and the less danger of unemploy- 
 ment. Hence, trades unions have adopted 
 the policy of restricting output, by slowing 
 up the workers and opposing the introduc- 
 tion of labor-saving machinery. This mis- 
 taken policy is one of the causes why Eng- 
 land before the war, where this policy was
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 101 
 
 most generally in force, developed only 
 about fifty per cent of her labor efficiency 
 and was greatly handicapped in her com- 
 mercial competition with Germany. The 
 controlling factor in determining the value 
 of labor is the amount of marketable goods 
 produced and at such a cost as consumers 
 can afford to purchase. The fear of un- 
 employment, however, is a force that must 
 be met in such a way that the burden shall 
 not fall wholly upon labor. Such guaran- 
 tees should be given that the workers shall 
 be encouraged to give their utmost energies 
 to make production as large as possible, 
 which is their most effectual safeguard, and 
 at the same time be provided with sufficient 
 insurance to tide them over the evil day, 
 when it does come. England has ah'eady 
 taken a step toward this end. At the time of 
 this writing one million persons are receiving 
 their unemployment dole. 
 
 The Class Struggle and the Com- 
 munity 
 
 The class struggle, which Socialists and 
 others have declared to be the norm of civih-
 
 102 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 zation, cannot be settled within the industrial 
 unit and upon economic grounds alone. 
 Economic forces are constantly being over- 
 borne by national and racial interests; and 
 these interests in turn bow to the superior 
 claims of humanity. Before the war the 
 Socialists of Europe were banded together 
 in the International and fondly believed that 
 this bond of fraternity was stronger than 
 all others, even strong enough to prevent 
 war. But when the appeal to patriotism was 
 made, the Socialists in the various coun- 
 tries rushed to the colors and fought against 
 one another on all fronts. No struggle for 
 freedom has ever been won by any class with- 
 out enlisting the help of other classes, and 
 indeed, of some members of the very class 
 against which it was fighting. The bond of 
 the alliance thus formed was more human 
 than economic. No great advance for hu- 
 manity has been made without the coopera- 
 tion of "psychic forces, organized in civiliza- 
 tion, subduing individuals or aggregates of 
 individuals efficient in their own interests to 
 those universal principles which are making 
 for the limitless efficiency of civilization."
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 103 
 
 The industrial strife and bitterness which 
 have become so formidable and are shaking 
 the supports of society can never be over- 
 come without the cooperation of the com- 
 munity. The psychic forces, which have 
 been developed largely in the family, the 
 state, and the church, must be applied to 
 the industrial member. Industrialism has 
 insulated itself in many cases from ethical 
 restraints and social obligations. The com- 
 munity has been exploited and its rights 
 ruthlessly trampled upon. It has been long 
 suffering and much too kind. It is high 
 time that the community in which the owner- 
 ship of so much of the natural resources is 
 vested, and upon whose will the very life 
 of industry depends, should insist upon its 
 rights. The fixing of prices and wages with- 
 out regard to the public ; the increasing dis- 
 position on the part of corporations to com- 
 pel consumers to pay tribute and on the 
 part of the proletariat to conscript wealth 
 by taxation, are as fatal to economic effi- 
 ciency as they are to social solidarity. The 
 effrontery of syndicalists in enforcing their 
 claims not only by curtailing profits but by
 
 104 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 "the universal strike" — by holding up the 
 community by the stoppage of supplies — is 
 treason of the worst sort. 
 
 The Supreme Claims of "a Greater, 
 Happier, and Better Humanity" 
 
 The human obligations within industry 
 and to the larger life of the community are 
 the invisible ties which hold society together. 
 When these obligations are weakened, when 
 the arterial circulation of common ideals, 
 feelings, and interests is poor, "there is 
 schism in the members" — the social body is 
 torn by its contending factions. Clemenceau, 
 speaking about the program of the Peace 
 Conference, said, "It is no longer the peace 
 of a more or less vast territory, no longer 
 the peace of continents; it is the peace of 
 nations that is to be made." We must be 
 ready to make any sacrifice, but "on the con- 
 dition that we endeavor impartially to con- 
 ciliate interests, apparently contradictory, 
 on the highest plan of a greater, happier, 
 and better humanity." The spirit of self- 
 sacrifice and conciliation which the French 
 premier declared to be essential to the estab-
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 105 
 
 lishment of international peace is just as 
 truly essential to industrial peace. There 
 must be the conciliation and cooperation of 
 groups and interests, "apparently contra- 
 dictory" and now hostile, by making them 
 feel the wisdom and power of "a greater, 
 happier, and a better humanity."
 
