Ill m'irM ill! dm':,' tl!ltll(iil SOCIALISTS AT WORK among journalists and others fond of good literature. Its readers wereentranced by the " Unsentimentaljourneys " of the jovial, big-hearted Bounder; the lilting, satirical lyrics of Mont Blong ; and they found a new interest in comedy and drama under the tutelage of Dangle, re- cently in New York in the interests of his two plays "Tom Jones " and " The Dairymaids." Above all their hearts were touched and their enthusiasm was fired by the wonderfully simple, charmingly written articles of Nunquam. His writings are perhaps more eagerly read than those of any other English author. His " Mer- rie England," giving the economics of socialism, sold upward of a milUon, and " Britain for the British," a similar book, has been read by hundreds of thousands. When I was in London in 1899, I found many circles of influential people discussing socialism. The Fabians were absorbed in municipal affairs and in their efforts to permeate the Liberal Party with socialist ideas, but miss- ing no opportunity to lecture and laugh at each other and everybody else. There was also a small group of the Independent Labor Party, an organization founded by Keir Hardie in the early nineties, with its strength mostly in the provinces. It was serious, hard at work, and, ap- parently without reason, hopeful for the future. I saw a good deal of John Burns. He had broken away from all socialist bodies, and was busy in parliament and in the London County Council ; but he was making no ef- fort to form a movement among the workers, and indeed quite frankly without hope that one could be formed. I saw a few members of the Social Democratic Federation. Their movement, then nearly twenty years old, was standing still, and nearly all the London members were bitter and disheartened. So far as I could see there was THE BRITISH LABOR PARTY 10 1 no movement of consequence. The various sections did not like each other, the propertied interests looked upon socialism without alarm, and evidently the working-class was fighting shy of it. Later in the summer I attended the conference of the Social Democratic Federation at Manchester, but I was not led to change my con- clusion. In fact, it was not until I spent a few days with Keir Hardie at his home in Scotland that I began to think my estimate of the socialist movement was wrong. Late one afternoon I arrived at Old Cumnock, and was met at the station by Mr. and Mrs. Hardie. As night came on, with a fine, full harvest moon, they took me for a walk ; and after listening to my rather despondent remarks concerning the failure of British sociahsm, Hardie said : " But you have only seen London, and every one who breathes the air of London loses hope. If you want to see the socialist movement, spend some time in the prov- inces, and you will see that everywhere socialism is making headway." As a matter of fact, Hardie had made socialism a thing of consequence among the workers outside of London. He early saw the necessity for uniting into one political organization the trade unions with their million and a half adherents, the cooperatives with their million members, and the various municipal or- ganizations working on a program of vital interest to the workers. Hardie and his friends of the provinces were convinced that by working persistently among these organizations they could bring them all together into a political party. In this work he was joined by Tom Mann, who with John Burns had been grad- ually breaking down the conservatism of the British 102 SOCIALISTS AT WORK trade unions, and had at their Liverpool congress in 1890 scored a great victory for the newer ideas. Hardie had for years been quietly at work among the unions of the north. He was born almost in the mines, having gone to work underground at seven years of age. He never had a day's schooling, but his mother taught him to read when he was so young that he cannot remember when he could not read. When quite a youth, he began reforming as a temperance advocate, and although without interest in the union movement he was induced to become the secretary of a miners' organization, because he was the only one who could write the minutes and properly pre- pare the papers. As soon as the employers discovered that this youth was the secretary of the union he was discharged, and he came, in a very practical way, face to face with economic problems. This act of the em- ployers made Hardie a labor agitator, and gave to the workers of England the most powerful, consistent, pa- tient, and painstaking leader the movement has known. But this Scotch miner " could not long be the voice of the wronged and bruised labor of the mines alone," as John Spargo has so eloquently said. "Whoso would cry for one single toiler's weal must cry equally for all. There is no weal for any while there is woe for any. Keir had not come to that, but when the docker ap- pealed to him, he became the docker's voice. And when the seeker for work, tired of seeking in vain, beck- oned with wasted finger, Keir answered and straight- way became the voice of the workless one's woe. Then Keir realized that the wrong of the miner and the wrong of the docker and the wrong of the workless one were the same wrong. So Keir became a socialist. THE BRITISH LABOR PARTY IO3 He was the voice of toil in the street, by the dockyard gate, in the market-place, — he became the voice of toil in the parliament of the exploiters of toil. It needed Courage, and it needed Faith, and Keir lacked neither the Faith nor the Courage. Sometimes Labor was afraid of its own voice — afraid of Keir; and when he cried aloud for Peace, and shouted defiance to the red dragon of war, miner and docker and workless one cried out against Keir with a voice not their own and would have stoned him — would have stilled their own voice. But Keir's Strength and Courage and Faith increased ; he voiced wronged and bruised and blinded Labor's woes in spite of its own unfaith and ignorance and fear." At the Trade Union Congress held in Bradford in 1892, Hardie gathered about him a small group of working men for the purpose of forming a labor party. His idea was at that time, as it has been ever since, to unite all the workers into an independent political move- ment. He found it increasingly difficult to believe in the value of socialism without any labor party to ac- cept it. He was entirely of the view of Wilhelm Lieb- knecht, who once declared that " it is crazy tactics for a working men's party to seclude itself away up above the workers in a theoretic aircastle, for without work- ing men there can be no working men's party, and the laborers we must take as we find them." Many of the socialists opposed Hardie in this work, and he once said rather bitterly, " It is remarkable that the only serious opposition we have had to encounter has come from the men who ought to have occupied an inner place in our councils. It has been said that the words of the apostate are ever the harshest ; and we are ex- periencing the truth of that." 104 SOCIALISTS AT WORK Nevertheless the I. L. P., as it is now called, was organized, and began almost immediately to make headway in the provinces. Upon the birth of the new party, Tom Maguire, a working man, a poet, and one of the most lovable spirits in the British movement, wrote to Edward Carpenter : " As you may not have heard, be it mine to mention that now the mountain, so long in labor, has been delivered of its mouse — a bright, active, cheery little mouse, with just a touch of venom in its sharp little teeth. . . . To come to the point, an Independent Labor Party is born unto us — long may it wave. You will find in your travels that this new party lifts its head all over the north. It has caught the people as I imagine the Chartist move- ment did. And it is of the people ; such will be the secret of its success. Everywhere its bent is socialist, because socialists are the only people who have a mes- sage for it." Many of its members at the succeeding elections were carried to local governing bodies, and the party won to its cause not only the strongest of the younger men in the labor movement, but a large num- ber of disinterested and loyal friends outside the work- ing-class. The new movement early demonstrated, what had been doubted before in many quarters, that a third party could become an effective power in British poli- tics. The doubt that a labor party could get a footing was due in part to the failure of the Social Democratic Federation in its electoral struggles. In 1885 it had run two candidates in London. Mr. Williams in Hampstead got 27 votes, and Mr. Fielding in Ken- sington 32 votes. This wretched showing proved a disaster to the socialist movement. The Federation THE BRITISH LABOR PARTY I05 lost many of its members, and some extremists repu- diated political action altogether. The English feeling at that time was similar to that which still exists among a great many radicals in the United States. It was recently expressed rather bitterly in an editorial in the single-tax weekly of Chicago, " The Public." " Under the present electoral machinery," runs the editorial, " the socialist party can no more become a dominant or even a second party than a cabbage can become a cow. They cannot continue to draw their own vote. Machine politicians understand this, and are accordingly indiffer- ent to side-party voting." This is a vigorous expression of what seemed to be the view of many English social- ists in the eighties and early nineties. Among others the Fabians had condemned the third- party idea. It was, therefore, of immense importance to socialism when the victories of the I. L. P. proved that a third party could become a political force. Almost immediately after its formation one of its candidates ran in opposition to both Liberal and Tory candidates, and after a short and brilUant campaign succeeded in polling over 1400 votes. Scarcely a by- election took place in an industrial constituency in which the I. L. P. did not carry on an active campaign. At the General Election of 1895 all of its parliamentary candidates, including Hardie, were defeated, but the total vote ran up to nearly 50,000, which meant that the I. L. P was proving to be, even at this early date, a disturbing political factor. In municipal elections it made distinct gains. In Glasgow, Bradford, and other places, it elected representatives to the munici- pal councils, to the School Boards, the County Coun- cils, Parish Councils, and Vestries. From that time on I06 SOCIALISTS AT WORK independent political action was recognized as one of the most effective ways of demonstrating socialist strength. The I. L. P. was unquestionably the strongest sociahst organization in Great Britain at the time I was visiting Hardie. But he was dissatisfied. He said the unions had not come into the movement as he had hoped, and the cooperatives were entirely out of it; above all, the various socialist organizations were not united. It was not his purpose merely to start a new political associa- tion to compete with the other socialist bodies. He considered the first and most important work to be done was to take all unions, cooperatives, and other labor organizations out of the Liberal and Tory parties, and to have them form an independent political body. He reahzed that in the beginning this organization could hardly be socialist, but he was confident that inasmuch as socialism expressed the hopes and aspirations of the working-class, an independent political movement un- dertaken by the workers themselves must, in the end, become socialist. Hardie was at the time at work on this larger and more inclusive organization, but it had hardly assumed form when I bade him good-by in 1899. Returning to England in 1903, I went to see Hardie at his rooms in London. He lives in an old court reminiscent of bygone centuries, in the very garret of a fourteenth-century house. In this quaint old place he spoke with enthusiasm of the rising labor movement, and indeed, a new stage was developing in British socialism. The trade unions had decided at their congress in 1899 to call a conference on labor representation in parHament, In February, 1900, a large meeting was held of the THE BRITISH LABOR PARTY 107 representatives of nearly all of the most important labor organizations in the country, and of the three socialist organizations. As a result it was decided that labor can- didates should be run for parliament on a footing inde- pendent of the two old political parties. Unfortunately the committee had to face a general election when only a few months old, and as nearly all of the candidates had opposed the Boer War, and as jingoism still ran high, they were only successful in electing two candi- dates, Richard Bell and Keir Hardie. However, several by-elections were won, which made a profound impres- sion upon the country. The movement was taking definite form, and Hardie prophesied that at the next general election at least twenty-seven labor men, the majority of them socialists, would be returned to parlia- ment. But it was not the propaganda of the socialists alone that forced the inert unions into poHtics. It was to no small degree the result of an attack upon the very ex- istence of the trade union movement. A decision of the courts, now known to history as the Taff Vale decision, threw the entire trade union movement into a state of excitement and dismay. The Taff Vale Railway Company had sued the Amalgamated Society of Rail- way Servants for having conspired to induce the work- men to break their contracts, and also with having conspired to interfere with the traffic of the company by picketing and other alleged unlawful means. A promi- nent justice granted an injunction against the society, and while this was later reversed by the Court of Appeal, the House of Lords finally sanctioned the decision as at first rendered. It decided that a trade union might be sued, and as a result of the suit the railway union I08 SOCIALISTS AT WORK was forced to pay damages to the amount of over ;^ 1 00,000. This verdict was staggering, and the unions saw very clearly that unless something was done to alter the situation their movement would be destroyed. According to the English law, the decision practically amounted to new legislation against the unions, and a nullification of the old rights which had been won in 1 87 1. There was a tremendous agitation among the unions, and they immediately set to work to find ways and means of exerting their political power upon parlia- ment, from which they demanded a new law which would give them again the rights they had enjoyed pre- vious to the Taff Vale decision. This attack upon the unions, coming as it did at the very climax of the socialist agitation for a working men's political move- ment, gave an immense impulse to the organization then taking form. The new party first came into existence under the form of the Labor Representation Committee of the Trade Union Congress, but as the movement developed, it took the name of The Labor Party of Great Britain. It is a federation of trade unions, trades councils, social- ist societies, cooperative societies, and local labor associa- tions. All members elected under its auspices are paid an equal sum not to exceed $1000 per annum, but this payment is made only to those members whose candi- datures have been promoted by societies which have contributed to the funds. Absolute independence of both the old parties is enforced upon those elected, and absolute loyalty to the constitution and rules of the party is insisted upon. In the short time of its existence, it has grown to a membership of over one million. In other words, this enormous number of voters severed THE BRITISH LABOR PARTY lOQ their connection finally with the two old parties, and the only candidates who could hope to obtain their support in the parliamentary election were those pledged to the principles and objects of the Labor Party. The object, as defined in the constitution, is to organize and maintain a parliamentary group with its own whips and policy, and to secure the election of candidates for whose can- didatures affiliated societies have made themselves respon- sible financially, and who have been selected by regularly convened conferences in their respective constituencies. Candidates must accept the constitution ; agree to abide by the decisions of the parliamentary party in carrying out the aims of this constitution ; appear before their constituencies under the title of Labor Candidates only ; abstain strictly from identifying themselves with or promoting the interests of any party not eligible for affiUation ; and they must not oppose any candidate recognized by the executive committee of the party. Candidates must also join the parliamentary labor group if elected. The independence of the party should not be con- fused with what is known on the Continent as neu- trality. It is definitely a class party working to improve the conditions of life among the workers of Great Britain, and while sections of the Tory and Liberal parties are not permitted to join, all the socialist bodies of Great Britain are welcomed. Both the L L. P. and the Fabian Society are at present affiliated, and their members are put up as candidates of the party. In other words, it is independent politically of all except the socialist parties. Indeed, although every effort has been made by the capitalist papers and politicians to create a division between what they call the socialist no SOCIALISTS AT WORK section of the party and the trade union section, there is no real distinction, for most of the 20,000 affiUated sociaUsts belong to trade unions and many of the 975,000 affiliated trade unionists are also socialists. The strength of the sociahsts cannot, therefore, be measured by the number of the adherents coming direct from the socialist groups. For instance, out of seven candidates successfully promoted and financed by the I. L. P., three of them were trade union officials whose societies comprised about 50,000 members, and of the 23 successful candidates put up by the trade unions themselves, 10 were leading members of the I. L. P. Altogether 13 members of parliament are both trade unionists and members of the I. L. P., and they represent trade societies with a total of 330,000 members. Another indication of the unity between the two sections is the fact that nearly all of the ablest militants are sociahsts. The chairman of the Parlia- mentary Committee, the chairman of the Executive Committee, and the chairman of the Congress are all sociahsts, and of the members of the new Executive Committee only three are not sociahsts. In addition to these evidences of socialist strength, a large majority of the candidates selected at present to contest new seats in the next general election are well-known social- ists. It is with complete unity between the sections that the Labor Party has carried on its electoral cam- paigns. The brilliant results are known, and, at the last general election, 29 working men were returned to parHament, a majority of them socialists. It was a great achievement, and when the news was cabled round the world, it was received with amaze- ment. The old political parties, the metropolitan THE BRITISH LABOR PARTY HI newspapers, the leaders of thought, and the grave and wise governors of the destinies of the British people could not understand. It seemed incomprehensible that such a movement could have arisen, could have attained such proportions, without their knowing of its existence. British labor in politics ! Fifteen or twenty- socialists returned to the House of Commons ! It seemed incredible. Of all the workers in the world none appeared less class-conscious, less imbued with socialist sentiment or revolutionary ideals, than the British working man. He had patiently suffered every injustice. He lived in frightful conditions of squalor and poverty, and when old age, unemployment, or serious illness deprived him of a livelihood, he and his family went to the workhouse or subsisted on the meagre rations of outdoor relief. His submissiveness had been so complete, and his complaints so rare and mild, that a political revolt seemed unbelievable. It was the general belief that the grossly immoral thing called socialism would never appeal to the Briton, and the governing classes, sure that it never would, were almost paralyzed. The working man had severed his connection with the capitalist parties, and what they had failed to give him as a matter of common human justice he demanded now in no uncertain way by sending his own representatives into parliament. With these things in mind, I went to the Labor Party congress which convened at Belfast on the 24th of January, 1907. There I found 350 delegates, all but half-a-dozen of whom were working men, who had come as representatives from the most important trade unions in Great Britain. It was a most significant gathering, — significant because it represented a mass movement of 112 SOCIALISTS AT WORK the manual workers to express politically their dis- content with the present order. In combining with almost perfect soHdarity all the varied working-class organizations of Great Britain, the party had accom- plished a remarkable work, the importance of which, from the point of view of the advance of socialism, could not be exaggerated. There were representatives from practically every trade — miners, iron founders, steel smelters, engineers, firemen, gas workers, railway men, dockers, printers, postmen, textile workers, car- penters, bricklayers, and general laborers, and as a whole they represented a miUion workers, who during the last seven years had been assembled together in the independent political movement. Practically every one in the assembly had come from the workshop. Most of them were self-educated men, who, despite the hard conditions surrounding their early life, had fought their way into responsible executive positions in their powerful organizations. Nearly all of them knew the evils of capitaHsm at first hand. They had suffered from poverty, unemployment, insani- tary homes, insanitary workshops, and many of them had begun as children their lives of labor in mills, mines, and factories. And yet most of them were men of capacity and ability. Their work as organizers had schooled them, and nearly all were capable debaters and impressive speakers. Probably in no other class of society could one find men more familiar with eco- nomic and political questions, or better trained in the businesslike methods of parliamentary procedure. Some of them administered the affairs of trade organ- izations with over a hundred thousand members, and handled year in and year out hundreds of thousands THE BRITISH LABOR PARTY 113 of pounds. The striking growth of the movement since its inception in 1900 is illustrated by the follow- ing figures : — Year Trade Unions Socialist Societies TnxAT No. Membership No. Membership I 900- I 1901-2 1902-3 1903-4 1904-5 1905-6 1906-7 1907-8 41 65 127 165 158 158 176 181 353.070 455.450 847.315 956,025 885,270 904,496 975,182 1,049,673 3 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 22,861 13,861 13.835 13.775 14.730 16,784 20,885 22,267 375.931 469,311 861,150 969,800 900,000 921,280 998,338* 1,071,940 * This total includes 2271 cooperators. It will be seen that the party has trebled in size since its beginning, and the number of unions affiliated has increased over fourfold. The miners' unions, which have fifteen members in parliament under the auspices of the Liberal Party, have not yet decided to join the independent movement, although the balloting on the question last year was very close, and indicated a grow- ing sentiment in favor of affiliation. The only defec- tion from the ranks of the Labor Party since its foundation has been that of the Social Democratic Federation, which withdrew in 1901 when the party declined to adopt a socialist program. Impressive as the gathering was, there was one sig- nificant contrast between it and the other congresses abroad. With the exception of Hardie, Pete Curran, Bruce Glasier, and one or two others, none of the most prominent militants of the socialist movement were I 14 SOCIALISTS AT WORK in attendance. The withdrawal of the Social Demo- cratic Federation prevented, of course, the attendance of Hyndman, Burrows, Irving, and others of that body, and the organization, composed as it is almost solely of manual workers, has not thus far made adequate provision for obtaining the active and enthusiastic par- ticipation in its affairs of such eminent socialists as Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, Sidney Webb, Robert Blatchford, and a host of writers, professors, econo- mists, and clergymen who have become ardent sym- pathizers. In fact, the only middle-class socialists who were there were MacDonald, Bruce Glasier, and S. G. Hobson, from the I. L. P., and Edward Pease, the able secretary of the Fabian Society. Thus in the absence of some of the foremost British socialists one could hardly think of the Labor Party as occupying the same position in Great Britain that the socialist parties occupy in other countries ; and there is no question but that the movement must make some provision for unifying the intellectual with the manual workers if it wishes to exercise an influence equally powerful with that of the continental parties over the thought and life as well as over the institutions of the community. The first day's session of the congress was exces- sively dull. Only details of organization