 106 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 PROPERTY AND THE SOCIAL 
 ORDER 
 
 Private property has a divine sanction 
 and is one of the oldest of human institu- 
 tions. It has enlarged the scope of human 
 personality and has been a potent factor in 
 binding individuals and groups into com- 
 munities and nations. Communistic experi- 
 ments have failed. Most Socialists now 
 admit the necessity and worth of this time- 
 honored institution and give it a place in 
 their programs for collective ownership and 
 production. 
 
 The Right to Property 
 
 Many theories which have been adduced 
 to justify the right to property base this 
 right upon force, possession, or acquisition, 
 irrespective of moral relations and obliga- 
 tions. But these objections are conclusive: 
 "The arbitrary seizure of a thing cannot
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 107 
 
 become the ground of a right to it; the 
 momentary possession of a thing still less 
 can become the ground of a continuous 
 right; and the title of acquisition is not the 
 basis of property, but the property is the 
 basis for the title. . . . Occupancy and 
 labor and law are indicative of possession 
 on the ground that apart from them the 
 necessity and justice of property exist." 
 
 Mulford, in his great book, The Nation, 
 after a critical review of the conventions con- 
 cerning the right to property, comes to this 
 noble conclusion: property "is man's only 
 as his personal being; that is, his life in its 
 moral realization is from God, and it is his 
 in and for the fulfilbnent of his vocation in 
 a moral order in the world, and apart from 
 this there is nothing which is his own. . . . 
 If property becomes in itself an end, then 
 personality is subjected to the things it pos- 
 sesses. If it be held apart from the voca- 
 tion of man and the moral relations and 
 obligations involved in that, then it becomes 
 mere possession; the instrument of a selfish 
 interest and the means for the degradation 
 of personality."
 
 108 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 The Biblical Conception of Property 
 
 Mulford's conclusion, that the right to 
 property comes from God as the Creator 
 and Sovereign of the earth, is a fundamental 
 truth of the Bible. The Scripture passage 
 "The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness 
 thereof" is no mere rhetorical phrase, but 
 the expression of supreme reality. God 
 owns the world in fee simple. All material 
 substances and forces, all human powers and 
 rights, are his gifts, and conditioned by his 
 moral order. Man, by virtue of his divine 
 endowment as a spiritual being, is given 
 dominion over the physical world. His 
 vocation is to use it in fulfillment of the 
 Divine purpose and thus work out his own 
 development and destiny. 
 
 David's prayer, which was offered at the 
 building of the temple, reveals the Hebrew 
 conception of property as God's gift, to be 
 held in trust for his use in the realization 
 of his Kingdom upon the earth and in the 
 exercise both by men and nations of their 
 high calling and stewardship. "Thine, O 
 Lord, is the greatness, and the power. . . .
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 109 
 
 Both riches and honor come out of thee, and 
 thou reignest over all. . . . Who am I, and 
 what is my people, that we should be able to 
 offer so willingly after this sort? for all 
 things come of thee, and of thine own have 
 we given thee. . . . O Lord our God, all 
 this store . . . cometh of thine hand, and is 
 all thine own. . . . O Lord God of Abra- 
 ham, Isaac, and of Israel our fathers, keep 
 this forever in the imagination of the 
 thoughts of the heart of thy people, and 
 prepare their heart unto thee." 
 