were consid- ered, and the discussion was brief and uninteresting. It also was a decided contrast to the continental assem- blies, as indeed all British meetings are. Britishers abhor general discussion, and their meetings are or- ganized to keep the assemblies strictly in hand and to limit rigidly the speaking to the point at issue. On the continent provision is made for thorough general discussion before the details of a question are consid- THE BRITISH LABOR PARTY II5 ered. In Germany it is usually thorough, scientific, and doctrinaire ; in France and Italy it is the oppor- tunity for a really brilliant play of wit, humor, and intellect. To one of the Latin temperament every question makes an appeal both to his reason and con- science. Necessarily it takes time to obtain an agree- ment under such conditions, but it is a great incentive to intellectual life. Over a matter that is settled in Great Britain after a few five or ten minute speeches, the Frenchmen spend hours and even days in debate. The question is examined from every possible point of view, and in its relation to every other conceivable question. And when one has been living for some time in the midst of men keenly enjoying this play of intellect and emotion, the British assembly seems to have organized out of existence nearly everything that is worth while in a conference. A long speech is not tolerated, and unless the orator is exceptionally clever he dare not give expression to his emotion. As a result of such parliamentary traditions the congress of the Labor Party seemed all machinery and organi- zation, — like a Lancashire cotton mill. There was little of importance in the first session, beyond the discussion which was brought up by a resolu- tion of the executive committee to increase the admin- istrative and electoral forces now employed by the committee, so as to enable the party to take an active part in municipal elections, and the report of Keir Hardie as chairman of the parliamentary group. Hardie showed that labor is becoming a powerful force in British poli- tics. In one session they had forced through parliament three important measures, and for perhaps the first time in the history of labor they had obtained serious consid- Il6 SOCIALISTS AT WORK eration for all their proposals. The greatest victory was, of course, in passing the Trades Disputes Bill, which defined anew the legal position of the trade unions, and reversed entirely the Taff Vale decision. A bill for com- pensating workmen injured in industry was also passed, which reahzed a great gain in principle as well as in the provision made for those rendered incapable of further labor. These two bills were directly in the in- terests of the trade unions, and another bill was passed of a still wider social bearing. For years there had been agitation to provide meals for necessitous school children, and at last under pressure from the Labor Party a bill was passed which enables the local authorities to make such provision. Hardie was justified in saying that no party in British politics ever came out of a single session with a better record of good work accomplished. The second day of the congress was largely devoted to a discussion upon general principles. There was an effort on the part of several members of the Social Democratic Federation, who had come to the congress as trade unionists, to force a constitutional amendment, defining the object of the party to be the overthrow of the pres- ent capitalist system. The amendment was so framed that if carried, it would doubtless have split the party, and have forced those who were not out and out socialists to withdraw from the organization. This naturally called forth the opposition of nearly all the socialists who had been working for years to build up the independent political movement. The executive of the party asked Pete Curran, an old militant, to oppose the motion. He said that the resolution, if carried, would destroy the movement, and he insisted that it was neither in the interest of solidarity nor in the interest of socialism THE BRITISH LABOR PARTY II7 throughout the trade unions that the motion had been proposed. This was very much the line of discussion taken by the ablest socialists at the congress, although Hardie regretted that the motion had come up in the form that it had, as it prevented sociaHsm being discussed on its merits. Many good sociahsts present who would have voted for a socialist statement, would, he said, be compelled to vote against the proposed amendment to the constitution. As the socialists voted with the other organizations, the resolution was hopelessly de- feated. The last day of the congress was interesting only be- cause of one incident. In the few minutes immediately before the close of the session, after a number of ques- tions had been hurriedly voted upon, and other matters decided, a resolution came up dealing with Women's Suffrage, a question which has recently been brought to the front by a campaign of sensational agitation led by some able women. Ever since the movement assumed definite form, Hardie has manifested great sympathy for it. During the last session the party in the House pledged itself to the effect that women's suffrage would be one of the first measures it would advance the follow- ing year. A resolution was, therefore, brought before the conference which read as follows : " That this con- ference declares in favor of adult suffrage and the equal- ity of the sexes, and urges an immediate extension of the rights of suffrage, and of election, to women, on the same conditions as to men." This left to the parliament- ary group freedom to support any measure in the direc- tion of complete adult suffrage. Mr. Harry Quelch, the editor of " Justice," who was there as a trade union rep- resentative, but who was really the spokesman of the Il8 SOCIALISTS AT WORK Social Democratic Federation, moved an amendment. He expressed himself in favor of equal voting rights be- ing extended to all men and women, but he demanded that the party oppose any restricted measure. The amendment was, of course, intended to prevent the Labor Party from supporting in any way the hmited suffrage bill then before parliament. For reasons unnecessary for me to dwell upon, a majority of the delegates were in favor of passing the amendment, and all over the hall there arose cries of " Vote." Nevertheless, when Hardie rose to speak, the conference listened to him. It had been said that the bill would only permit women with property to vote, and Hardie was accused of having dropped the unemployed agitation to support this hmited form of women's suffrage. In answer to these and other objections Hardie said briefly that if the bill contained a property qualification, he would not support it; neither would he support it if it were an attempt to put women's suffrage before a remedy for unemployment. What was the fact .'' Women to-day were classed with criminals and lunatics as being unfit to exercise the vote. There were no men so classed ! (Voices : There are.) " No; a man does not require to have property to have a vote, he has a householding qualification. The bill does not propose to establish any new qualification at all. Under it two millions of women would be enfranchised, and of these one and three-quarter millions would be working women. The difficulty about the bill is that people will not take the trouble to understand it." A vote was taken, and it was found that the amend- ment was carried by a large majority. A loud cheer from the victors, almost the only demonstration of the kind that had followed any vote of the conference, THE BRITISH LABOR PARTY II9 greeted the result. No one thought that the amend- ment would carry with it any serious consequences, but to the astonishment and dismay of every one, Hardie, after expressing the thanks of the congressists for the hospitality of the Belfast workers, made the following important statement: — " Twenty-five years ago this year I cut myself adrift from every relationship, political or otherwise, in order to assist in building up a working-class party. I had thought the days of my pioneering were over. Of late I have felt with increasing intensity the injustice which is inflicted upon women by the present political laws. The intimation I wish to make to the conference and friends is that, if the motion they carried this morning was intended to limit the action of the party in the House of Commons, I shall have seriously to consider whether I can remain a member of the parliamentary party, I say this with great respect and feeling. The party is largely my own child, and I would not sever myself lightly from what has been my life's work. But I cannot be untrue to my principles, and I would have to be so were I not to do my utmost to remove the stigma resting upon our wives, mothers, and sisters of being accounted unfit for political citizenship." These words fell upon the conference like a bomb. The congress of the Labor Party was over, but for a long time the men stood about the hall not knowing what to do. Hardie's action was a surprise to every one, and no one, not even his most intimate friends, had felt that he would treat his defeat so seriously. But Hardie believes that suffrage is a fundamental right of democracy, and he afterward wrote, in answer to a friend who had written him urging him not to re- I20 SOCIALISTS AT WORK sign, and that socialism must be first : " What my friend overlooks is the fact that with us it is socialism first because we already have the vote. With our voteless fathers it was votes first. In Russia just now it is votes first ; in Belgium the same ; and so it would be here if men were outside the franchise as women are. Our fathers fought against class disability just as the women are now fighting against sex disability. If only that fact could be grasped, all the trouble would dis- appear." Later, in the same statement, Hardie says : " The spectacle of women being treated as though they were dogs or pariahs revolts and humiliates me ; their admission to citizenship on terms of political equality with me is with me a sacred principle ; and I would not wish to be in association with any movement or party which could be guilty of the unfairness and the injus- tice of denying to women those rights which men claim for themselves." It was not an uplifting conference. The first day bored every one, and in the end, as the reader must well see, we went away sad and depressed. In contrast to the continental congresses, the men of the Labor Party lack the passion and warmth which come only with the possession of a great ideal. Nearly everywhere else in Europe the masses are fired with a new religion, and the cold, machine-like methods of the Labor Party chilled one's enthusiasm. There are perhaps many explanations that might be given for this lack of ideal- ism. Perhaps it is because the movement is still in its earlier stages, and the details of organization press themselves forward, leaving little time for developing the fundamental ideas which the movement must have as a basis if it is to rank with similar movements the world THE BRITISH LABOR PARTY 121 over. Perhaps this coldness is inherent in the British temperament. But whatever the cause, the lack of far vision in the labor movement irritates and saddens a great many socialists. But the average Britisher has no theories. He is quiet, thoughtful, but stolid. Above all he is practical, and the thing he is doing is an end in itself. And the British workman is no exception. If he is interested in cooperation, trade unionism, or a labor party, he is interested in it for the practical good that can be ob- tained by the use of that thing itself. The Frenchman has his unions and cooperatives, but not at all because he cares about the immediate ends of these institutions. To him they are merely weapons, ammunition in the social revolution. But to the British working man these things are too often an end. If he wishes to exercise his power in cooperation with others in buying, selling, or producing ; if he wishes to exercise his economic power by cooperating with his fellow-workmen in trade unions, or if he desires to exercise his political power by uniting politically with his fellow-workmen, he does these things because he feels that there is some con- crete immediate end of distinct advantage to himself to be obtained by these means. Formulas, fundamen- tal principles, and eternal verities irritate him. Yet it is perhaps because of these traits of his character that he has formed one of the most distinctly class move- ments to be found in the world ; but he refuses to call himself class-conscious or at present to discuss very seriously or exhaustively the advantages of the socialist state. One cannot help admiring the quick intelhgence, the enthusiasm, and the high ideals of the Latin peo- ples, and the thorough thinking and fatal logic of the 122 SOCIALISTS AT WORK Germans, but there is much also in the British tempera ment that appeals to one. Simply because the move- ment in Great Britain refuses to accept phrases which it does not fully understand is not a good reason for think- ing that it is not equally advanced with the move- ment elsewhere. So long as it moves definitely on the lines of the class struggle, that is the most im- portant matter ; and if the working-classes can be united politically and economically against the exploiter of labor, the rest will come of itself. However, many prominent English sociahsts do not agree with this view, and they refuse to identify them- selves with the new movement because they fear it is not, and never will be, a socialist organization. But even if this were granted, it would only prove that the British working men are inaccessible to socialist ideals ; and if that is true, there cannot be a conscious socialist movement in Great Britain. The Labor Party represents the working-class. It carries the class strug- gle into politics. It is an organization of working men, maintaining absolute independence of the capital- ist parties, while at the same time extending an open hand of welcome to every socialist, whether of the working-class or not, who belongs to an affihated or- ganization. No better opportunity has been offered the socialists of any country to carry on their propa- ganda, and even to lead the workers into the lines of socialist development. If the socialists cannot impress their ideas upon the Labor Party, they will fail to im- press them upon the workers outside of the Labor Party. The worker of the Labor Party is the typical Britisher. He is suspicious of theoretical considerations and broad generalizations. For this reason he may resist to the THE BRITISH LABOR PARTY 1 23 end the thoroughgoing comprehensive programs upon which the movements of other countries have been built. But because of that, shall we say the Labor Party is not socialist? Socialism is surely less a matter of program than it is a movement of the disinherited. Hardie very well said at the conference that formed the I. L. P., "The labor movement is neither a program nor a constitution, but the expression of a great principle, the determination of the workers to be the arbiters of their own destiny." * Marx himself said that " a movement was worth ten programs." Liebknecht, de Paepe, and nearly all the ablest socialist leaders have considered working-class organization and unity more important than the program. Engels indi- cated that he was of the same view when in 1892 he wrote of the British movement, " It moves now and then with an over-cautious mistrust of the name of socialism, while it gradually absorbs the substance.'' * The fact is the British worker is building up a powerful working- men's movement. It will represent, it must represent, the aspirations of the working-class, and every day it must come into conflict with the selfish and narrow policy of the present order. Whether it works con- sciously or unconsciously, its end must be socialist, and curiously enough by the very nature of its political re- volt it follows the lines of the Marxian philosophy. When socialism in England was largely a matter of programs, broad generalizations, and critical analysis, it made little impression. It was a thing by itself, not yet embodied into the constitution and action of working-class life. SociaHst thought had not yet been brought into proletarian life, and proletarian life had not * The italics are mine. 124 SOCIALISTS AT WORK yet been brought into socialist thought, as Jaures so well puts it ; but the socialists to-day who are in the Labor Party are in contact with proletarian life, and are gradually infusing their spirit into the mass of British workers. In the old days when the socialists limited their activities to permeating cultivated people with their aspirations, to use Morris's phrase, they were scoffed at or ignored. To-day everybody in England is discussing socialism, and every capitalist influence is being exerted to the utmost to split the Labor Party by separating the trade unionists from the socialist mem- bers.* The "Daily Express" during the whole sum- mer of 1906 ran a column entitled "The Fraud of SociaHsm." Always bitterly antagonistic to every aspiration of the working-class, it has consistently fought every measure for the benefit of the workers ; but in this campaign it posed as the friend of work- ing men. With a sensational appeal to the mass of trade unionists it endeavored to rouse them to what it called the raid the socialists were making upon their funds. According to the " Express " the socialists were endeavoring to capture the trade unions by stealth, and to use them for furthering their own nefarious and anti-social purposes. Other papers came into the battle. All Great Britain was discussing so- cialism and the Labor Party. Everybody wrote letters to the papers, as every one does in England, express- ing their views upon the matter ; and bishops, minis- ters, politicians, and even the nobility began to take sides. Nothing has ever happened that has done more to advance socialism, and the socialists came out of the fight stronger than ever. * See also p. 231. THE BRITISH LABOR PARTY 1 25 The real test of the strength and conscience of the workers is at hand. The sociaHsts are being held up as atheists, as believers in the confiscation of all private property, and as advocates of free love.* The labor men with conservative views are being patted upon the back and flattered. Their vanity is worked upon, their jealousies and ambitions fed, and so the campaign pro- gresses, publicly and privately, openly and underhand- edly, to disrupt the party and disorganize the working- classes. The most subtle, and not the least important of the efforts being made to destroy the Labor Party, is the shrewd politics of the Liberals. They have given labor all and more than it has asked. The measures already obtained by labor are not of fundamental importance ; and yet even these petty measures in the interests of the working-class could not have been obtained except by bringing to bear on the old parties powerful political pressure, and that pressure is exercised best by an in- dependent party. The old parties see very plainly that if they do not endeavor to placate labor, it may return a hundred or more members to the next parliament, and may even within a few years become the second party. They begin, therefore, to realize that they are in an awkward situation, and they now lavish upon labor evidences of good-will. They do not do so be- cause they love labor any more than they have loved it in the past ; it is because their political life has been threatened, and the wise British masters have their own way of acting under such circumstances. They give nothing until they have to, but when no alternative is open to them, they give gracefully. This is a very * See also pp. 232-233. 126 SOCIALISTS AT WORK skilful method of retaining power, and even some of the labor members are puzzled, and perhaps a little inclined to think they have too harshly judged their masters. There are reefs ahead, and trying times. No other workers in Europe have such an astute class to battle with. To divide and thus to conquer is the present policy of the old parties, of the press, and of nearly all the most prominent leaders of British opinion. Bis- marck, endeavoring to destroy socig,lism, persecuted the leaders, threw them into prison, drove them into exile, and for several years forced the whole movement under- ground. He meant to destroy it, but instead he gave it an enormous incentive. As we have seen, his action consolidated the warring factions. In France the upper class use a somewhat similar method, and in Italy they shoot down discontented, starving workmen ; but the English statesmen divide, disrupt, create suspicion, flatter, and corrupt, and if necessary, grant, apparently with real sympathy, some of the claims of an advanced movement. These subtle methods are far more effec- tive than those known to continental politicians, and despite all the reform movements that have risen and political revolutions that have occurred in England, the rule of the upper classes has never once been in danger. Taine has well said, " Such a country as this is, based on the whole national history and on the whole national instincts, it is more capable than any other people in Europe of transforming itself without recast- ing, and of devoting itself to its future without re- nouncing its past." In the face of such traditions and inherited instincts, in the face of the native dislike of general principles THE BRITISH LABOR PARTY 12/ and abstractions, it is a stupendous task to impress upon British labor the comprehensive revolutionary- ideals of socialism. Whether it can be done or not remains to be seen, and in the meantime there is no question but that a real danger confronts a party with- out well-defined principles and high ideals. No one realizes that fact more than Hardie, and it seemed to me that when he spoke at Belfast the following words, it was with a note of wistfulness, and a sentiment of sorrow : " A labor party without an ideal cannot last. There must be some Holy Grail which they are ever in search of, which they are making sacrifices to reach, and which will inspire and enable the men and women comprising the party to do mighty deeds for the advancement of their cause. Many of the Labor Party — most of them — find that ideal in socialism. They are not content to be merely a Red Cross Brigade to stanch the wounds caused by the system under which they live. They stand for reform, for progress, and 'finally for freedom of the class to which they be- long." Note. — As the manuscript goes to the printer the following report (from "The Labour Leader") of the Hull Congress of the Labor Party reaches me : — "At last the Engineers' resolution was reached. In animated sen- tences J. J. Stevenson, of the Engineers, moved: — " ' That in the opinion of this Conference the time has arrived when the Labor Party should have as a definite object the socialization of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, to be controlled by a democratic State in the interest of the entire community ; and the complete emanci- pation of Labor from the domination of capitalism and landlordism with the establishment of social and economic equality between the sexes.' " When the result was read out, it was found that the resolution was carried by 514,000 against 469,000 votes. This is the first time the ex- tent of socialist conviction has been seriously tested in the Conference." CHAPTER V THE BELGIAN LABOR PARTY I HAVE come from the " Classic Land of Capitalism " to what Karl Marx has called " The Paradise of the Capitalists." One would need to be an adept in fine distinctions to make clear the difference. If the work- ing-classes of England are poverty-stricken, and live in overcrowded and squalid quarters, so do the workers of Belgium. There is one distinction, however. There are certain classes of workmen in England who have, by organization and united action, established for them- selves a tolerable existence. In Belgium there is prac- tically no such class. The entire mass of workers, when not actually beneath the poverty line, live but slightly above it. In both the classic land and the para- dise an immense body of citizens live in abominable conditions, and toil their lives away without enjoying the benefits of modern civilized life. Belgium is not a comfortable, joyous place where the people lead happy lives and the souls of children are full of gladness. It is true that in many parts of this tiny country, the smallest in Europe, there are spacious and beautiful estates and handsome chateaux, enjoyed by capitalists who control the powers of government and the institutions of the land. But beneath them is a nation in poverty. The capitalists have created for themselves a paradise ; and in order to support it, they have made for the people an inferno. Outside their 128 THE BELGIAN LABOR PARTY 129 magnificent estates there is the never ceasing hum of industry; the great factories, the mines, the quarries, the vast docks and wharves, the canals stretching throughout the country, and the minutely and intensively cultivated fields, where multitudes of men, women, and children labor unceasingly. Travelling in Belgium, one passes through such a conglomeration of industrial centres as to make one feel that Packingtown, the great steel mills of Pittsburg, the mining districts of Pennsylvania, the textile mills of the South, and the docks of