 The spirit of this prayer is supreme in 
 the Law and the Prophets. This spirit 
 shines all through the history of that chosen 
 people, blessing them when they were obedi- 
 ent and justifying its wisdom by the de- 
 grading abominations and disasters into 
 which they fell when they were disobedient. 
 When Israel turned away from the worship 
 of the unseen righteous God and bowed 
 down to idols; when they broke the obliga- 
 tions which the possession of property en- 
 tailed, the bond that made those nomad 
 tribes a people with a God-given mission was 
 weakened. Their hold upon the righteous-
 
 110 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 ness of God and his moral government being 
 loosened, all lower sanctities and rights lost 
 their force. Religion degenerated into cere- 
 monialism. Only partial service and sacri- 
 fice were required. Might usurped right. 
 Property divorced from a divine sanction 
 became a means of selfish aggrandizement 
 and an instrument of oppression. The con- 
 centration of wealth, without moral restraint, 
 brought its inevitable concomitants — the 
 debauchery of the rich and the impoverish- 
 ment of the poor. Nothing saved Israel 
 from the fate of the surrounding idolatrous 
 nations but the burning protests of the 
 prophets speaking with divine authority, re- 
 calling them to the worship of a righteous 
 God and obedience to his moral order. 
 
 Jesus and the Social Order 
 
 Jesus came to reveal more fully and 
 persuasively the unseen Sovereign and 
 Father to whom the Law and the Prophets 
 sought to bind that believing, but doubting 
 and sinful, people. Jesus was primarily a 
 revealer. He was not a social agitator 
 against the intolerable political and eco-
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 111 
 
 nomic tyranny under which humanity was 
 then groaning. If Jesus had yielded to the 
 popular clamors of his day and had incor- 
 porated into his gospel a social program 
 to remedy the oppressive conditions of 
 Palestine and the ancient world, his revela- 
 tion of an invisible kingdom whose Sove- 
 reign wisdom would be justified by its uni- 
 versal application and realization would 
 have been obscured and would have lost its 
 unique redemptive character. The world- 
 embracing, regenerating principles of Jesus 
 cannot be compressed into social dogmas, 
 much less into class slogans. As Mazzini 
 said, "Christ came for all; he hved for all; 
 he died for all." 
 
 Every age cries out for some sovereign 
 specific to cure its peculiar evils. Drastic 
 legislation and methods are demanded, but 
 often the fundamental rights upon which the 
 very structure and stability of society rest are 
 violated. Mayor Hansen, of Seattle, Wash- 
 ington, was asked by a New York news- 
 paper for a fifteen-hundred-word article on 
 the laws he would propose to curb Bolshev- 
 ism in America. He denied the request and
 
 112 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 said: "Laws might be enacted which, while 
 meeting the present emergency, would 
 threaten the rights of the American people; 
 it was better to wait till calmness and de- 
 liberation could take the place of furor and 
 tumult." Bolshevism is an epidemic due to 
 diseased social conditions. Drastic methods 
 are necessary to curb its violence and check 
 its spread, but the cause lies too deep for 
 laws to cure. 
 
 .-? God's Righteous Order 
 
 The crying need of that ancient world 
 and of these tumultuous times is God's 
 righteousness established in the minds and 
 hearts of mankind. When this righteous- 
 ; ness is sought and obeyed, ethical and social 
 ' potencies of marvelous efficacy are released. 
 They work from within outward and give 
 quickening and strength to other similar 
 forces. "The presence of electrical force in 
 one body," we are told, "induces a corre- 
 sponding force in another not in contact 
 with the first, but adjacent to it; currents 
 passing in a given direction communicate 
 new properties to a body round which they
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 113 
 
 circulate ; the neutral iron becomes a magnet 
 attracting, vibrating so long as it is en- 
 circled by a galvanic current." Similarly, 
 the power Jesus received from God was im- 
 parted to his disciples. This spiritual cur- 
 rent spread, communicating intensity and 
 new properties to other ethical potencies, 
 more or less remote from it. Like the forces 
 of nature, it has always been available and 
 responsive to human needs and cooperation. 
 "The world was out of joint" then, and 
 it is still. No political and social recon- 
 struction could or can set it right, so long 
 as disruptive forces were and are raging. 
 The kingdom might have been restored to 
 Israel, the Roman yoke thrown off and a 
 treaty of peace concluded. But God's 
 righteousness could be established only so 
 far as the insurgence of self in the heart of 
 humanity at enmity against the divine order 
 was conquered and transformed. No reform 
 would be effectual with a wicked and an 
 adulterous generation which worshiped false 
 gods, enthroned might over right, and or- 
 ganized the forces of human strength under 
 the Prince of this world against the Right-
 
 114 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 eous Ruler. The strangle hold which sin 
 had upon humanity must be broken before 
 society could be saved. 
 
 The prime essential and dynamic for the 
 regeneration of society then and now is 
 God's love incarnate in Jesus Christ, who 
 took upon himself our flesh and infused into 
 those who received him a new purifying, 
 transforming power which remakes men 
 and enables them to remake society into 
 the kingdom of God. 
 
 The Ownership of Property and Its 
 Obligations 
 
 What does this Divine Love as revealed 
 in Jesus require in respect to the ownership 
 and use of property, which is the storm 
 center of so much of the evil in the world? 
 Jesus accepted without criticism the insti- 
 tution of private property as he did other 
 institutions of society. He evidently did not 
 regard its possession, or wealth, as an in- 
 fringement upon the rights and welfare of 
 others, still less as the cause of poverty and 
 misery. However faulty or unjust the 
 structure of society may have been at times,
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 115 
 
 it has been imperiled whenever the sacred- 
 ness of private property has been violated 
 save for the benefit of the social whole. 
 Wealth, when it is earned, is an achievement 
 due to faithfulness over a few things in a 
 minor sphere and is entitled to its reward. 
 It is accompanied by vu'tues or vices ac- 
 cording as certain higher laws are obeyed 
 or disobeyed. It may minister to the beauty 
 and gladness of hfe or increase its miseries. 
 It is the way in which a man gets or uses or 
 spends his wealth; it is the place it has in 
 his thoughts and affections, which deter- 
 mines his character. Like knowledge, which 
 often fosters pride and the desire to domi- 
 nate others ; Hke religion, which so easily de- 
 generates into hypocrisy and persecution; 
 Hke any other good, which may be debased, 
 wealth has its perils which none escape and 
 few pass through unscathed. The strain and 
 stress of acquisition; the preoccupation with 
 one's possessions; the covetousness which it 
 breeds, the vices which it engenders — ^these 
 often impoverish the real life of men and 
 dry up its springs. Only he who is athletic 
 of soul can endure the grueling test. But
 
 116 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 if he does endure it, he gains greater moral 
 power and even spiritual blessedness, as the 
 parable of the talents teaches. 
 
 No sin, save possibly hypocrisy, which is 
 an abuse of a real good, was treated by the 
 Master with such withering scorn as covet- 
 ousness. Nothing was so severely con- 
 demned as indulgence in selfish splendor in 
 the midst of moaning want. Retribution is 
 pictured as falling like a crack of doom upon 
 the rich fool who lived in luxurious ease, and 
 also upon Dives, who in hell hfted up his 
 eyes in torment and beheld Lazarus in 
 heaven, the accusing witness of his brutal 
 selfishness. On the other hand, one of the 
 meanest characters in the gospel is the man 
 who hid his one talent, the I. W. W. who 
 produced nothing, lost his ability and oppor- 
 tunity, and was cast as an unprofitable serv- 
 ant into outer darkness. 
 
 The Sin of Luxury 
 
 Flaunting luxury in the presence of 
 
 poverty and misery is a deadly sin and a 
 
 ^6 pernicious perversion of property. Un- 
 
 / productive consumption of wealth, the
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 117 
 
 diversion of labor to the production of ar- 
 ticles many of which not only supply no real 
 need, but are injurious, is a prolific cause of 
 poverty. In a well-ordered household it 
 would be considered monstrous and brutal 
 if the father or mother should spend so much 
 of the common patrimony in selfish gratifi- 
 cations that the rest of the family should 
 suffer for the necessities of life. If a com- 
 pany of persons should be gathered together 
 at the banquet where the provisions were 
 barely sufficient to give each a moderate 
 share, and a few greedy persons should help 
 themselves so plentifully that there would 
 not be enough left for the others, those 
 greedy persons would be regarded as boors. 
 But in every city there are hundreds of idle 
 rich, idle rich, who produce nothing, but con- 
 sume so much from life's common table that 
 only a few crumbs are left for the many who 
 are continually on the verge of starvation. 
 