the Great Lakes had all been crowded together in this little hand- ful of country. Since 1830, when the capitalists began their rule in Belgium, the population has steadily increased until now it is the densest in Europe. The increase in wealth has been prodigious, and the factories, mines, commerce, and cultivation of the soil have developed to such an intensity that perhaps no similar bit of space in the universe is so adequately and variously industrialized. The figures of the increase in the wealth of Belgium show that during these years of capitalist domination, there have been amassed 35 milHards of francs, with an annual revenue of 3J milliards. Louis Bertrand shows that if this wealth were equally distributed among all the people, each family would possess a capital of 25,000 francs, or an annual revenue of 2500 francs. This would mean in Belgium that every man, woman, and child would be assured a comfortable and in a small way even a luxurious existence. But there is no such distribution of wealth. Instead of comfort in the year 1896, 170,000 workmen, or about 25 per cent of all laborers investigated, gained less than 40 cents per day, and 172,000 workers, or 25 per cent K 130 SOCIALISTS AT WORK again, earned between 40 and 60 cents per day. This, of course, means that these workers were under the poverty line, and therefore unable to supply themselves and their families with the necessaries of life. Perhaps as striking as any of the figures illustrating the poverty in Belgium are those concerning the dwellings of the workers. In Brussels the conditions are by no means the worst, and yet 17,597 of the families investigated, or 34 per cent, are forced to live in one room, the sole space they have for sleeping, eating, and living. But it is not only in wages or in housing that such appalling conditions exist. Even the capitalists under the present system cannot easily remedy these things. The injus- tice and wickedness of their rule are even more clearly shown by the woman and child labor, and by their re- sistance to the demands of the people for the education of their children. In 1902 the proportion of militiamen in various European countries who were entirely illiterate was as follows : — In the German Empire in 1900 . In Sweden . . . . In Denmark . . . . In Switzerland . . . . In Holland . . . . In England (marriage statistics) In France In Belgium . . . . Per 1000 0.7 0.8 0.2 20 * 23 37 46 lOI * Read only imperfectly. From these figures it will be seen that the Belgians are by far the most illiterate and poorly educated of all THE BELGIAN LABOR PARTY I31 the peoples of industrial Europe. Children have been needed for the mills and mines, and protest on the part of the people has not availed to prevent the capitalists from exploiting them. Capitalist rule in Belgium has been perfect, for, as with us, there were until 1886 but two parties ; when the one was defeated, the other was in power, and both parties represented the elements that are enriched by cheap labor. It would seem impossible to expect from the workers of Belgium an intelligent and consistent revolt, as they are the most oppressed and badly educated workers of the industrial countries of Europe, and accustomed to work the longest hours at the lowest pay. Indeed, it is the opinion of many Belgians that they are weak and submissive. A well-known socialist, Louis de Brouck^re, writes : " Belgium, the battlefield of Europe, has known for centuries nothing but uninterrupted oppression. Spain, Austria, and France fought for our provinces which had already suffered from the brutal treatment of the Dukes of Burgundy. The rival powers took posses- sion of them, lost them, and took them again at various intervals. At every new conquest our country had to be forced to surrender and to obey. . . . We have been assailed by all the reactions since the Inquisition, and they have raged in our country more furiously than in any other except Spain, until the Restoration. We have had to submit to the despotism of every power from Philip the Second down to Napoleon, a cruel and long tyranny which ended by forcing us into servitude. During the time of our misery we learned habits of sub- mission, from which these twenty years of sociaHst organization have not been able to entirely free us." This is a strong statement, and in the face of such 132 SOCIALISTS AT WORK odds it is little wonder that the workers have submitted. But where any other course has been possible, they have availed themselves of it. In the old days in Ghent the mediaeval guilds used to flock into the public square to raise their standard of revolt. There also Gerard Denys used to lead the weavers against their oppressors. And there to-day stands the Maison du Peuple, representing the modern revolt of the workers. The Walloons of Li^ge, known always for their industry and hard labor, used to take the weapons which they manufactured so skilfully to use against their oppressors. A writer of the old day says : "The history of Liege records a series of sanguinary insurrections of the turbulent and unbridled populace against their oppressive and arrogant rulers." And so it has always been. The strongest section of the International was among the Belgians, and their leaders were among the most capable and uncompromising. Indefatigable in their labor to keep alive the spirit of revolt, they fought with incredible energy and devotion. Cesar de Paepe, Jean Pellering, Desire Brismee, Eugene Steens, and Laurent Verrycken were men of whom any country might well be proud. Unfortunately the Inter- national, as a whole, was a body dominated by intellec- tuals, and although exhorting the workers to union and persistently urging that " The emancipation of the workers must be the work of the workers themselves," it was filled with the poison of sectarian strife. It was, despite all, ideological, and above all a continuous battle between two great intellects.* Especially in Belgium they were dreary years of quarrels, creating antagonisms that made unity of action impossible. The death of the International in 1872 was * See also p. 305. THE BELGIAN LABOR PARTY 1 33 followed by blank despair. Some of the leaders came to believe with the Russians that the only hope left to the workers was pan-destruction. Others retired to their workshops, hopelessly discouraged. Still others went into bourgeois politics, having lost all hope of working- class organization. Two " brilliant " members of the International planned to interview Napoleon the Third, who was then in England, and to endeavor to persuade him to become the emperor of the workers and peasants ! One of them was so infatuated with the idea that he soon imagined himself vice-emperor, and to expound his views he printed a little tract on " The Empire and the New France." Pessimism was general, the labor movement was dormant, and capitalism in Belgium as elsewhere grew more arrogant and oppressive. It was some time before new blood began to make itself felt. Two of the most remarkable of the younger men came from among that wonderful people, the weavers of Ghent. They were Van Beveren and An- seele. Other youths began to work in other parts of Belgium, and pretty soon throughout the country, work- men's leagues, democratic federations, rational and republican organizations began to spring up. Some of the old sections of the International were revived and a Chamber of Labor at Brussels was founded, while in Ghent and elsewhere the cooperative and socialist organ- izations took on a new development. Everywhere with the reviving movement there came to birth again the old longing of the oppressed for unity and concerted action. With this spirit there arose leaders to give it voice : Jean Volders, Van Beveren, Anseele, and Bertrand, while old C6sar de Paepe and Verrycken began to work again with renewed enthusiasm. 134 SOCIALISTS AT WORK In 1885 a hundred working men, representing 59 groups, came together in Brussels to discuss what they should do. It was a remarkable gathering, which ended in the formation of the Belgian Labor Party. To the thought of every one the condition of the workers had become unbearable, and the longing for unity among the working-classes was profound. They were weary of dogma and intellect, and came very near excluding that grand old man, Cesar de Paepe. They gave no thought to program, and the socialists themselves, with the ex- ception of two or three, agreed that it was better to leave the word " sociahst" out of the title of the party. They had reached a stage more fundamentally revolu- tionary and more dangerous to capitahsm than ever rested in any thought, dogma, or statement of what the future society should be. They intended to unite the working-class, no matter what the individuals believed. They wanted the stupid and backward elements as much as the advanced and more intelligent. In this memorable year something more profound than doctrine agitated the souls of the workers, and unionists, mutualists, so- cialists, democrats, republicans, rationalists, catholics, protestants, revolutionists, and positivists came together and formed a class party. It was a union of oppressed against oppressors, a union of workers against capitalists, a union of exploited against exploiters. They did then precisely what they are now doing in England. It was the birth of a party, determined to free itself from political connections of any sort with capitalist parties. The members did not say they were socialists ; they simply said, " The working-class of Belgium is or- ganizing itself politically against its exploiters," and that means that they intend some day to take Belgium THE BELGIAN LABOR PARTY 1 35 into their own hands and administer it in their own interest. Some of the socialists were not satisfied, but they all freely and generously assented to the decision of the congress. Whatever their opinion was at that time, it certainly came later in accord with that of Cesar de Paepe, who wrote not long afterward : " What more immense and at the same time more simple and precise ! Why add the words socialist, collectivist, communist, rationalist, democrat, republican, and other limiting epithets ? He who says Parti Oiivrier says Party of Class, and since the working-class constitutes itself into a party, how could you believe that it may be anything else in its tendencies and principles than socialist and republican ? " After the Belgian party was constituted it became the most strikingly solidified and integral party in Europe, and it was not long before it adopted a complete social- ist program. Vandervelde has well said : " Belgian socialism, at the conflux of three great European civili- zations, partakes of the character of each of them. From the English it adopted self-help and free association, principally under the cooperative form; from the Ger- mans political tactics and fundamental doctrines, which were for the first time expounded in the Communist Manifesto ; and from the French it took its idealist ten- dencies, its integral conception of socialism, considered as the continuation of the revolutionary philosophy, and as a new religion continuing and fulfilling Christianity." In accord with this eclectic spirit, the Belgian Labor Party includes in itself every organization that expresses working-class aspirations. The trade unions ; the co- operatives with their " Houses of the People," their great stores, and their public meeting-halls; and the 136 SOCIALISTS AT WORK friendly societies with their insurance schemes, are all closely and definitely associated in one poHtical party, which carries on a gigantic propaganda, and has its press and its fighting force in parliament and upon municipal bodies. It is not surprising, therefore, that this complete organization and almost perfect solidarity brought the workers hope for the future and for the present great confidence in themselves. During the year 1886 riots broke out in various in- dustrial sections. The working-class had long stood oppression, and now at last it seemed the time had come to remedy the misery of their condition. During all the years of capitalist domination the two old parties had ignored the necessities of the poor. There was no legislation of importance to benefit or protect the work- ing-class. The total disregard of the capitalists for the misery of the workers is shown by their treatment of a bill introduced as early as 1872 to regulate child labor. It was an effort to prevent boys under thirteen years of age and girls under fourteen years of age from working underground in the coal mines. The bill was ignored for six years, and only in 1878 did the parties take time to consider it. And then, even after the horrible con- ditions of child slavery had been stated, out of 155 representatives in parliament 1 50 voted against the bill. But things began to change immediately after the forma- tion of the Labor Party. The capitahsts were then forced to consider seriously the condition of the people. A commission of inquiry was established, and in the years following 1886, law after law was voted for the benefit of the working-class. They were not important laws perhaps, but as I have shown in the chapter on the British movement, even such miserable concessions are THE BELGIAN LABOR PARTY 1 37 wrung from the ruling powers only after a complete political revolt of the wage-workers. Early on Easter Sunday, 1907, I went to the "House of the People " to attend the annual congress of the Belgian Labor Party. In one of the busiest and most important sections of the beautiful capital of Belgium the socialists have built their temple at a cost of over 1,200,000 francs. It is a veritable palace, containing the offices of the International Socialist Bureau, the Belgian party, and the trade unions. There are also several large meeting and committee rooms, and of course, the stores, tailor shops, etc., of the cooperative. On the ground floor there is a large and handsome cafe, which is filled to overcrowding every evening with working people and their families. Besides this House of the People there are five branch establishments, all of them handsome buildings, and one of them with large grounds in addition. On this Easter morning the building was gorgeous in the sunlight ; red flags were flying, and a great banner with "Welcome to All" was flung over the broad entrance. From the top of the building were hung four tablets bearing the names of Marx, Proudhon, Volders, and de Paepe. How significant are these names ! Marx and Proudhon bequeathed to the Bel- gian movement, as to all other working men's move- ments in the world, intellectual lines of guidance. Volders represents the genius of agitation, one who literally destroyed himself by days and nights of feverish propaganda. At the time of his death, he was the master of Brussels. Cesar de Paepe was a friend of Proudhon, of Bakounine, and of Marx ; a great scientist, and an indefatigable propagandist. It 138 SOCIALISTS AT WORK was his spirit and counsel more than any one else's that made possible the unity and impressive harmony which rules the Belgian movement. His was the genius of working-class solidarity. At the top of this House of the People is a superb hall, ordinarily used for dramatic purposes, with seats for perhaps 2000 people. The night before I had seen it crowded with the poorest working men, women, and children of Brussels, who had come to see the popular cinematograph. This morning working men from every part of Belgium, from the mines, quarries, docks, glass-works, mills, and all the great industrial enterprises, were gathered together to deliberate upon their common affairs. There were about 400 delegates, representing cooperatives, mutual societies, trade unions, socialist circles, and " locals." They were almost all working men, for the movement in Belgium is predominantly proletarian, and in this respect it resembles markedly the British Labor Party. The mass of the delegates are builders and organizers of working-class movements. Many of them are masterly in debate and powerful propagandists, but few outside of Belgium know their names, or can appreciate the immense role they play in party affairs. There were, however, a few men of note. There was Louis Bertrand, who in the early days of the move- ment carried on an effective propaganda, and was also president of the conference at which the Labor Party was founded. Professor Emile Vinck, who has special- ized for many years upon municipal questions, delivered an important report. Senator Lafontaine, an extraor- dinarily brilliant man, Jules Destree, and Louis de Brouckere were also in attendance. Camille Huys- THE BELGIAN LABOR PARTY 1 39 mans, the secretary of the International Socialist Bureau, was as efficient in the Belgian congress as he is in all congresses and committee meetings, whether national or international. Vandervelde, perhaps the most able parliamentary leader, and a scholarly and conscientious writer on economic subjects, was unable to be there because of illness ; but he sent a report which was read and discussed. The youthful-looking person in the chair was Edouard Anseele. I had always wanted to see this militant ever since I learned that socialism was not a dream or a Utopia, but a present-day movement full of purpose and vitality. I had imagined that Anseele was now old and fatherly-looking, with white hair, benevolent face, and kind eyes. Instead, I saw a short, powerful, well-muscled, youthful-looking man with a small head and a strong neck. His jaws are those of a fighter, and in action they open and shut like a steel trap. He is the soul of conviction, and to express this soul he has a body of iron that knows no ache or pain. Overcoming obstacles is to him a joy. He loves to meet them, to battle with them, and to con- quer them. He is strenuous as even Roosevelt knows not how to be. He never rests ; he cannot walk, he runs. In fact, Anseele does the work of half-a-dozen men, and his accomplishments are prodigious. Besides managing one of the largest cooperative undertakings in Belgium, which does an annual business of over 5,000,000 francs, he is an aggressive deputy, and no discussion takes place but finds him on the fighting line. He is the bete iwir of the capitalists in the chamber. He annoys them, routs them out of their lethargy, prods them into activity, and goads them into 140 SOCIALISTS AT WORK fury. He is also an indefatigable propagandist, flying to all parts of Belgium to carry the message of social- ism. The son of a workman, Ansccle is the very in- carnation of the working-class revolt. It is recorded that once, when about eighteen years of age, he heard by chance some sociahsts speak. One of them described the misery and wretchedness of the weavers of Ghent. Anseelc wept. That meant some- thing for that lad, and since that hour he has been a revolutionist. In his youth he sold papers on the streets, he wrote socialist novels, and in the evening hours he carried on a ceaseless propaganda. As he was extremely poor, he often sold shirts and other ar- ticles to his audiences to pay his travelling expenses and to assist the propaganda. Later he became the editor of the local socialist paper, and was sent to prison for some months because after the soldiers had shot down some workers on strike, he called King Leo- pold, Assassin I, and issued a passionate appeal to the mothers, sisters, and sweethearts of the soldiers, beg- ging them to write to their dear ones in the army, de- manding that they refuse to fire upon their brothers, the working men. It would be impossible to recount what this man has accomplished by his superhuman activity during the last thirty years. The congress reminded me very much of the English one. It was cool, even-tempered, and efficient. There were no great orations delivered, and the questions dis- cussed had to do with definite and practical party work. For an outsider there was not a great deal of interest. After considering reports from the parliamentary group, the trade union group, the cooperative group, and the federated municipal councillors, the congress gave con- TIIK BELGIAN LAHOR PARTY I4I sidcration to certain detailed questions of administra- tion, and to other matters largely of local interest. Louis Bertrand read an important report upon the eight-hour day, and the old fight for universal suffrage came up under the form of a proposed electoral affiliation with the Liberal Party. Vandervelde in his report traced the history of the struggle for universal suffrage, and advo- cated affiliating with the Liberal Party for the purpose of combating the Clericals. The latter have always been the most obstinate opponents of universal suf- frage. It w;is, therefore, the opinion of Vandervelde that a gener.il and concerted electoral affiliation should be worked out l)c:twecn the Liberals and the Labor P.'uly which would ena,ble them together to control practically all Ihe municipal bodies of ]ielgium. The struggle for universal suffrage in Jielgium has been a long, bitter, and insistent fight, extending over a half century. 'I'here have been two general strikes, countless riots, imprisoned and martyred workers. At all the congresses since the formation of the party, there h;is 1)(h:ii ;i discussion of this (piestion. One cannot over- estimate what the working-class of Belgium has suffered in the long struggle to obtain a more equitable electoral system. After the general strike of 1895 the old law was rei)cale(l ; but the new law, while marking an advance, well deserves the name that Anseelc gave it, " The law of tlic four infamies." This legislation still irritates the workers, and the; suggestion of Vandervelde was con- sidered as ])erhaps the only means now available of forcing the •government to grant a further extension of the suffrage. It should be said incidentally that elec- toral affiliations among the opposition parties are cus- tomary in Iklgium ; but although the wisdom of such 142 SOCIALISTS AT WORK action is doubted by some members of the Labor Party, each section or federation has been left to do as it pleased in such cases, and the party statutes provide only that the principles of the party program shall not be sacrificed. The proposal of Vandervelde was, there- fore, not so unusual as at first appears. It proposed that instead of isolated instances of affiliation, the Labor Party should work out a consistent plan for affiliation with the Liberals in all parts of Belgium. After an in- teresting debate it was decided not to agree to a gen- eral plan, but to leave to the local federations freedom to do as they desired. This is perhaps the chief matter of interest to the outsider that came up for discussion. It was not what transpired at the congress that impressed one with the vital power of the Belgian movement. It was what was back of the congress. It was the thousands of work- ing men, women, and children bound together in a mul- titude of circles, cooperatives, mutualities, and unions that form the basis of working-class action. The Belgian movement is not dominated by politicians, nor held together by oratory. It is the expression of a class impulse. It is the precious result of the work of the men and women of the mines, mills, and factories, who after the hard toil of the day, give their love and labor to the upbuilding of their emancipatory institu- tions. Determined to free themselves from the unbear- able conditions of capitalism, they have created for themselves numberless organizations to support them in their conflict. To begin with, there are the syndicats, or trade unions. Although they have existed in Belgium from early times, and while almost every type can be found there, THE BELGIAN LABOR PARTY I43 including " Tlie Knights of Labor," copied from the American organization, the trade union movement as a whole is weak. The reasons for this are various. In the first place the law has been most unfriendly to its development, its members have not seen the necessity for large dues and efficient, well-paid secretaries, and at present they have practically no paid organizers. At the time of a strike they often depend more upon as- sistance from the cooperatives than from their own treasuries. The trade unions also usually have a politi- cal or religious bias. There are, for instance, four types of unions: (i) those connected with the Liberal party ; (2) those connected with the Clerical party ; (3) those connected with the socialist party ; and (4) the Independents who refuse to affiliate themselves defi- nitely with any party. There are now about 148,483 trade unionists in Belgium. Only 17,000 are Catholics, 2000 are Liberals, about 31,000 are Independents, while 94,000 are affiliated with the socialist party. It is obvious, therefore, that outside of the socialist and independent unions the movement is of little con- sequence. The Labor Party, realizing the weakness of the unions and their importance in working-class action, is now using all its power to build up a strong and virile trade union movement. Several of the ablest leaders are devoting their entire time trying to infuse a more militant spirit into the workers Propagandists are at work in all parts of Belgium, agitating for paid officials who can give all their time to the affairs of the unions. New organizations are being formed, and the old ones that have fallen into decay are being revived. As a result of these energetic efforts, one begins to see 144 SOCIALISTS AT WORK a great increase in membership that promises well for the future. Not all the unions, however, are badly organized, and those of Ghent have been of enormous service to the workers. The cooperatives, the mutualities, and the party work in perfect harmony, and together they have realized an immense progress. Through their political influence the unions have obtained from the city of Ghent an insurance scheme for assisting the unem- ployed members. Since 1901 the municipal council has given to unemployed union men one dollar for every dollar expended from the trade union treasury. This is a significant and important development, for it means that the unions no longer have to bear the entire responsibility for the unemployed. The scheme has spread from Ghent to other cities in Belgium, which now undertake a part of this heavy burden and cooper- ate with the unions to the extent, at least, of sharing the load. The next group of organizations connected with the Belgian movement are les Miitualit^s. They are mutual insurance societies such as we have in America. They existed in Belgium long before the formation of the Labor Party, when a number became affiliated to the po- litical movement. Some, however, were unable to do so at that time, as they included in their organization both employers and employees. In 1905, according to the Bureau of Labor, there were about 7000 such societies, organized to insure the workers and their families against sickness, old age, death, and similar misfortunes. Although this seems a large number for so small a country, there are still many others which do not report their affairs to the Bureau of Labor, and are, therefore, THE BELGIAN LABOR PARTY I45 not included in the official reports. One of the most interesting of the latter is the Bond Moyson at Ghent, named in memory of one of the pioneer socialists of Flanders. In 1890, after a long discussion and a rather heated battle, all of the insurance societies in Ghent, excepting one, affiliated themselves to the group of socialist organizations centring about the Maison du Peuple. This consolidation was followed by an era of prosperity, and the members of the insurance organiza- tions increased from 4600 in 1897 to 10,323 in 1904, or including families to nearly 30,000 persons. Soon after the reorganization several new insurance measures were adopted. A new fund was established to provide against invalidity, and another for ordinary life insur- ance. The members of the Bond Moyson now obtain three classes of benefits: pensions, the care of a physi- cian and medicines, and bread supplies from the cooper- ative stores. In case of the death of the insured one, a pension is also given to the family. Special assistance is provided at the time of childbirth. As a new devel- opment a pension is now given to all those who have bought regularly at the cooperative stores for twenty years. And when they are 60 years old, they are given practically all their necessary supplies. Not only in Ghent has the system developed, but organizations similarly constituted and managed are a part of the movement in all the industrial districts of Belgium. The third group of organizations — the cooperatives — is perhaps the most important. They comprise almost every type of associated effort. One sees now in all the industrial towns of Belgium handsome stores, large assembly rooms, cafds, and restaurants, owned and administered by the working people themselves. In ad- 146 SOCIALISTS AT WORK dition to the stores, where the activity is largely commer- cial, there are also several productive enterprises of note, and almost every town has at least one model bakery. In these bakeries the workmen have an eight-hour day with the maximum trade union wage. There are also breweries and cigar-making establishments, boot and shoe factories, printing shops, cotton mills, and dairies, — all conducted on the cooperative plan. It is again at Ghent that the organization is the best developed. To begin with there is the beautiful house of the Vooruit, which is called "Our House." In ad- dition to being a large department store, where almost everything that is required by the working people can be bought, it is a working men's club. There are rooms for meetings and for recreation, which in many ways re- semble those of the University Settlements in America. On the first floor of Our House is a large caf6, where about 1000 people can sit comfortably at the tables. No strongly alcoholic drinks are sold, although one can always obtain light beers and wines, tea, coffee, milk, and similar non-intoxicating drinks. In the evening the cafe is invariably filled with men, women, and children, — the weavers of Ghent. Above this room is a large and beautiful library, which is also u.sed at times for lectures and meetings. On the same floor there are several committee rooms, while on the top floor there is a large assembly room, occasionally used as a theatre. All the rooms are handsomely decorated with mural paintings, illustrating in heroic forms the subject of Labor. Throughout the town there are many branch stores, and on the outskirts of the town there is a new model bakery with the most improved machinery, which pro- duces about 200,000 pounds of bread each week. In ad- THE BELGIAN LABOR PARTY 1 47 dition, there are several branch Hbraries, a large cotton mill, and a well-equipped printing establishment, where two daily papers and most of the books, pamphlets, tracts, and other publications of the party are printed. For twenty cents a year every member of the coopera- tive, including altogether about 155,000 persons, receives regularly all publications of this print shop. Perhaps no more significant move has been made by the ever enterprising Anseele and the working men of Ghent than the buying of a fine old house in one of the most aristocratic quarters. It was formerly occupied by an exclusive club, but it was found too expensive to keep up ! Suddenly and quite secretly this house was bought by the weavers of Ghent, and it is now their club. It has a caf6, a library, a handsome theatre, and meeting- rooms, in addition to a large garden, which is used on Sundays and other fete days, for the games and assem- blies of the socialists. In the midst of this old aristo- cratic quarter Vooruit has placed its standard, and the neighbors now see the working people at games and dances, and hear at close hand the singing of the " In- ternationale," and other revolutionary songs. It is, of course, impossible to give in a short chapter an adequate conception of the development of the co- operatives, but the following figures may convey some idea of their extent. The annual sales of the distribu- tive stores in Belgium during 1906 amounted to about 32,000,000 francs, and out of the profits benefits were allotted to the members amounting to over 3,000,000. This latter sum was distributed to about 120,000 persons who were afifiliatcd with the cooperatives. The total sales from the various productive enterprises, which in- clude breweries, bakeries, dairies, and so forth, during 148 SOCIALISTS AT WORK the same year amounted to about 1,500,000 francs. The value of these organizations, however, does not he only in the amount of money which they distribute to their members ; they also furnish supplies in immense quan- tities to the strikers when there is any great battle on between employers and employees. In addition they supply funds to carry on many other working-class ac- tivities. The Maison dn Peuple of Brussels, to mention but one instance, during the six years, from 1897-1903, gave to the socialist propaganda half a million francs. Another useful service rendered by the cooperatives is the aid they give to those agitators and propagandists of the labor movement who have been blacklisted by their employers. These men can always find work to do in the cooperative establishments, and still have time free to carry on their propaganda. The fourth development of the working-class spirit is the Labor Party itself. It is the bond which unites all the various activities. It is meant to express the views and aspirations of the working people politically. The party has now in parliament 30 deputies and seven senators. In the municipal councils of Belgium it has 500 representatives, and its total socialist vote is about half a million. While the unions fight the battles of the workers on the economic field, and endeavor to force the employers to accord them better conditions and higher wages, the cooperatives strive to displace the middle man in commerce, and to gain for the workers immense advantages in buying the necessaries of life. But the workers of Belgium realize that neither of these efforts alone can accomplish their complete emancipation. They do not undervalue the economic movements. On the contrary, they promote and THE BELGIAN LABOR PARTY 1 49 Strengthen them in every possible way ; but they fully realize that so long as the capitalists control the ma- chinery of government, the workers must remain a subject class. They, therefore, seek to conquer the gov- ernment, and toward this end the party carries on a ceaseless propaganda with its six daily papers, reaching over 106,000 persons daily, 22 weeklies, and 14 month- lies. The printing establishment of the Brussels " daily " is in a handsome building, with spacious quarters and everything required for publishing a first-class daily paper. There are large editorial offices, light and airy workrooms for the compositors, and ample quarters for the five large presses. The biggest press was at the time of my visit printing the daily papers for two other towns about two hours from Brussels. On another machine an illustrated weekly was being printed. The Brussels daily, " Le Peuple," sells for one cent, while the papers for the smaller towns sell for two centimes, or less than a half cent. The committee in charge of the press has decided recently to issue a new daily for one centime, or one-fifth of a cent. This gives some idea of the enterprise and business methods of the Belgian socialists. Of course there are efforts made in other direc- tions as well to promote the propaganda. A large number of party members are speaking and agitating all the time. At the cooperative theatres socialist plays are given. A clever method of spreading the party views among the poorest workers is through the medium of cinematographs. Between scenes there are shown mottoes, and short phrases expressing socialist opinions. Political criticisms, words of enthusiasm and revolt are 150 SOCIALISTS AT WORK thrown on the canvas, and in this way the poorest and most ill-educated workers gain some idea of the aims of socialism. There is also a university in Brussels under the control of the socialists. The efficiency of the Belgian socialists is impressive. For poor working men to have built up these great properties, and now to carry them on with such ability, is nothing short of miraculous. They are proving in the face of a hostile class their own capacity, and learn- ing day by day their own worth. Collective enterprise has its difficulties, associated effort its trials. They are learning what these difficulties and trials are ; and they are also learning something more profound — how to suppress brutal egoism, and how to serve the com- monweal. It is that which glorifies the Belgian move- ment, and gives even to the observer a profound and comforting spiritual uplift. But the workers have a hard fight against a reactionary government, which never ceases to combat their cooperatives, unions, and political party. To the workers of Belgium nothing has been given ; not a step has been taken without suffering. Indeed, it was misery that drove them together. Their own suffering and the memory of martyred brothers have so united their Hfe and spirit, that not a single important division has occurred in the movement during the last twenty years. They are not moved by doctrines, and they give free play to any one who has a plan for re- lieving distress. They would never think of neglecting any opportunity open to them to fight the battle of the disinherited. They scorn no method ; they eagerly use and develop all. They believe in cooperation, in trade unions, in municipal ownership, and in national THE BELGIAN LABOR PARTY 151 ownership; they believe in economic action and in political action ; indeed, when any one of these is but weakly developed, the whole party with hearty good- will devotes all the energy at its command to the task of strengthening it. While others have been discussing theories and quarrelhng over differences in method, the working-class movement in this little paradise of the capitalists has been born and has grown to full maturity. It is not hard to explain why it is the Belgian working- class is so fortunate, or why, in the face of so many difficulties, it is able to accomplish such a magnificent work- It has learned the value of unity and the power of concerted action. The advice and example of old Cesar de Paepe was ever before them. He coun- selled solidarity the day the party was born, and he never ceased urging its supreme importance. It is, therefore, significant that in 1890, as he was carried away from Brussels to die in Southern France, he should have written these words to the then assembled congress of the party : " I beg of you one permission, one only. Permit an old socialist, who has been in the breach for more than thirty-three years, and who has already seen so many ups and downs, so many periods of progress and of reaction in the revolutionary Belgian parties, to give you counsel. That is : be careful above all, in all your deliberations and resolutions, to maintain among the diffarnt factiotis of the party and among the more or less extreme or moderate tendencies the closest possible nttion, and to prevent all that can con- stitute even a suspicion of division. Naturally this implies that it is necessary to commence by forgetting the divisions that have existed in the past. To divide 152 SOCIALISTS AT WORK you in order the better to oppress you, such is the tactic of your enemies. Flee from divisions ; avoid them ; crush them in the egg; such ought to he j'our tactic, and to that end may your program remain the broad- est possible, and your title remain general enough to shelter all who, in the Belgian proletariat, wish to work for the emancipation, intellectual and material, political and economic, of the mass of the disinherited." CHAPTER VI THE PROGRAM OF SOCIALISM It is but natural that the reader should begin to ask, What is all this movement about ? What is wanted ? Why this extraordinary organization of working men in every country, and what do they seek to accomplish ? It is not my purpose in this book to attempt to answer adequately these questions, but rather to describe the movement, and to convey a precise impression of its present influence; I must, therefore, refer inquiring readers to other books which treat particularly of the aims and principles of socialism.* Nevertheless, I realize the necessity for a brief outline here of the historic basis of modern socialism, and of its funda- mental doctrines. Many people appear to be more interested in the methods by which socialists endeavor to obtain their ends than in the ends themselves. To such persons the word " revolution " is apt to signify merely a question of method, confused, therefore, with violence and in- surrection. When socialists use the term, as they do frequently, it is almost invariably without any implica- tion of violence. There are unquestionably a few semi- anarchists who from time to time associate themselves with the movement, and by inflammatory addresses convey the impression that the sociahsts expect to * See p. 364. 153 ic^ SOCIALISTS AT WORK attain their ends by resort to open warfare. Lieb- knecht once said, " The frothy and theatrical phrases of the fanatic supporters of the ' class struggle ' dogma are at bottom a cover for the Machiavellian schemes of the reactionaries." In nearly every country such irresponsible agitators have been excluded from the movement. But while modern sociahsm condemns violence, it is everywhere frankly revolutionary. It is perhaps too much to expect that the present struggle between labor and capital should proceed at all times peacefully. History has known many revolu- tions, nearly all of which have been the culmination of class struggles, wherein the force of the people has been spent without their knowing precisely what they sought to attain. Nearly all the early struggles, as for instance the struggle of the serfs against their masters, or that of the present dominant class against the old feudal landowning aristocracy, ended in violence and bloodshed. In the face of history, therefore, it would seem absurd for one to prophesy concerning the out- come of the present struggle between the workers and the capitalists, for certainly none of the previous up- risings were as truly revolutionary as the present. And if one considers that when the contemplated revolution is accomplished it means the rise to power of the work- ing-class, and the abolition of private property in the means of production, it would seem almost incredible that it should take place in all countries without violence. Nevertheless everywhere, and at all times, the re- sponsible leaders urge the masses to pursue a peaceful political course. Marx and Engels spent a good part of their lives trying to convert the working-class from the methods of violence, conspiracy, and insurrection THE PROGRAM OF SOCIALISM 1 55 advocated by the anarchists. In 1850 Marx resigned from the central committee of the famous Communist Alliance because they sought to substitute " revolu- tionary phrases for revolutionary evolution " ; and he told them with biting sarcasm that they would very likely have to go through a half-century of preparation before they could change themselves and make them- selves worthy of political power. Both Liebknecht and Jaures, two of the ablest parlia- mentary leaders the socialist movement has produced, have again and again spoken of the necessity for gaining a considerable majority of the people before attempting to put socialist principles into operation. Liebknecht says : " It would be both stupid and in- genuous to exact that we should have a majority sealed and ready in our pockets before we began to apply our principles. But it would be still more ingenuous to imagine that we could put our principles into practice against the will of the immense majority of the nation. This is a fatal error, for which the French socialists have paid dear. Is it possible to put up a more heroic fight than did the workmen of Paris and Lyons .-' And ^ has not every struggle ended in a bloody defeat, the most horrible reprisals on the part of the victors, and a long period of exhaustion for the proletariat t The French workers have not yet fully grasped the im- portance of organization and propaganda, and that is why up to the present moment they have been beaten with perfect regularity. . . . Not to contract, but to expand," he continues, " should be our motto. The circle of socialism should widen more and more jmtil we have converted most of o?ir adversaries to being friends, or at least disarmed their opposition. And the 156 SOCIALISTS AT WORK indifferent mass that in peaceful days has no weight in the political balance, but becomes the decisive force in times of agitation, ought to be so fully enlightened as to the aims and essential ideas of our party, that it will cease to fear us and can no longer be used as a weapon against us. All the legislative measures which we shall support, if the opportunity is given us, ought to have for their object to prove tJie fitness of socialism to serve tJie common good." This is very much the line of argument taken by the leaders of the movement. There is not a single social- ist of prominence who believes that a change in condi- tions can be forced upon society contrary to the inherent social forces and the natural evolutionary processes work- ing out in society. For the first time perhaps in the history of the world a constructive revolutionary move- ment is forming that is based upon a definite doctrine, scientifically deduced from the facts of history and social evolution. Far from advocating violence, social- ism realizes, even more than its opponents, that it has all to gain and nothing to lose by the peaceful method. It already has adherents numbered by the million, its representatives in parliament, its exponents in literature, and its friends in every class of society. It is intelli- gently led and organized in almost every industrial centre of Western Europe for study, propaganda, and political action. And it is daily increasing in strength. Why, therefore, should it seek to use violence or to en- courage insurrection, both of which means are to a certain extent even contradictory to its principles and its method of organization .? So much for the methods of contemporary socialism. In order to make clear the basis of its program it is THE PROGRAM OF SOCIALISM 1 57 necessary briefly to review modern industrial history, as the entire socialist doctrine is based upon the eco- nomic evolution of the last century and a half. It is well known that the last great revolution placed in power the capitalist class. Previous to that time, the trader, the man of commerce, the capitalist, was looked down upon by the landed aristocracies and feudal lords as a person of inferior estate. Men of business had practically no political standing, and the old aristocracies, in order to maintain their privileges and unearned in- comes, placed many intolerable restrictions upon trade, commerce, and industry. In the face of these restric- tions capitalism could make no headway, and in order to gain freedom of commerce and a fuller development of industrial life, the capitalists, with the help of the masses, broke the political power of the landed aristoc- racies. The result of this revolution was a marked change in the relative positions of the various classes ; and nearly everywhere the landed class are to-day less powerful in government than the trader, the man of commerce, and the capitalist, all of whom they used to look down upon and despise. With the advent of modern capitalism there came into the world a new class called wage-workers. Their condition differs fundamentally from that of the working- classes in the earlier periods of history. The workers were first slaves, later serfs, and just before the introduc- tion of capitalism, the main body of them were peasants, artisans, and craftsmen. The artisans and craftsmen mostly worked in their own homes, with their own tools, and the product of their labor was almost entirely their own. Excepting for such rates, rents, and dues as were paid to the upper classes and to the government, the workers were 158 SOCIALISTS AT WORK largely free from exploitation. They produced mainly for their own use, and it was common in those days for all members of the family to work together in the home, — brewing, baking, dyeing, weaving, and spinning. On a bit of soil attached to the cottage many of the neces- saries of life were grown, and only the most wretched of the populace were without livestock. This simple form of production could not realize great wealth, but there was little starvation, no unemployment, and, ex- cepting when the crops were destroyed through natural causes, the people were able to live tolerably comfort- ably. The peasant sold to the artisan agricultural produce, and bought from him the products of his handicraft. At the end of the eighteenth century the advent of steam power altered the whole method of production. This period is called in history the industrial revolution. The spinning-wheel, the hand-loom, the blacksmith's hammer, were replaced by the spinning machine, the power loom, and the steam hammer. The individual workshop was replaced by the factory. Industrial cities came into being, and milHons of people in Western Europe left their small homes, abandoned their cottage industries, to live in great tenements and to work in great factories. A mighty change took place in the industrial life, and the old individual form of production was replaced by a social form in which masses of men cooperated. This gave rise to modern capitalism. It was im- possible for the individual workman to own the new tool. It was large and costly in the beginning, and with every new decade it grew larger and more costly. To-day the tool is a vast machine run by steam THE PROGRAM OF SOCIALISM 1 59 or electrical power, and enclosed in great buildings. In the early days of this new form of industry there were crying social abuses. The people were herded together in the worst quarters, in great and insanitary barracks. All the traditional moral bonds of the old order were burst asunder. Women and children worked underground and overground like beasts, and the work- ing-class in general was reduced almost to a state of savagery. These industrial changes revolutionized the face of the world. Gigantic wealth was made possible. Pro- duction for domestic use was replaced by production for national and international markets. It was a period of feverish competition, of stupendous labor, of gigantic commercial undertakings, and of big industrial horizons. At a mighty bound the capitalist class rose to a domi- nant position in modern life. At the same time there came into the world newer and intenser forms of misery. Under the old domestic system the workman could, so long as he had health, provide himself and his family with the necessaries of life. If his skill was not great, he remained