 Professor Cairnes, an able English econo- 
 mist, writes in reference to the extravagant 
 expenditures of the idle rich: "The wealth 
 accumulated by their ancestors or others on 
 their behalf, when it is employed as capital
 
 118 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 in productive enterprises no doubt helps to 
 sustain industry. But what they consume 
 in luxury and idleness is not capital, and 
 helps sustain nothing but their own un- 
 profitable lives. By all means they must 
 have their rents and interest as it is written 
 in the bond; but let them take their proper 
 place as drones in the hives, gorging at a 
 feast to which they have contributed noth- 
 ing. This does not apply to the industrious 
 rich, but it does condemn their luxury." 
 
 Predatory Wealth 
 
 The war has made parasitic and preda- 
 tory wealth as odious and as treasonable as 
 Prussianism. The slacker and the profiteer 
 are social outcasts. Property rights, and 
 even some precious personal freedoms, are 
 justified only when subordinated to the good 
 of the whole. The obligations that posses- 
 sion entails, which the Bible has taught, and 
 have been observed by spiritual-minded men 
 in all ages, are becoming accepted and ap- 
 plied by an awakened social conscience. All 
 that enters into wealth — natural substances 
 and forces, the powers that organize and
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 119 
 
 drive industry, the machinery of production 
 and exchange, the laws and institutions of 
 society which generations have developed 
 and transmitted — all these, without which 
 the acquisition or the possession of property 
 would be impossible, are God-given and 
 maintained by society. No individuals or 
 corporations own the product, and they 
 have no right to administer it in any way 
 that violates the character of God or militates 
 against his rule in human affairs. "What- 
 ever hinders the attainment of a true and 
 full humanity on the part of every man or 
 woman ought to be removed, and whatever 
 is essential to the very existence of human 
 beings as our Father in heaven means them 
 to exist, ought to be supplied and made pos- 
 sible to all." 
 
 The drastic discipline of these tragic 
 years, when civilization has been trembling 
 in the balance, has driven home the convic- 
 tion that all rights and possessions depend 
 for their validity and perpetuity upon their 
 relations to God's moral order. In coopera- 
 tion with him these lower forces and posses- 
 sions may prosper; without him they fail.
 
 120 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 "The fashion of this world," with its idola- 
 tries and perversions of God's order, "passeth 
 away." The lust of the flesh, the indulgence 
 of appetites at whatever cost to others, the 
 pride of possession and push for domination 
 which is "hard by hate" and oppression — 
 these flourish for a time, but they are self- 
 destructive and are doomed. "Fresher life" 
 humanity "derives from their decay" be- 
 cause "the Waster builds again." 
 
 Property and the Awakened Sociai. 
 Conscience 
 
 No giving is too great, no sacrifice is too 
 costly to establish God's righteous rule over 
 everything that destroys the souls of men 
 and breaks down the supports of society. 
 The question is not how much shall we give 
 of money and service, but how much have 
 we a right to keep and how shall the posses- 
 sion we hold in trust be administered to con- 
 serve and spread this blessed rule. H. G. 
 Wells, a free lance in religion, says: "The 
 servant of God has no business with wealth 
 or position, except to use them immediately 
 in the service of God. Finding these things
 
 AND SOCIAL REVOLT 121 
 
 in his hands, he is bound to administer them 
 in the service of God." 
 
 This is what the awakened social con- 
 science expects of God's servants. Social 
 radicals risk and give everything to stir up 
 social revolt. God's servants should be as 
 self-sacrificing and as adventurous in pro- 
 moting spiritual and social regeneration. 
 Billions of bonds have been purchased, ex- 
 cess profits have been given up, the savings 
 of the poorer classes have been contributed 
 in all ^he allied nations to enable them to 
 overthrow a malevolent autocracy. Why 
 not put such bonds and such profits and such 
 savings at the service of a far more im- 
 perative and sublime cause, the enthrone- 
 ment of God's kingdom over the principah- 
 ties and powers of evil? 
 