poor ; but at any rate he earned a living. He was not employed or unemployed according to the will of another. Under the new regime he worked only when the great machine worked. He sold himself day by day to an employer. He became propertyless, as he could neither own his tools nor his tenement. In other words he became dependent, first upon an employer, second upon a machine, and then upon the state of the markets. When the machine stopped working, he was instantly deprived of the means of life. Without fields in which he could work, or the individual tools of the l60 SOCIALISTS AT WORK old order, he was precipitated into pauperism by the slightest industrial derangement. His wages were little more than sufificient to keep him and his family- while he was at work, and when illness, accident, un- employment, or death occurred, the family was face to face with misery. In the old order there was a certain security of existence ; in the new order there was none. At certain periods the distress of the working-classes became acute. Great commercial crises and financial convulsions paralyzed all industry. " Since 1825, when the first general crisis broke out," says Frederick Engels, " the whole industrial and commercial world, production and exchange among all civilized peoples and their more or less barbaric hangers-on, are thrown out of joint about once every ten years. Commerce is at a standstill, the markets are glutted, products accumulate, as multi- tudinous as they are unsalable, hard cash disappears, credit vanishes, factories are closed, the mass of the workers are in want of the means of subsistence, because they have produced too much of the means of subsistence; bankruptcy follows upon bankruptcy, execution upon execution. The stagnation lasts for years ; productive forces and products are wasted and destroyed wholesale, until the accumulated mass of commodities finally filter off, more or less depreciated in value, until production and exchange gradually begin to move again. Little by little the pace quickens. It becomes a trot. The in- dustrial trot breaks into a canter, the canter in turn grows into a headlong gallop of a perfect steeplechase of industry, commercial credit, and speculation, which finally, after breakneck leaps, ends where it began — in the ditch of a crisis. And so over and over again. We have now, since the year 1825, gone through this five THE PROGRAM OF SOCIALISM l6l times, and at the present moment (1877) we are going through it for the sixth time. And the character of these crises is so clearly defined that Fourier hit all of them off, when he described the first as * crise pletho- riqiic,' — a crisis from plethora." These industrial paralyses forced the attention of the capitalists to the dangers of unrestricted competition. It was a new kind of warfare in which capitalists destroyed each other in commercial and industrial battles. At times, the whole nation stood amazed in the face of these appalling crises. With no lack of natural oppor- tunities or resources, with no adverse natural conditions, with superb machines and great factories, with an earnest and laborious working-class, the empty factories and silent machines facing millions of unemployed and starving men, proved above all the necessity of ending the competitive warfare. Thus competition gradually gave way to monopoly. One capitalist, it is said, de- stroys many, and the smaller were eaten up by the larger, until to-day in all the great countries many of the most important industries have been combined into trusts. The very conditions of modern life forced it ; the crises, the panics, the bankruptcies, the fearful periodic disturbances of economic life. Out of this anarchy of industry developed great organ- izations of capital, and with them there appeared a new class. In the early days the capitalists were mainly skilled workmen or managers possessing a small amount of capital, or in a position to borrow capital. They were often the hardest and most capable workers ; but with the new organization of industry, and especially with the enormous increase of wealth, the capitalist became more and more divorced from actual manage- M l62 SOCIALISTS AT WORK ment, and more and more merely the owner of stocks and bonds. With each generation this evolution is more marked, and as the property leaves the hands of the old captains of industry it passes into the hands of sons and relatives who do not themselves actively participate in industrial operations. A new class begins to emerge, similar in many respects to the privileged classes of the old feudal regime, and more and more it becomes true that from the moment when you become a proprietor of land, of houses, or of the machinery of production, you may as Henry George says, " sit down and smoke your pipe ; you may lie about like the lazzaroni of Naples or the lepers of Mexico ; you may go up in a balloon or dig a hole in the ground, and all the time, without any act of yours, the rent of the house and farm, and the interest on your other capital, will keep dropping steadily into your hands." On this industrial history of the last century the socialist program is based. In the Communist Mani- festo, published in 1848, Marx gives a masterly survey of the industrial revolution then reaching its culmina- tion in a society dominated by capitalism. He gives full credit to the vast accomplishments of the new order when he says that during its rule of scarce a hundred years it " has created more massive and colossal produc- tive forces than all the preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature's forces to man, machinery, appli- cation of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground — what earlier century had even a presentiment that such pro- ductive forces slumbered in the lap of social labor .-' " THE PROGRAM OF SOCIALISM 1 63 At the same time Marx points out that modern so- ciety, which has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is Hke the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world which he has evoked by his spells. Like the prince in the fable, another writer has said,* capitaHsm seems to have released from his prison the genie of competition, only to find that he is unable to control him. The poor, the drunk, the incompetent, the sick, the aged, ride modern society like a nightmare, and the legislation of the past hundred years is a perpetual and fruitless effort to regulate the disorders of the economic system. In the midst of this chaos Marx saw that a new class was being formed, the modern wage-workers, which was performing all the important industrial functions, while the capitalists were becoming less and less important to industry. From a purely scientific point of view it was natural that the useful class should persist and the useless class be thrown aside. At least it was incon- gruous that the useful class should continue to be the poorest class, and especially that it should be content to suffer the insecurity of livelihood made inevitable by the capitalist system. That men should consent to be employed or unemployed at the caprice of a class which produced for the sake of profit only, and which stopped all production when the profits decreased, was inconceivable. The machine having become a social necessity must be owned socially. To have the ma- chinery of production continue in the ownership of a class that did not use it, and used by a class that did not own it, was not only economically unsound, but so- * " Letters from a Chinese Official." 1 64 SOCIALISTS AT WORK cially intolerable. To Marx's mind it was certain that the wage-workers, the producers, who bore the bur- dens of modern industry, would in time revolt against the growing class of parasites who lived upon rents, interests, profits, and other forms of unearned incomes. As early as 1848 Marx described the tentative struggles of the working-class against capitalism. " At first," he says, " the contest is carried on by individual laborers, then by the workpeople of a factory, then by the op- eratives of one trade, in one locality, against the indi- vidual bourgeois who directly exploits them. They direct their attacks not against the capitalist conditions of production, but against the instruments of produc- tion themselves ; they destroy imported wares that compete with their labor, they smash to pieces ma- chinery, they set factories ablaze, they seek to restore by force the vanished status of the workman of the Middle Ages. At this stage the laborers still form an incoherent mass scattered over the whole country, and broken up by their mutual competition. " With the development of industry," he goes on to say, "the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses ; its strength grows, and it feels that strength more. The various interests and conditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are more and more equalized, in proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions of labor, and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level. The growing competition among the capitalists, and the resulting commercial crises, make the wages of the workers ever more fluctuating. The unceasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly devel- oping, makes their livelihood more and more preca- THE PROGRAM OF SOCIALISM 165 rious ; the collisions between individual workmen and individual capitalists take more and more the character of collisions between two classes. . . . Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate re- sult, but in the ever expanding union of the workers.^' The fundamental cause of this class antagonism is the individual ownership of the means of production. To eliminate class strife, and to harmonize the interests of society, it is necessary to socialize these means of production. Marx, however, takes a very broad view of the evolutionary process which will end by consti- tuting a new and social form of ownership of capi- tal. He did not believe it would proceed in any foreordained way. In the program of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, which his disciples framed, there is no suggestion of national or munici- pal ownership. His view was far broader and more comprehensive, based as it was upon scientific and historical principles. First of all he advocated the organization of working men, of a nation within a nation, of the useful class against the useless class. He wanted the working-class to realize consciously their power and the historic role they must play in the evolution of industry. To teach the working-class self-reliance and self-respect, to educate them, and to organize them politically and economically in order that they should take into their own hands the ad- ministration of the state, are fundamental principles of Marxism, The measures by which socialism would be introduced must vary in different countries in relation to the political and social institutions of the country. Marx, therefore, did not prescribe definitely how the 1 66 SOCIALISTS AT WORK capital essential to industry should be socialized. The first and most important step toward that end was the complete organization of the working-class on the political and economic fields in order that they might become conscious of their power, and in truth the arbiters of their own destiny. Toward this end all socialist parties are working. The working-class is developing self-reliance, self- respect, and political capacity. It has already, as I have shown, its own press, its congresses or parlia- ments, national and international, that meet together to discuss the program and tactics of the party, and the methods of taking into its own hands modern in- dustrial operations. Besides its political organization, with its men in parliaments and municipal councils, it has also organized in all lands its trade unions, which also have a press, a literature, a program, and parlia- ments, national and international. In Belgium, Eng- land, and elsewhere, great cooperative enterprises are conducted by the working-class ; so that at present the second largest commercial undertaking in England is owned by the workers, and one of the largest in Bel- gium by the socialists. In other words, the movement is forcing its way, politically, industrially, and commer- cially, into power. Very much the same methods that the capitalist class used in the old feudal regime the rising working-class is using to undermine the princi- ples, privileges, and power of the present order. At the moment, some of the largest industries in the world are managed and worked by paid presidents, managers, superintendents, skilled and unskilled ma- chine operators, and general laborers ; that is to say, by the working-class. It would be absurd to suppose THE PROGRAM OF SOCIALISM 167 that the Vanderbilts are essential to the conduct of the New York Central Railroad, or that Mr. Astor is essen- tial to the management of his landed property ; and Mr. Rockefeller, it is said, confesses to " an ignorance of the affairs of his great concern which should cause his immediate removal by any sane board of directors." Whether the latter is true or not is not important. In the next generation the affairs of this gigantic enter- prise will be largely managed by paid employees. The capitalists have organized industry so well that they have organized themselves out of it. They are in most instances no longer essential to it. This industrial evo- lution which has given to salaried men and wage-work- ers the management and superintendence of industry will only complete itself when the workers themselves own the capital. Little by little they gain force, and day by day become more fully conscious of their own power and the role they are to play in this evolution leading toward the socialization of industry. This is briefly the historic and economic basis that forms the groundwork of the socialist contention. A similar resume accompanies all the various national pro- grams, either as a statement of principles, or an intro- duction to the immediate demands. One can take up the program of any one of the national parties, and find in all very much the same thought expressed. Where there exists a difference, it is not so much due to a critical attitude on the part of the socialists, as it is to the belief that local color will add to the effectiveness of the general statement. I have chosen to take as an ex- ample of these official programs the one adopted by the German party, because it has served as the basis of many others. It was the work of the closest friends 1 68 SOCIALISTS AT WORK and most enthusiastic disciples of Marx, and was almost a literal following out of his instructions. It, therefore, has exceptional value from a documentary point of view, and while it is heavy and rather technical, it has the advantage of being authoritative. It will be seen that the German program epitomizes what I have already said, and it is in fact a condensation of the fundamental position of contemporary socialism. Most of the doctrines were first stated in the Communist Manifesto published in 1848. They were then adopted in 1869 as the basis of the first Social Democratic Labor Party in Germany ; but in 1875, in order to achieve unity between the Lassallians and the Marxists the program was altered, and many ideas of Lassalle were accepted in the face of the very vigorous opposition of Marx. Finally, however, in 1891 the German congress revised its program, and adopted a thorough and comprehensive Marxian position. The thought of contemporary social- ism has, therefore, remained almost unchanged for over half a century. There has been a good deal of criticism of its main doctrines. The progressive concentration of capital, which is the subject of the first and second para- graphs, has been severely criticised. The increasing misery of the masses has been denied, and the class struggle has been the subject of very lively debates both inside and outside the party. The great discussion which occurred between Kautsky and Bernstein a few years ago was really based upon a consideration of these doc- trines of the party, but although the discussion created an immense interest outside of the party, the political organizations in every country have remained faithful to the older views, and there seems to be no disposition on the part of the masses to ask for a revision. THE PROGRAM OF SOCIALISM 169 The Erfurt Social Democratic Program OF October, 1891 The economic development of industrial society tends inevi- tably to the ruin of small industries, which are based upon the workman's private ownership of the means of production. It separates him from these means of production, and converts him into a destitute member of the proletariat, whilst a com- paratively small number of capitalists and great landowners obtain a monopoly of the means of production. Hand in hand with this growing monopoly goes the crushing out of existence of these shattered small industries by industries of colossal growth, the development of the tool into the machine, and a gigantic increase in the productiveness of human labor. But all the advantages of this revolution are monopolized by the capitalists and great landowners. To the proletariat and to the rapidly sinking middle classes, the small tradesmen of the towns, and the peasant proprietors, it brings an increasing uncertainty of existence, increasing misery, oppression, servitude, degrada- tion, and exploitation. Ever greater grows the mass of the proletariat, ever vaster the army of the unemployed, ever sharper the contrast between oppressors and oppressed, ever fiercer that war of classes between bourgeoisie and proletariat which divides modern society into two hostile camps, and is the common characteristic of every industrial country. The gulf between the propertied classes and the destitute is widened by the crises arising from capitalist production, which becomes daily more comprehensive and om- nipotent, which makes universal uncertainty the normal condi- tion of society, and which furnishes a proof that the forces of production have outgrown the existing social order, and that private ownership of the means of production has become in- compatible with their full development and their proper appli- cation. Private ownership of the means of production, formerly the 170 SOCIALISTS AT WORK means of securing his product to the producer, has now become the means of expropriating the peasant proprietors, the artisans, and the small tradesmen, and placing the non-producers, the capitalists, and large landowners in possession of the products of labor. Nothing but the conversion of capitaHst private ownership of the means of production — the earth and its fruits, mines, and quarries, raw material, tools, machines, means of exchange — into social ownership, and the substitution of socialist production, carried on by and for society in the place of the present production of commodities for exchange, can effect such a revolution, that, instead of large industries and the steadily growing capacities of common production being, as hitherto, a source of misery and oppression to the classes whom they have despoiled, they may become a source of the highest well-being and of the most perfect and comprehensive har- mony. This social revolution involves the emancipation, not merely of the proletariat, but of the whole human race, which is suf- fering under existing conditions. But this emancipation can be achieved by the working-class alone, because all other classes, in spite of their mutual strife of interests, take their stand upon the principle of private ownership of the means of production, and have a common interest in maintaining the existing social order. The struggle of the working-classes against capitalist exploita- tion must of necessity be a political struggle. The working- classes can neither carry on their economic struggle nor develop their economic organization without political rights. They cannot effect the transfer of the means of production to the community without being first invested with political power. It must be the aim of social democracy to give conscious unanimity to this struggle of the working-classes, and to indicate the inevitable goal. The interests of the working-classes are identical in all lands governed by capitalist methods of production. The extension THE PROGRAM OF SOCIALISM 17I of the world's commerce and production for the world's markets make the position of the workman in any one country daily more dependent upon that of the workman in other countries. There- fore, the emancipation of labor is a task in which the workmen of all civilized lands have a share. Recognizing this, the Social Democrats of Germany feel and declare themselves at one with the workmen of every land, who are conscious of the destinies of their class. The German Social Democrats are not, therefore, fighting for new class privileges and rights, but for the abolition of class government, and even of classes themselves, and for universal equality in rights and duties, without distinction of sex or rank. Holding these views, they are not merely fighting against the exploitation and oppression of the wage-earners in the existing social order, but against every kind of exploitation and oppres- sion, whether directed against class, party, sex, or race. Following the above general statement of principles come the immediate demands. I have not included these because they apply particularly to German con- ditions, and an American would gain from them little idea of what the socialists are trying to obtain in the way of specific reforms. Naturally these demands vary in each country according to the stage of political democ- racy, the advance in labor legislation, and the extent of social reform. In Germany autocratic institutions force the party to make demands which it is not necessary to make in England, and in America the party is forced to demand labor legislation which exists already in Germany. For this reason no one program conveys a complete idea of this phase of socialist activity. This objection applies with considerable force to the Belgian program, which I have thought advisable to use, but as it is in many ways the most perfect in structure and completeness that 172 SOCIALISTS AT WORK I have happened to see, it will serve as a very useful guide to the reader. PoLFTiCAL Program of the Belgian Labor Pariy Electoral Reform. — Universal suffrage without distinction of sex for all ranks (age limit, twenty-one ; residence, six months) ; proportional representation ; election expenses to be charged on the public authorities ; payment of elected persons ; elected persons to be bound by pledges according to law ; electorates to have the right of unseating elected persons. Decentralization of Political Power. — Suppression of the Senate ; creation of legislative councils, representing the differ- ent functions of society (industry, commerce, agriculture, edu- cation, etc.) ; such councils to be autonomous, within the limits of their competence, except from the veto of parUament ; and to be federated for the study and defence of their common interests. Communal Autonomy. — Mayors to be nominated by the electorate ; small communes tp be fused or federated ; creation of elected committees corresponding to the different branches of communal administration. Direct Legislation. — Right of popular initiative and ref- erendum in legislative, provincial, and communal matters. Reform of Education. — Primary, all-round, free, secular, compulsory instruction at the expense of the state ; maintenance by public authorities of children attending the schools ; inter- mediate and higher instruction to be free, secular, and at the expense of the state ; assimilation of communal teachers to the state's educational officials ; creation of a superior council of education, elected by the school committees, who are to or- ganize the inspection and control of free schools and of official schools ; organization of trade education, and obligation of all children to learn manual work ; autonomy of the state univer- sities, and legal recognition of the free universities ; university THE PROGRAM OF SOCIALISM ' 1 73 extension to be organized at the expense of the public authori- ties. Separation of the Churches and the State. — Suppression of the grant for pubHc worship ; philosophic or religious associa- tions to be civil persons at law. Revision of Sections in the Civil Code concerning Marriage and the Paternal Authority. — Civil equality of the sexes, and of children, whether legitimate or illegitimate ; revision of the divorce laws, maintaining the husband's liability to support the wife or the children; inquiry into paternity to be legalized; protective measures in favor of children materially or morally abandoned. Judicial Reform. — Application of the elective principle to all jurisdictions ; reduction of the number of magistrates ; justice without fees ; state payment of advocates and officials of the courts ; magisterial examination in penal cases to be public ; persons prosecuted to be medically examined ; victims of judicial errors to be indemnified. Extension of Liberties. — Suppression of measures restrict- ing any of the liberties. Suppression of Armies. — Organization provisionally of national militia. Suppression of hereditary offices, and establishment of a republic. Economic Program. — General Measures Organization of Statistics. — Creation of a ministry of labor ; pecuniary aid from the public authorities for the organization of labor secretariats by workmen and employers. Legal Recognition of Associations. — Especially of trade unions ; reform of the law on friendly societies and cooperative societies, and subsidies from the public authorities ; repression of infringements of the right of combination. Legal Regulation of the Contract of Employment. — Exten- sion to all industries of laws protecting labor, and especially 1/4 SOCIALISTS AT WORK to agriculture, shipping, and fishing; fixing of a minimum wage and maximum of hours of labor for workers, industrial or agricultural, employed by the state, the communes, the provinces, or the contractors for public works ; intervention of workers, and especially of workers' unions, in the framing of rules; suppression of fines, suppression of workshop savings- banks and benefit clubs ; fixing a maximum of 6000 francs for public servants and managers. Transformation of Public Charity into a General Insurance of all Citizens. — Against unemployment ; against disablement (sickness, accident, old age) ; against death (widows and orphans). Reorganization of Public Finances. — Abolition of indirect tax-es, especially taxes on food and customs tariffs ; monopoly of alcohol and tobacco ; progressive income tax ; taxes on legacies and gifts between the living (excepting gifts to works of public utility) ; suppression of intestate succession, except in the direct line and within limits to be determined by the law. Progressive Extension of Public Property. — The state to take over the National Bank ; social organization of loans, at interest to cover costs only, to individuals and to associations of workers ; abolition on grounds of public utility, of private ownership in mines, quarries, the subsoil generally, and of the great means of production and transport ; nationalization of forests ; reconstitution or development of common lands ; progressive taking over of the land by the state or the communes. Autonomy of Public Services. — Administration of the public services by special autonomous commissions, under the control of the state ; creation of committees elected by the em- ployees of the public services to discuss with the central ad- ministration the conditions of the remuneration and organization of labor. Particular Measures for Industrial Workers : — Abolition of all laws restricting the right of combination. THE PROGRAM OF SOCIALISM 1 75 Regulation of Industrial Labor. — Prohibition of employ- ment of children under fourteen ; half-time system between the ages of fourteen and eighteen ; prohibition of employment of women in all industries where it is incompatible with morals or health ; reduction of working-day to a maximum of eight hours for adults of both sexes, minimum wage ; pro- hibition of night-work for all categories of workers and in all industries, where this mode of working is not absolutely necessary ; one day's rest per week, so far as possible on Sun- day; responsibility of employers in case of accidents, and appointment of doctors to attend persons injured ; workmen's memorandum books and certificates to be abolished, and their use prohibited. Inspection of Work. — Employment of paid medical authori- ties, in the interests of labor hygiene ; appointment of inspect- ors by the councils of industry and labor. Reorganization of the Industrial Tribunals and the Councils of Industry and Labor. — Working women to have votes and be eligible ; submission to the courts to be compulsory. Regulation of work in prisons and convents. Particular Measures for Agricultural Workers : — Reorganization of the Agricultural Courts. — Nomination of delegates in equal numbers by the landowners, farmers, and laborers ; intervention of the chambers in individual or collec- tive disputes between landowners, farmers, and agricultural laborers ; fixing of a minimum wage by the public authorities on the proposition of the agricultural courts. Regulation of Contracts to pay Farm Rents. — Fixing of the rate of farm rents by committees of arbitration or by the reformed agricultural courts ; compensation to the outgoing farmer for enhanced value of property ; participation of land- owners to a wider extent than that fixed by the Civil Code, in losses incurred by farmers; suppression of the landowners' privilege. Insurance by the provinces, and reinsurance by the state, 176 SOCIALISTS AT WORK against epizootic diseases, diseases of plants, hail, floods, and other agricultural risks. Organization by the Public Authorities of Free Agricultural Education. — Creation or development of experimental fields, model farms, agricultural laboratories. Purchase by the commune of agricultural implements to be at the disposal of their inhabitants ; assignment of common lands to groups of laborers engaging not to employ wage-labor. Organization of a free medical service in the country. Reform of the Game Laws. — Suppression of gun licenses ; suppression of game preserves ; right of cultivators to destroy all the year round animals which injure crops. Intervention of Public Authorities in the Creation of Agricul- tural Cooperative Societies. — For buying seed and manure ; for making butter ; for the purchase and use in common of agricultural machines ; for the sale of produce ; for the work- ing of land by groups. Organization of agricultural credit. Communal Program Educational Reforms. — Free scientific instruction for chil- dren up to fourteen ; special courses for older children and adults ; organization of education in trades and industries, in cooperation with workmen's organizations ; maintenance of children, except where the state intervenes to do so ; institu- tion of school refreshment rooms ; periodic distribution of boots and clothing; orphanages; establishments for children abandoned or cruelly ill-treated. Judicial Reforms. — Ofiice for consultations free of charge in cases coming before the law-courts, the industrial courts, etc. Regulation of Work. — Minimum wage and maximum work- ing day to be made a clause in contracts for communal works ; intervention of trade associations in the fixing of rates of wages, THE PROGRAM OF SOCIALISM 177 and general regulation of industry ; the echevin of public works to supervise the execution of these clauses in contracts ; ap- pointment by the workmen's associations of inspectors to supervise the clauses in contracts ; rigorous application of the principle of tenders open to all, for all services which, during a transition period, are not managed directly ; permission to trade unions to tender, and abolition of security-deposit ; creation of Bourses du Travail, or at least offices for the de- mand and supply of employment, whose administration shall be entrusted to trade unions or labor associations ; fixing of a minimum wage for the workmen and employees of a commune. Public Charity. — Admission of workmen to the administra- tion of the councils of hospitals and of public charity ; trans- formation of public charity and the hospitals into a system of insurance against old age ; organization of a medical service and drug supply ; establishment of public free baths and wash- houses ; establishment of refuges for the aged and disabled ; night-shelter and food-distribution for workmen wandering in search of work. Complete neutrality of all communal services from the philo- sophical point of view. Finance. — Saving to be effected on present cost of admin- istration ; maximum allowance of 6000 francs for mayors and other officials ; costs of entertainment for mayors who must incur certain private expenses ; income-tax ; special tax on sites not built over and houses not let. Public Services. — The commune or a federation of com- munes composing one agglomeration, to work the means of transport, tramways, omnibuses, cabs, district railways, etc. ; and to work directly the services of general interest at present conceded to companies, lighting, water-supply, markets, high- ways, heating, security, health ; compulsory insurance of the inhabitants against fire, except where the state intervenes to do so ; construction of cheap dwellings by the commune, the hospices, and the charity offices. CHAPTER VII SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL REFORM It is difficult nowadays for socialists to keep the de- tails of their immediate program in advance of legisla- tion. For more than a half century socialist and labor programs advocated the abolition of child labor without finding any considerable sympathetic response on the part of the general public. Only a few years ago a child-labor law was considered an unwarrantable inter- ference with the free conduct of capitalist enterprise. To-day the legislation in some countries is in advance of the specific demand made by one or two of the socialist parties. There was a time when the socialists alone advocated national and municipal ownership of public utilities ; to-day it is advocated by all the more advanced parties. A few years ago land municipalization would have been hailed as a revolution of the first order. To- day there are few municipalities in Europe that do not see the necessity for radical reform in the ownership of land if slums are to be abohshed. There are various causes for this extraordinary change in public policy, but few will deny that the credit for it belongs mainly to the growing socialist movement. The old parties quite naturally combat the intrusion of the new ideas. When the socialists in the legislative bodies endeavor to carry out their program, their meas- ures are bitterly assailed by the opposition; but the 178 SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL REFORM 1 79 socialists use such opportunities to review the evils of existing conditions and the necessity for reform, with the result that the community becomes aroused. The opposition, who first attack a socialist measure as crimi- nal and vicious, then as well-intentioned but impracti- cal, finally, after as much delay as possible, reintro- duce the measure in as weak a form as they dare submit it, and pass it as a great and virtuous public act. It is not, I think, an exaggeration to state that on the continent of Europe, this is the legislative history of most of the important measures in the interest of labor passed during the last twenty years. The social- ists are rarely permitted to pass legislation, but in the way described they are really the directing force in nearly all the continental legislative bodies. In other words, the old parties are gradually being forced to fol- low the line of the immediate demands of the socialist program. But quite aside from this influence over the course of legislation the socialists are doing a notable work in gradually breaking down that ancient and honorable form of political corruption which is inherent in class government. The patriotic citizens of foreign countries will tell you that corruption does not exist, and one must admit that there is a difference in the corruption abroad and that which obtains with us. Legislators are rarely bought. But then it is unnecessary, as in most cases the "traction magnates," the "gas thieves," etc., — as we are disposed to call them, — where there are any left, are themselves members of legislative bodies. It is obviously unnecessary to buy themselves. The difference between corruption there and here is that we elect Tim Sullivan, Hinky Dink, and Johnny Powers l80 SOCIALISTS AT WORK to our municipal councils. No power on earth could induce us to elect Thomas F. Ryan, August Bel- mont, or Yerkes. But unfortunately Ryan and his friends have as their personal representatives Sullivan and his friends, and the latter turn us — the people and "our" government — over to their corporate masters. Nothing like that is to be found in Eng- land or on the continent. It would be impossible to induce the people of those countries to vote for their Sullivans ; they elect their Ryans. A prominent social- ist in the Berlin municipal council told me recently that the greatest difficulty they meet with in their efforts to deal with the traction monopoly arises from the fact that several directors of the company are on the council. Nothing, therefore, can be done without the traction monopoly knowing instantly the facts. Something of that sort exists nearly everywhere in Europe ; the vested interests represent themselves. It is corruption, but it is a higher type of corruption, unaccompanied by all the inelegant features associated with American politics. One must admit it is also a preferable form, as it exists in the open. It is not always easy for the public to know that Sullivan, Hinky Dink, and Johnny Powers, or the thousands like them without their notoriety, represent purely private inter- ests and not the interests of their constituents. Abroad it becomes clearer, day by day, that the nominees of the vested interests represent those interests. As a result, the workers in Europe are beginning to send to the municipal councils and to parliament their own representatives, and we find the conflict between the workers and the capitalists sharply defined. I saw it once strikingly illustrated during a parliamentary de- SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL REFORM l8l bate upon a bill for compensating workmen injured in the mining industry. A socialist miner, pleading for more liberal compensation, had delivered a terrible arraignment of the conduct of the industry. When he sat down, another member arose. He said he was a mine- owner, and would like to give notice that he would answer "the honorable gentleman" on the following day. In this instance, the miner, representing the working people, and the mine-owner, representing the capital employed, stood face to face before the country in a debate upon the conditions prevailing in that industry. This was a dramatic instance of what is occurring throughout all Europe, as a result of the participation in politics of independent working men's parties. Class government, which seemed at first only strengthened by the extension of the suffrage, is breaking down. The workers are learning that it avails nothing to vote the conservatives out and the radicals in, or vice versa. In either case the upper class remains in complete control. Only a few years ago the situation in Europe was almost as bad as it is with us, and we seem unable to uproot our corruption, to prevent our insurance scandals, and to eliminate corporation control of our political parties. In Europe exposures of a similar character would now destroy any political party in- volved. The socialists of Italy, for instance, did not face conditions quite as black as ours, and yet they so effectually followed up exposures of corruption that many prominent persons were driven from public life. The power to accomplish this remarkable work resides in this independent political movement, this party of the workers now forcing its way into power. In the face 1 82 SOCIALISTS AT WORK of its criticism the old order dare not press the kind of class legislation which was so common a few decades ago. It dreads the criticism of the new party, which appears as the expression of the exploited and disinher- ited, produced largely by the iniquitous legislation of the past. It realizes that any serious blunders on its part, any corruption, any favors to private interests, means the strengthening of this active and subversive group of socialists. The influence of the socialist party is even more clearly shown by the manner in which it obtains the enforcement of law. It is an old political game to pass laws not intended to be enforced. Having control of the executive as well as the legislative departments of government, the parties in power sometimes find this the easiest way to defeat popular clamor. But even this undignified course is impossible where the sociahst party is active. The socialists realize that if present laws were only enforced, they would considerably im- prove existing conditions. In the German municipali- ties and elsewhere they taunt the parties in power with the squalor, the vile tenements, the high death-rates, the adulterated food, and the other evils resulting in part from a lax administration. The effectiveness of these stings cannot be overestimated, and one of the most striking changes of the last few years is the in- crease in efficiency of the municipal administration in the continental cities. In three ways, therefore, the sociahst movement exercises an important influence upon European political policy : first, upon legislation itself ; second, in making almost impossible the older form of political corruption residing in class rule ; and third, in compelling the enforcement of existing laws. SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL REFORM 1 83 Socialism does not set out to occupy itself merely with political reforms. It is based upon economic principles, which emphasize the necessity for industrial reconstruction. But one insurmountable political obsta- cle stands in the way of its advancement as a party. In many countries the suffrage is so restricted that it gives the propertied classes a position of advantage. A fun- damental political demand, therefore, upon which all socialists agree, is universal and equal suffrage without distinction of sex. In Belgium during the last twenty years enormous pressure has been exercised upon the government to force it to grant this political right. Deprived of other means of expressing their will, the people have had to resort to general strikes and even to riots. Several times the electoral law has been altered, but the governing classes in Belgium fear to grant universal and equal suffrage, as the growing popu- larity of the socialists would then make probable their early advent to power. Other European governments face a similar situation, and it becomes increasingly difficult to obtain universal suffrage. The danger to the present order is illustrated by two recent events. In Austria, after a series of general strikes, and a period of threatening agitation, universal manhood suffrage was granted, and the socialists instantly increased their parliamentary representation from 11 to 87 members. In Finland the social democratic agitation was even more successful, and women were admitted along with men to the right of suffrage. At the first election under the new law 80 socialists were sent to parliament, of whom nine were women. Coincident with this desper- ate struggle to win universal suffrage an effort is being made to obtain the referendum and initiative, and in 1 84 SOCIALISTS AT WORK many countries the old parties have been forced in self- protection to establish proportional representation. That it should be left to the socialists alone to fight these battles of political democracy shows to what extent the old liberal parties, whose glory it once was to widen the suffrage, have degenerated since they came into power. In the field of public finance a graduated income tax, and the abolition of all indirect taxes, customs, and other politico-economic measures, which sacrifice the interests of the whole community to the interests of a favored minority, are demanded in all socialist pro- grams. The Germans ask for an obligatory graduated tax upon inheritance, and the Belgian party seeks the suppression of intestate succession except in the direct line. The English Independent Labor Party stands for the gradual transference of all poHtical burdens to un- earned incomes, and the Italian party advocates the taxation of unearned increment from land. England and Germany already have an income-tax, and France is at present in the midst of drafting important legis- lation in the same field. The present legislation, how- ever, does not satisfy the socialists, as it is their avowed purpose to shift the entire burden of taxation on to unearned incomes. The enormous budgets of the European countries, made necessary in part by stu- pendous annual expenditures for naval and military purposes, have forced the governments to place a part of this heavy burden upon the wealthier classes ; but the burden upon the workers is nevertheless crushing. Consequently the socialists are exercising their utmost power in every country to relieve the workers by shift- ing these taxes upon those classes for whose benefit naval and military expenses are incurred. SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL REFORM 1 85 The German cities have taken an important advance step in the taxation of unearned increment arising from the sale and transfer of land. The object is to absorb the profits of the speculator. On every change in ownership an increasing tax is placed in a shifting scale in relation to the selling price. The introduction of the new rating forced the Breslau speculators in land to pay in 1900 an increased taxation of ^76,250. Frankfurt was the first town to undertake legislation in this direction, and the socialists in all parts of Germany are pressing measures of a similar character. In Berlin they recently introduced an extreme measure, and while it met with defeat, it will doubtless in a year or so be presented in modified form and passed by one of the conservative parties. Many of the German Town Councils also rate unimproved land on the amount for which it could be sold. Crefeld, Breslau, Aachen, Diisseldorf, Elberfeld, Charlottenberg, Kiel, Wiesbaden, and other towns have already adopted the new method and all German towns are urged by the Prime Minister to follow their example. These new forms of land taxation have not yet been sufficiently developed in Germany to show very important results ; but under socialist pressure they are certain to be gradually extended until the cities will absorb the entire unearned increment arising from land. So much for the attitude of the socialists in the field of public finance. A most important change has taken place of recent years in European political thought concerning factory legislation. The old ideas of laissc:; faire, ^hxch. are still potent in America, are rapidly being abandoned on the other side of the Atlantic. During the last 1 86 SOCIALISTS AT WORK twenty years there has been a steady growth of state intervention, until now there are laws regulating almost every phase of the competitive system. The relation between labor and capital, the conduct of factories, mines, and other industrial enterprises, and the sanitary condition of tenements and workshops are more and more regulated by law. The old political principles allowed complete freedom of contract, neglecting to make any provision for the necessary basis of equality in condition. State intervention is a tardy and indeed vain effort to equalize conditions and to put labor upon an equal footing with capital. The socialists in forcing labor legislation work as the direct representatives in parliament of the trade-union movement. They are constantly agitating for laws giving greater freedom of action to the unions. Even before the organization of their political parties, the working-class had gained in most countries the right to unite and the right to strike. In some countries the right of peaceful picketing is now guaranteed to the workers. Usually this is a result of an administrative measure, but the English parliament, during its last session, specifically granted the right in the Trades Disputes Bill. Injunctions are rarely used in Europe against labor organizations ; but in case any court should be unwise enough to grant one, it would seldom be sustained. In some countries the use of the army and police against strikers is still common, and of course in all demonstrable instances of violence the interven- tion of the authorities is certain. Nothing, however, in Europe compares with the use commonly made of the army in America, and it is doubtful if anywhere else employers would be permitted to hire " Pinkertons " SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL REFORM 1 8/ to shoot down or to intimidate starving workmen. As a matter of fact, things have changed greatly in most European countries during recent years. The socialist municipalities of Italy and France sometimes supply strikers with food and shelter, and in all cases they see that the children are cared for. In these instances the old order is completely reversed, and instead of the employer being given governmental aid to break strikes and to crush the workmen, the men are rendered assistance to the extent sometimes of direct contribu- tions to their funds. The French chamber itself has many times, after the conclusion of a strike, voted financial aid to the families of the working men. It is impossible to give an adequate review of the progress of factory legislation. As I have said be- fore, there was practically no such legislation in Bel- gium previous to the formation of the Labor Party. The reader will have observed in its program, that among other things it demands the prohibition of the employment of children under 14; a half-time system, that is to say, half a day at work and half in school, for workers between the ages of 14 and 18 ; the pro- hibition of the employment of women in all industries where it is incompatible with morals or health ; the reduction of the working day to a maximum of eight hours for adults of both sexes ; a minimum wage ; the prohibition of night-work for all categories of workers in all industries where this mode of working is not absolutely necessary ; one day's rest per week, so far as possible on Sunday ; responsibility of employers in case of accidents ; and the appointment of doctors to attend persons injured ; the employment of medical authorities to work in the