 The Peace Conference at best will be 
 partial and ineffectual in some of its pro- 
 visions. It will fail unless the signatories 
 and peoples keep their covenants with God, 
 the Supreme Owner and Sovereign, and re- 
 nounce their idolatries of Mammon, Mili- 
 tarism, and Materialism. George Mac- 
 donald's most earnest exhortation should
 
 122 BOLSHEVISM 
 
 be taken to heart: "Cast your idol into the 
 furnace ; melt your mammon down ; coin him 
 up ; make God's money of him and send him 
 coursing. Make of him cups to carry the 
 gift of God, the water of life, through the 
 world. . . . What true gifts might not the 
 mammon of unrighteousness, changed back 
 into the money of God, give to men and 
 women, bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh! 
 How would you not spend your money for 
 the Lord if he needed it at your hands ? He 
 does need it; for he that spends it upon the 
 least of his fellows spends it upon his Lord. 
 To hold fast upon God with one hand and 
 open wide the other to your neighbor — this 
 is religion; this is the Law and Prophets 
 and the true way to all better things that are 
 yet to come."
 
 INDEX 
 
 America, 36, 65 
 Anarchy, 7-16 
 
 Bakounine, 7-13, 20 
 Bolshevism, Pre-, 7 
 Bolshevism and the Bolshe- 
 
 viki, 23, 32, 35, 38, 39, 40, 
 
 46, 51, 52 
 Burke, Edmund, 63 
 
 Capitalism, 80-92 
 Church, 71, 72, 73 
 Clemenceau, 104 
 Conference Peace, 35 
 Czecho-Slovaks, 68-70 
 
 David, prayer of, 108 
 Democracy, 93 
 Democracy, Industrial, 98 
 Doctrine, Monroe, 37 
 Dupries, Charles, 10 
 
 Emerson, 34 
 England, 68 
 
 Forces Psychic, 87, 91, 103 
 Fox, Charles James, 28 
 Froude, 19 
 
 Germany, 69 
 Gompers, Samuel, 25 
 
 Hansen, Ole, 47, 111 
 Hegel, 8 
 Hugel, Von, 17 
 Hillquit, Morris, 24 
 Hobson, John Atkinson, 90 
 
 Individualism, 17 
 
 Internationa. Harvester Co., 
 
 97 
 I. W. W., 40, 42, 46, 57 
 
 Jaures, 55 
 
 Jesus and the Social Order, 
 
 110, 111 
 Jesus and Private Property, 
 
 114 
 
 Kautsky, 54 
 
 Kidd, Benjamin, 76, 78 
 
 Labor, 41 
 Law, 61, 62 
 Lawlessness, 58 
 Lawrence, 10 
 Lenin, 27, 30, 31, 32 
 Liberty, 63 
 
 Lincoln, Abraham, 56, 62 
 Lubin, David, 74 
 Luxury, 116, 117, 118 
 Lynching, 58 
 
 Macdonald, George, 121 
 Machiavellianism, 8 
 Marshall, Alfred, 81, 82, 83, 
 
 85 
 Marx, Karl, 20, 44 
 Mulford, 107 
 
 Nations, League of, 35, 65, 66 
 Nihilism, 12 
 
 Parker, Edwin B., 88 
 Poland, 68 
 
 Power, Balance of, 10 
 Production, Industrial, 100 
 Proletariat, dictatorship of, 
 30 
 
 123
 
 124 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Property, private, 106, 114, 
 
 120 
 Proudhon, 15 
 
 Revolution, French, 29 
 
 Russian, 29 
 Righteousness, 74, 113 
 Rufsia, 49, 50 
 
 Russia, Peasants of, 70 
 
 Schmoller, 80 
 Shakespeare, 18, 53 
 Slavs, 66, 67, 68 
 Socialism, 96 
 Sorel, Georges, 43 
 
 State, the, 17. 18 
 Standard Oil Company, 98 
 Steinmetz, Charles P., 95, 96 
 Strike, the Universal, 54 
 Stoddart, Jane T, 44 
 Struggle, the class, 101 
 Syndicalism, 42, 45, 53 
 
 Thackeray, 9 
 Times, London, 84 
 Treitschke, 80 
 
 Vienna, Congress of, 64 
 
 Wealth, Predatory, 118 
 Wells, H. G., 74. 120
 
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