interests of factory hygiene, 1 88 SOCIALISTS AT WORK and the appointment of all inspectors by joint com- mittees of employers and employed. Some of the other national programs advocate more stringent meas- ures, and the Fabians demand for women workers that for equal work they should receive equal pay with men. Nearly all the programs demand a gen- eral compulsory insurance of citizens against unemploy- ment, disablement, and death. The Fabian program also advocates the eight-hour day, the prohibition of the employment of children under i6, the undertaking of useful public works in special cases, and a general extension of governmental ownership of industrial operations : all for the purpose of doing away with unemployment. As a result of constant pressure exer- cised by the socialists every country in Europe has sensibly increased, and in some cases initiated, legis- lation protecting workmen against insanitary condi- tions, dangerous trades, and other evils incident to industry which undermine the health and vitality of the working-class. France is one of the first countries to establish le repos Jiebdomadaire — one day's rest in seven. Perhaps the most important legislation that has been passed in the interest of labor is the compulsory insur- ance of working men, now spreading all over Europe. It is mainly an effort to render tolerable the present economic system, and to give to the working-class some security in life. The German empire was the first country to realize the widespread discontent of the workers which resulted from their uncertainty of livelihood. England and America still persist in throwing upon the poor law, and degrading to the position of paupers, the aged, the sick, and the unem- SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL REFORM 1 85 ployed, as well as the families of those who have sac- rificed their lives to industry. In Germany, where the insurance system is best developed, every employee receiving less than ;^500 a year in wages must be in- sured against accident, sickness, invalidism, and old age. Practically every workman in the German empire is, therefore, assured of an economic existence, when he is unable to continue at work. One no longer finds broken-down workmen, suffering from tuberculosis, chronic rheumatism, or other forms of invalidism, or maimed and injured so as to be incapable of further labor, or weary and exhausted veterans, still forced to maintain a tragic and futile struggle to earn the nec- essaries of life. To all these unfortunates, pensions are granted at a cost of over ^100,000,000 a year. In Austria, insurance against accidents, sickness, and old age is obligatory for practically the entire laboring population. Compulsory insurance has also gained a foothold in France and Roumania, while for fifty years there has been a system in Belgium of miners' insur- ance which is practically compulsory upon mine-own- ers. The best examples of state voluntary insurance are found in France, Belgium, and Italy. The first country has had in existence for many years three in- dependent departments for accidents, old age and invalidism, and death. Belgium has a similar institu- tion for old-age insurance, while Italy has established a national bank for insurance against accidents. The ' English employer is now forced by the Workmen's Compensation Act to indemnify injured workmen, a more complete form of the law having been recently passed under pressure from the Labor Party. The system of governmental insurance, however, 1 90 SOCIALISTS AT WORK does not include insurance against unemployment. There is a scheme for pensioning the unemployed, which was started a few years ago in Ghent, and is gradually being adopted by other cities throughout Europe. The working method is for the unions to establish an insurance fund against unemployment, to which every member subscribes a certain sum weekly or monthly ; and for every dollar contributed by the workmen an equal sum is usually contributed by the municipality. The unions, being financially responsible to the same extent as the municipalities, undertake to see that no idlers shall be supported from the funds. In this way society is beginning to assume a part of its responsibiUty for unemployment, instead of throw- ing the burden entirely upon the workmen. In nearly all the sociahst municipalities of France a similar system has been developed, and the French chamber recently acknowledged the principle of society's re- sponsibility for unemployment, by making a subvention to these funds. A step in advance of governmental regulation and even of governmental insurance is national and mu- nicipal ownership. It is unfortunate that no general figures exist giving the extent of public property, but in every country in Europe during the last twenty years there has been an astonishing growth of state socialism. Many countries have nationalized the rail- ways, and there is a growing tendency to own na- tionally all the great natural resources, such as coal and iron mines, etc. Switzerland is considering a proposition to keep under national control the im- mense power which lies in her mountain streams. There is a possibility that Great Britain will national- SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL REFORM 191 ize the railroads in Ireland, and there is considerable agitation for the nationalization of all British rail- ways. Public enterprise is, of course, most extensive in the cities. Hardly a franchise expires in any Euro- pean city that is not immediately taken up by^ the municipality. In many places no new franchises are granted to private companies, and little by little all public services are coming into the hands of the gov- ernment. In Great Britain this movement has taken on an enormous development, so that now most of the munici- pahties own the water, gas, and electrical supplies, trams, baths, wash-houses, libraries, and of course the pubUc schools, parks, playgrounds, etc. Many of the cities have entered the field of municipal housing, and some have undertaken to demolish large areas of slums, replacing them by municipally owned tenements. For many years past a number of cities have had a municipal telephone service, and the national post-office has re- cently made arrangements looking to tlie nationalization of all telephones as soon as the existing licenses expire, expecting a complete national ownership by 191 1. Some of the cities have also instituted municipal slaughter- houses and sterilized milk-supplies. Nearly everywhere there has also been a great extension of municipal institutions for the intellectual development of the com- munity, such as museums, art galleries, and libraries; and for the physical development, such as parks, play- grounds, and recreation fields. One of the strongest influences in the recent growth of this enlightened public policy throughout England is the work of the Fabian Society and similar bodies, whose members have carried on an extraordinary 192 SOCIALISTS AT WORK propaganda and have constantly urged their practical municipal program. The Independent Labor Party in the provinces has exerted a powerful influence in the same direction, and upon nearly all the councils in the industrial districts the fighting has been led by its representatives. It cannot, however, be said that British municipal socialism is the result of an organized and threatening movement of the workers. For this reason many of the reforms have been more for the benefit of the entire community than for the working- class in particular. Certain collectivist ideas appeal to all, as for instance the municipalization of such public services as are essential to the comfort of all. It is possible for a city to own practically all of these public services without greatly improving the life of the masses. The pressure for reform has come mainly from the middle class instead of from a politi- cally organized working-class, and the difference be- tween the results obtained in England and those obtained on the continent by the socialist parties is the English slums, the most abominable of Europe. In the continental countries the trend toward munici- pal socialism is, on the other hand, mainly the result of an organized working-class movement. Certainly the infiltration of socialist ideas throughout all classes of the community, and the labors of that considerable class who now call themselves state socialists, have not been with- out effect; but the influence of the latter is often Hmited to forms of collectivism which do not always directly benefit the poor, while the socialist party itself has forced a whole series of measures materially ameHorat- ing the condition of the workers. It is actually in con- trol of a large number of cities, and there is hardly a SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL REFORM 193 municipal council without its representatives. In France the party elects the mayors of over a hundred cities, and in Belgium and Italy it controls some of the most impor- tant of the secondary municipalities. But unfortunately in these countries there is a highly centralized govern- ment which prevents the socialists from carrying out their ideas, and often forces them to grant to private interests the conduct of public utilities. Although they have fought valiantly for increased power, it has thus far availed little. Here and there they have established municipal pharmacies, new and improved hospitals, and nearly everywhere they have a sufificiently free hand to establish school restaurants for the feeding of the children. Curiously enough, the most important results of the socialist movement are to be found in Germany. In France, Belgium, and Italy their electoral strength places them in possession of the municipal government, but the centralized powers prevent them from carrying out their policies. In Prussia the law does not permit them to control a municipality, but they can and do direct its policies. The electoral law provides that the non-prop- ertied classes shall only elect one-third of the munici- pal council. In nearly every city the socialists elect the full third, and in many industrial cities their vote is larger than that of all other parties. The moral power which this electoral strength gives to the socialist minor- ity enables it to exercise enormous pressure upon Ger- man municipal policy. The position of the socialists may be merely that of critics, but their activity in plac- ing before the councils measures for the improvement of the conditions of the workers, the sanitary renovation of the poorer quarters, the building of model tenements, 194 SOCIALISTS AT WORK the municipalizing of public utilities, and countless other measures for municipal improvement, make them a source of perpetual irritation to the old parties. They drive the conservative majorities to more and more ex- treme measures, until Germany has now the most enlight- ened municipal policy in Europe. Twenty years ago her slums were notorious. There was hardly a great city which did not have conditions rivalling those still prevalent throughout Great Britain. To-day there is hardly a poor district in Germany that can justly be called a slum. The German cities have developed municipal owner- ship to a greater extent than perhaps any other cities of Europe, and in addition they have for years pursued a policy of extensive land ownership. Since 1890 Cologne has increased its public land by over 1000 per cent, Chemnitz by over 600 per cent, Munich by over 300 per cent, and so forth. Strasbourg has over 350 square yards of land for each inhabitant. The town of Ulm owns over 80 per cent of the land within its boundaries. It buys and leases land daily, and by its power as landowner it prevents all land speculation. It is now the general policy of all German towns not to sell any land. To review the extent of municipal enterprise at pres- ent would exhaust the pages of a very large book, and it is only possible to mention its increasing development in the above general way. It is unnecessary to say that national and municipal ownership is advocated in nearly all socialist programs, but even where it is not a formulated demand, the sociaHst parties have usually sup- ported any effort in this direction. They, however, place greater emphasis upon those forms of municipal SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL REFORM 1 95 or national ownership which tend definitely to relieve or abolish the exploitation of the workers. Among the first measures they press are those for municipal hous- ing, and the control of the food, clothing, and fuel sup- plies. It is their primary effort to take the necessaries of life out of the field of capitalist exploitation. But even where municipal or national ownership is gained, they do not consider their end attained. Nearly all socialists would agree with Wilhelm Liebknecht, who said, " The state when it assumes control in place of the private entrepreneur carries on the capitalist exploitation exactly as the private entrepreneur. It can in fact ex- ercise yet greater oppression." This leads the socialists to make strenuous efforts to obtain better hours, wages, and conditions for government employees. The London County Council have endeavored to follow out this social- ist policy, and in all public work they have established among other things the eight-hour day, trade union wages, one day's rest in seven^ and the employment by the municipality direct of all classes of workmen engaged upon public works. In many German cities like condi- tions have been established, and wherever the socialists have been in control, in France, Italy, or Belgium, a similar program has been put into operation. It was pointed out a moment ago that the centralized government of France prevents the socialists from car- rying out a general policy of municipalization. It may be interesting, therefore, to mention some of the work they have been able to accomplish. It is sometimes said that socialism will destroy the home, and some of its opponents have been unscrupulous enough to attack socialists as advocates of free love. In answer to such accusations perhaps nothing could be more conclusive 196 SOCIALISTS AT WORK than what the socialists actually do when they come into power. It is known that illegitimacy is common in France, especially among the poorest people. To what extent it is due to poverty, and the inability of the poorest workmen to pay fees for the marriage service, is not known ; but when the socialists came into control of the city of Lille, they established a free marriage service, the fees to the pastor being paid directly by the municipality. Thousands of marriages have been sanctioned under this new act, and a great number of children who would otherwise have been classed as ille- gitimate are now legalized. The work of the socialists in the same city is sufficient to answer the other accusation. It is a theory that socialism will destroy the home ; it is a fact that for millions of the poor capitalism Jias destroyed the home. Go through any great centre of industry, and see the mothers who are forced to give their children to the street and themselves to the fac- tory. Literally speaking, millions of women, how many with children one cannot say, leave their homes at dawn, and return to them only at nightfall. Some of them hardly have time to give birth to their babies before thdy are called back to the mills. These facts make little impression upon those who are not working peo- ple ; but can any one really think for a moment that the poor suffer without complaint this destruction of home life .'' Can any one believe that when the mothers and fathers rise in the morning before dawn, and leave their children to the care of an older child or upon the streets, and go themselves to toil for ten, twelve, or fourteen hours in the factory, they are without feehng in the matter .'' If that is the impression, the pathetic efforts of these French working men when they come into SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL REFORM 1 97 power are a sufficient answer. Amidst the greatest imaginable difficulties they strive to retrieve something of the social advantages lost to them through the indus- trial revolution. They establish public kitchens so that soups, meats, and vegetables can be obtained warm when the people return from their work. They establish creches for the babies of working mothers. The cantine scolaire, or school restaurant, is but another effort to reestablish in some manner the social institutions lost by the destruction of the home. So long as the present system lasts, or at least so long as sociaHsts remain in a minority, it is impossible for them to free from toil the mothers of their children. But they can save the babies from neglect, the children from the streets, and all from actual hunger. There are few workmen who would not, if they could, destroy all the creches and ca7itines scolaij-es and ecolcs maternclles, if at the same time they could reestablish the home and give back to the babies their mothers. This, however, being impossible, it will be a curious and perhaps interesting fact to the prosperous classes that, among the first things to which the social- ists turn their attention when they become charged with the responsibility of municipal government are these very problems of the family and the home. This is typical of the activity of the socialists in France, Italy, Germany, and Belgium, whenever they obtain con- trol of a municipality. The feeding of the children in school restaurants is rapidly spreading throughout all Europe. Where the Itahans have gained control, they have immediately established the system and in some cases in order that there shall be no distinction between poor and well-to-do children, attendance at school meals is made compulsory for all children. In Norway the 198 SOCIALISTS AT WORK municipalities provide a nutritious midday meal regard- less of whether the children can pay or not, and this is also true of a number of Belgian cities. In France the children usually pay where possible, but no one knows which of the children pay and which do not. Probably the most interesting development in the care of the children is that of the forest school near Berlin. The German cities, having generally provided school physicians, found a large percentage of the chil- dren of such delicate health that there was no likelihood of their growing into strong men and women. Bad food and insanitary homes, added to general tendencies, were producing a class of children who must in time become a burden upon the community. Merely as an experiment a forest school was estabhshed, to which several hundred children were sent. They are fed ; nurses and doctors attend them ; their lessons are given, as far as possible, in the open air ; and every effort is made to build up a strong physical constitution. It has proved an amazingly successful experiment, and after a year or two of attendance practically all of the dehcate children return to the ordinary schools in ro- bust health. The food, the doctors, the nurses, and the medicine, as well as the teaching, are supplied at the expense of the community. Other similar schools are now being estabhshed, and it is reasonable to hope that within a few years they will have spread all over Ger- many, with the result that there will be few weak and delicate children at the end of the school period. The socialists of Lille have undertaken a somewhat similar experiment, and the municipal control of the milk-supply, which is now becoming general, is having an excellent effect upon the babies. SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL REFORM 1 99 In line with these efforts to solve some of the prob- lems of morals and health is the war upon alcoholism. It is one of the most important problems that now confront the socialist party. Aside from the purely- humanitarian motives which influence the socialists to attack alcoholism, there is also a party motive. They fully realize that one of the greatest enemies to the propaganda of their ideas is drunkenness. In many of the European countries almost the only strength remain- ing to the old political parties among the working-class is the support of the shiftless and drunken elements in the large towns and industrial centres. In Belgium the socialists own a large number of club-houses or Houses of the People, all of which are based upon ex- tensive cafes patronized solely by the working-class. Regardless of the financial loss entailed, alcoholic drinks are no longer sold in many of these cooperatives, and the Belgian party is gradually developing a definite political policy against the entire drink traffic. One of the most significant things that has recently happened in Europe is the resolution against alcoholism passed at the last German national congress. In Sweden and the northern countries the socialists have used their influ- ence to promote the Gothenburg system of controlling the drink traffic. A law prohibiting all traffic in drink was recently passed in Finland, although there is a doubt whether the existence of certain international fiscal treaties will not render it to a great extent inopera- tive. The Fabians in London advocate the municipali- zation of the industry in order to abolish the private interest in the making of drunkards. In Switzerland the drink traffic has been nationalized. In Russia the state monopoly of spirit retailing was established solely 200 SOCIALISTS AT WORK for fiscal purposes and not to decrease drunkenness. The problem is a new one for the socialist movement, but nearly everywhere in Europe it is beginning with characteristic energy an active campaign against the liquor traffic, and using its tremendous moral power among the masses to combat alcoholism. I shall not attempt here to give the attitude of the party upon militarism, the colonial question, and agri- culture, — all questions of fundamental importance to the European movement. They are extremely complicated, and the party has not yet adopted a policy that maybe considered final. Not only have the national congresses given serious consideration to these problems, but the several international gatherings have passed resolutions, trying to define the position of the movement. Thus far there has not been an agreement reached which meets the approval of all the national parties. But in passing over these difficult questions, there still remains one matter of too great importance to go without con- sideration, and that is the tactical attitude of the party toward social reform. Socialism is a movement for radical and revolutionary change in the constitution of society, and its policy in regard to reforms and amelio- rations in the present order cannot be ignored. There are two groups in the socialist movement which advocate different political tactics in regard to social reform. A few years ago there was no end of discus- sion within the organization, and the debates between the two groups became bitter, until finally the strife was brought to the attention of the outside world by a pub- lic controversy between Kautsky, " the Marxist," and Bernstein, "the Revisionist." The press heralded the discussion with sinister delight, and Bernstein became SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL REFORM 20I for a time an international figure. It was thought at first that the difference between the two tendencies was limited to Germany, but as the discussion progressed it was found that the party was divided in nearly every country into two camps — on the one hand, reformists, revisionists, moderates, possibilists, and ministerialists, as the opportunists are called ; on the other, impos- sibilists, Marxists, and revolutionists. These various designations were often used in contempt, and in all the more important countries of Europe the two factions were struggling to impress upon the party a political tactic in accord with their own particular view. I have already given the unhappy history of the schisms in the French party. In the very beginning there was a division between the possibilists and the impossibilists, and only a few years ago there occurred the critical and passionate struggle between Guesde and Jaures. The English movement is divided on some- what the same lines, the Fabians going to the most ex- treme limit of the reformist tactic, and the Social Democratic Federation going to the other extreme. In Germany the struggle between the two factions has been almost continuous since 1891. Vollmar, the leader of the Bavarian section of the movement, was one of the first in the German party to take issue with the Marxian tactics of Bebel, Liebknecht, and the North Germans. Bernstein followed with his polemics upon the subject, and at nearly every congress for ten years the matter was brought up in some form. In Italy the quarrels have been more serious even than in France. The re- formists definitely allied themselves with the two minis- tries of Zanardelli and Giolitti. Throughout the north they have pursued everywhere a policy of compromise. 202 SOCIALISTS AT WORK Again and again in the Italian congresses this question threatens the very existence of the movement. Austria has not been without a similar struggle, and in Belgium the reformist policy prevails. The reformists believe that the movement should use all its effort to accomplish certain definite reforms, and in this manner gradually alter the whole constitution of society. They are not agreed as to the extent to which they would go for the sake of specific reforms. Some believe in cooperating with the parties in power ; some, in electoral alliances with the more advanced parties ; some, that the members of the party should accept posts in the cabinet; others go so far as to say that "the movement is everything ; the aim nothing." They do not, however, disagree with their adversaries as to the end. They are all in a sense revolutionists ; but they are convinced that we shall arrive at socialism more quickly by specific reform, and collaboration with other political parties, than by an attitude of uncompromising hostility. The Marxists believe that no fundamental alteration will be made in society except by working-class unity and action. The education and organization of the workers is, therefore, their chief aim. To them parha- ment is largely a place for propaganda and agitation. Reforms gained are looked upon in the light of strength- ening the working-class revolt. They do not deny the value of reform, but they do not want the end and aim of the movement to be confused with what they consider as only temporary ameliorations in the capitalist system. Furthermore, they claim, and this is their chief argu- ment, that reforms are more easily gained by a hostile group of working men in parliament, jealously maintain- SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL REFORM 203 ing its isolation, than by compromise and collaboration with the old parties. In other words they set out to or- ganize the people, and to impress upon them the princi- ples of socialism, fearing to obscure their ideals by an appeal based upon the immediate program alone. The battle between these two tendencies raged inside and outside the party until the Amsterdam Congress, when the Marxists won a signal victory. The latter proved that in those countries where the party had been the most uncompromising the reforms gained are most numerous. For instance, in Germany the movement as a whole, despite Bernstein, Vollmar, and other reform- ists, has pursued a poHcy of continuous and bitter hos- tility to all other parties. And it is in Germany that the most important and fundamental reforms have been obtained. It is not to Italy, France, or Belgium, in all of which countries the socialists have allied them- selves with the radical parties, that one goes to find the most advanced reform legislation. In all these countries, the conditions among the masses are abominable. De- spite the fact that the socialists have been sufficiently powerful in the first two countries to decide the fate of nearly all the recent ministries, they have not been able to obtain freedom for socialist action, even in those mu- nicipalities of which they have control. Millerand was certainly responsible for some important legislation, but it is not to be compared with that of Germany. The fact that the working-class of Europe altered the whole political outlook as soon as it became a party working in open hostility to the other parties is also proof of the soundness of the Marxian tactic. The Fabian and reformist tactics are often thought to be the same, but there is, it must be said, a vital differ- 204 SOCIALISTS AT WORK ence between the two policies. The Fabians steadfastly decHne to adopt the party idea. For years they have pursued an adroit and effective policy in permeating the liberal party, and especially the progressives of Lon- don, with collectivist views. It would be difficult to overestimate the practical value of the work of Sidney Webb, Bernard Shaw, and others, who have for more than twenty years carried on a campaign for municipal ownership. The Fabian essays and tracts have unques- tionably revolutionized the ideas of the younger genera- tion. Sidney Webb's " The London Program" and " London Education," and Bernard Shaw's "The Com- monsense of Municipal Trading," are outlines of a fun- damental municipal policy. In London the Fabian policy has been extremely successful, and as early as 1888 Bernard Shaw says: "We counted the solid ad- vantage of a progressive majority full of ideas that would never have come into their heads had not the Fabians put them there. The generalship of this movement was undertaken chiefly by Sidney Webb, who played such bewildering conjuring tricks with the Liberal thimbles and the Fabian peas, that to this day both the Liberals and the sectarian socialists stand aghast at him." Wholly without an organized move- ment the Fabians have almost from the beginning been the brains, conscience, and will of the progressive majority in the London County Council, and the results they have attained are not to be despised. But to say this is not to ignore the dangers of their policy. The progressives at the last election were defeated, and the socialists of London are left in an almost helpless posi- tion, entirely without a political organization. As a contrast, we find that in Berlin, Paris, Brussels, and SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL REFORM 205 Vienna the socialists have their strongest organizations. In Berlin, the party polls a large majority of all votes cast. It would be impossible for it to be disorganized and rendered helpless by a single defeat. It is a ques- tion, therefore, whether the Fabian policy has really been successful from the larger point of view. To have a his- tory of agitation in London extending over twenty-seven years, and to show at the end of that period no definite political organization of the working-class, is perhaps the most damaging evidence against the Fabian policy. The Fabians can, of course, answer that they never in- tended to form a political party, which is perfectly true ; and in that lies the difference between Fabianism and reformism. The reformists on the continent have invariably worked inside the party, and they have often been most effec- tive in building up the political organization, while the Fabian policy takes us back to the tactics of the French socialists before 1848, who had no thought of organizing politically the working-class. They were endeavoring to convert the middle class, and without organization to capture the government. It was the opinion of nearly all socialists of that period that social reorganization must come from above, and there were those who be- lieved that the advantages of socialism could be made so clear to every rational mind that it only needed an in- telligent statement to convince mankind. That was the view of St. Simon, Fourier, and Robert Owen ; and Louis Blanc, Vidal, and Pecqueur endeavored to persuade the governing classes to abolish themselves. To Blanc and his friends socialism was governmental ownership, or if you please, the ownership by the people of certain or all forms of industry. They portrayed the evils of our 206 SOCIALISTS AT WORK present system ; they sought to aboHsh competition and capitalist institutions. They were all brilliant men, to whom modern socialists owe an infinite debt of gratitude ; but Marx called them Utopians because they failed to realize that the sole means of obtaining their end was the organization of the working-class. The present-day socialists who hold to this Utopian view often leave the party because they feel they can do more effective work for socialism through liberal or radical organizations. This seems to be the view of Burns, Millerand, Viviani, and Briand. It is absurd to question their sincerity without more direct and damaging evidence than is now possessed by socialists who attack them, but if they re- tain their socialist views, they should certainly be classed among the Utopians. We shall see in a later chapter how Marx condemned and finally destroyed the earlier Fabianism, and no finer tribute has ever been paid him than that of Jaures, who was for a time the foremost reformist on the continent, and often an unsparing critic of the Marxists. " To Marx belongs the merit, perhaps the only one of all attributed to him that has fully withstood the trying tests of criticism and of time, of having drawn together and unified the labor movement and the socialist idea. In the first third of the nineteenth century labor struggled and fought against the crushing power of capi- tal, but it was not conscious itself toward what end it was straining ; it did not know that the true objective of its efforts was the common ownership of property. And, on the other hand, socialism did not know that the labor movement was the living form in which its spirit was embodied, the concrete practical force of which it stood in need. Marx was the most clearly convinced SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL REFORM 207 and the most powerful among those who put an end to the empiricism of the labor movement and the Utopian- ism of the socialist thought, and this should always be remembered to his credit. By a crowning application of the Hegehan method, he united the Idea and the Fact, thought and history. He enriched the practical movement by the idea, and to the theory he added prac- tice ; he brought the socialist thought into proletarian life, and proletarian life into socialist thought. From that time on, socialism and the proletariat became in- separable. Socialism can only realize its ideal through the victory of the proletariat, and the proletariat can only complete its being through the victory of socialism. To the ever more pressing question, ' How shall social- ism be reahzed .'' ' we must then give the preliminary answer, ' By the growth of the proletariat to which it is inseparably joined.' This is the first and essential answer ; and whoever refuses to accept it wholly and in its true sense, necessarily places himself outside of socialist life and thought." It would be impossible to state more clearly the distinction between reformism and Fabianism.* That socialism cannot be realized so long as labor remains disorganized and unconscious of its power both the Marxists and the reformists are agreed, and it is this consideration that led three of the ablest politicians in the socialist movement to place higher even than doctrine the unified organization of the workers. Liebknecht, de Paepe, and Hardie have all sacrificed the program in the interest of solidarity. It is unnecessary to dwell * Of course I am using the term only as it applies to political tactics. The Fabian Society as a force in socialist education and propaganda cannot be overestimated. 208 SOCIALISTS AT WORK upon the difference between these tactics and those of the Fabians. In the one case the workers are left unor- ganized, unconscious of their strength, and incapable of exercising their will or of fulfilling their immense obh- gations to society. In the other they are taught self- respect, independence, and responsibility. They acquire a knowledge of their tremendous power when united. They become conscious of their moral obligation to each other and to society, — an obligation which they cannot throw on to other shoulders. Above all they are taken out of the corrupting and demoralizing atmosphere of Liberal and Tory party patronage which enervates when it does not destroy all manly qualities. Fabianism sacri- fices all this for the sake of specific reforms, perhaps extremely important in themselves and of great social value, but they will be obtained fast enough when the workers are once organized politically. Fortunately there is no disagreement of this sort on the continent, and in the sense I have used the term, there are few Fabians outside of England.* Reform- ism is a different tactic altogether, as it presupposes a party. It is a policy to be pursued by the party as a whole. It has the same confidence in the conscience of the party that the Fabians have in individuals, and is without fear that its solidarity will suffer or its social- * Perhaps there should be one reservation made to this statement. In America there are many socialists and single-taxers who have long pursued the Fabian policy. The most striking instance is the brilliant fight of Tom Johnson in Cleveland. He has the almost unique distinction of having used these tactics with success. But in winning a three-cent fare he has done no more than the socialists of Milwaukee, and in addition they have built up a great party that has already forced through the legislature and city council many important reforms, and promises to become a controlling influence in Wisconsin politics. SOCIALISM A.\D SOCIAL REFORM 209 ist aim be obscured by the adoption of a more genial and compromising attitude toward the old parties. It urges agreements and affiliations before election, and in the legislative chambers cooperation with the other advanced parties to the extent of forming blocs, and any other agreements that will advance reform legisla- tion. It considers that there are two distinct parts to every socialist program : one essentially reformist, the other essentially revolutionary. For the time being it would present to the governing classes that part which is most easily accepted, and work together with them upon that basis, leaving the other part, which exceeds the bounds of what is immediately reaHzable, to the future. Reformism as a political policy seemed to reach its cHmax in Europe before the international congress at Amsterdam, but the Titanic struggle between Jaures and Bebel settled the matter for the time being. Some details of that debate have already been given in another chapter, and there is no necessity for considering it further. Its importance lies in the fact that Marx- ism, which had built up modern socialism and had for over forty years been the basis of the doctrine and pro- gram of the party, was definitely established as the political tactic of the international movement. Of course this does not mean that the party has abandoned efforts for immediate reform. It simply recognizes the indisputable fact that the socialist movement cannot help being a stupendous reform force, and that no matter what course it pursues the mere fact of its exist- ence obliges the governing classes to ameliorate the conditions of the workers. CHAPTER VIII SOCIALISM IN THE PARLIAMENTS The parliaments of continental Europe are not mere legislative bodies : they exercise a profound influence upon thought and life. The newspapers give first place to parliamentary news, and during the progress of a great debate every detail is followed with interest. The entire conversation in cafes, clubs, and even at private dinners, is often devoted to the parliamentary events of the day. The "full-dress" debates are numerous, and resemble in many ways great battles. The chief debaters are like generals, each with an enthusiastic and devoted following. The parliaments are, therefore, not dull and methodical as with us, discussing mere de- tails of legislation ; they are in a sense the centre of the intellectual life of the community. The discussions cover a wide range of subjects. Days and days are spent in fighting out questions of principle, and the policies of the government are considered both from the theoretical and practical standpoint in relation to the welfare of the people. It is surprising how little there is of moment that does not find its way into par- liamentary debates, and one who follows the proceedings day by day will find himself an couj-ajtt with nearly all events of national or international importance. One reason for this breadth of thought and influence upon life is that the European parliaments are in every 2IO SOCIALISM IN THE PARLIAMENTS 211 way more powerful than our own. Historically the lower houses have come to be thought the direct representa- tives of the people, as opposed to the hereditary power of the monarchy or the upper houses. They are thus looked upon as nuclei of concentrated public opinion. To a degree, therefore, quite unknown to us their deci- sions are considered final ; and only in case of serious danger to the established order do the upper houses or monarchs attempt to interfere. The latter, as a result of the amazing growth of democracy throughout Europe, feel increasingly their precarious position, and they rarely interfere when the lower assembly shows a de- termined and hostile spirit. The long years of struggle between democracy and autocracy have gradually crippled the power of the latter in many European countries. In republican France the executive has very little power. " There is," Sir Henry Maine says, "no living function- ary who occupies a more pitiable position than the French president. The old kings of France reigned and governed, the constitutional king reigns but does not govern ; the president of the United States governs but does not reign. It has been reserved for the presi- dent of the French republic neither to reign nor yet to govern." And notwithstanding the increasing helplessness of the European executive, there is no judiciary to defeat the will of the people as expressed in their legislative assemblies. The power of the French parliament is almost omnipotent, or at least little less so than the British parliament. As there is no written constitution in England, the law of the legislative assembly is con- sidered final. In France it is intended that the constitu- tion shall not be changed by the ordinary statute, but if 212 SOCIALISTS AT WORK the chambers should decide to pass a law that was ob- viously unconstitutional, no court or official could legally prevent its application. In Italy there has long been a dread of judge-made law, and the courts have been gradually rendered impotent to thwart legislative de- cisions. There is some difference of opinion in Germany as to the power of the courts to pass upon the constitu- tionality of an imperial law, but it is not at all likely that the courts will ever venture to set aside statutes passed by the legislature of the empire. In Austria the courts can pass upon the validity of ordinances, but are es- pecially forbidden to inquire into the constitutionality of statutes. Even in Switzerland the legal tribunals must enforce without question the laws of the federal assem- bly. In none of these countries is there a body vested with the supreme authority that rests in our higher courts. Both, therefore, in the absolute power of final legislation, and in their moral power as representatives of the people, most of the lower houses of the parliaments of Western Europe exercise a dominant influence upon the course of progress. Even this does not exhaust the constitutional rights of the European legislators. They also exercise an effective control over the policy of the administration. It is thought that to have the power to pass laws without being permitted in any sense to control their method of enforcement is to render the popular assembly well-nigh helpless. Little by little, therefore, the lower houses have brought under their control the ministers in charge of the various executive departments ; and in nearly every country in Europe they are now directly responsi- ble to the lower house. When the government is a highly centralized one, this power of supervision and of SOCIALISM IN THE PARLIAMENTS 213 effective criticism is perhaps as important as the legisla- tive work itself. In all European parliaments the legislators have the right to question the administration upon its acts, and even in advance upon its policies. In England this rarely goes beyond questions, but in France, Italy, and Belgium, the custom has grown into extended inter- pellations. In Germany this right of questioning the government is invaluable, as the legislative power of the Reichstag is limited, and the lack of ordinary political rights would otherwise prevent the socialists from exer- cising any considerable influence. This privilege enables the socialists to use the Reichstag as a platform for speaking to the people. It is customary in some coun- tries to limit the use of questions, and often they may be addressed to a minister only with his consent. . But the interpellation is a matter of right, which any repre- sentative may exercise irrespective of the wishes of the cabinet. Thus it is often the vehicle for the severest criticism of the government ; and as any section of par- liament may exercise it at will, it gives that section, no matter how small, an exceptional opportunity to place its views before the country. It would be impossible to overestimate the value to democracy of the right of interpellation. It is an in- valuable aid to those whose rights are jeopardized by official violence or by any form of governmental injustice. Except in Russia, and a few of the more backward coun- tries, it is inconceivable that in Europe men should be shot, deported from their homes, denied every constitutional protection, and put at the mercy of martial law, — as happened for a period of many months a year or so ago in Colorado, — without the entire country knowing both 214 SOCIALISTS AT WORK sides of the case. And it is for exactly this reason that the right of interpellation is regarded in Europe as one of the main bulwarks of political liberty. A dramatic element adds to the influence of European parliaments. A section of a legislative body may at any moment overturn an unpopular administration. Again and again cabinets are forced to resign as a result of acts which, if committed daily by American executives, would go unquestioned. In watching the French chamber at work for a few weeks I saw the socialists several times give the government a thoroughly un- pleasant trouncing : twice upon its policy in dealing with two serious strikes, and once it was put in danger over the administration of the law defining the relation of the church to the state. Upon these occasions the debates were of intense interest, and it seemed as if all Paris were watching the outcome. But the debates in the European legislatures are not limited to specific questions of administrative policy. There is no hesitancy whatever to grapple with great and fundamental social, economic, and political principles. In fact, nearly all questions having to do with adminis- trative policy present themselves, in one way or another, either as the working out or the violation of some general principle which is supposed to underlie social institu- tions. During the last decade the socialists have led most of these battles ; and naturally, as their attitude is severely critical of the principles underlying the present order, they have again and again drawn the representa- tives of the majority into heated discussions upon funda- mentals. In this way Bebel used to be pitted against Bismarck, and is now carrying on, from day to day, a running parliamentary battle with von Buelow. In SOCIALISM IN THE PARLIAMENTS 21 5 France, it is Jaures against Clemenceau, in Belgium Vandervelde against de Smet de Neyer, and in Italy Ferri against Giolitti. On the occasions of these great debates the galleries are crowded, and thousands fail to obtain seats, while the people generally display an un- flagging interest. This is all in extraordinary contrast to our own parlia- mentary Hfe, which passes on from day to day without raising a single ripple of excitement. One can even read the papers diligently and not obtain any consecu- tive notion of what is happening in the chief legislative body of the nation. The people know that nothing of any importance is going to happen, and they fully real- ize that the legislature has little power, and almost no desire to exercise that power in the interest of the com- munity. As there exist only two parties, there is nearly always a permanent majority during the legislative session ; and while in other countries this would give the party in power an opportunity to carry out its policy unhindered, it seems to be with us an opportunity to prevent the passage of any measure of national interest. The body is strictly limited to legislative work, and the ministers and executive are in no wise responsible to it. Decentralized government puts quite out of the reach of our legislators some of the most important executive departments; and no matter how badly, unjustly, or even autocratically the law is administered, the legisla- ture has no power to interfere ; it can only retort by some change in the law. Our parHamentary work, therefore, consists largely in passing laws which are soon repealed, and then with the growth of abuses passed again. Our executive is only less powerful than our judiciary, which in America exercises an autocratic 2l6 SOCIALISTS AT WORK influence over the course of legislation ; so that, instead of being governed by popularly elected representatives, we are the subjects of a judiciary which wields a greater power than that vested in any monarch or upper house of Western Europe. In addition to these constitutional disabilities we suffer from the fact that our electoral power is in the hands of two political parties, while in nearly all continental countries there are many parties. It is an old custom among the Anglo-Saxons for two parties to battle for su- premacy. The institution is being mutilated at present in England, but in America it remains unimpaired. To a certain extent both parties exist without principles, and the main distinction between them is that one is out and the other is in. On the continent the various parties represent widely different principles and in- terests, perhaps as a rule the latter more than the former. Thus in nearly every country there are politi- cal groups representing royalty, the landowning interests, the capitalists, and the workers. In some cases, how- ever, the parties avow certain principles ; and, of course, in all countries the socialist party rests its entire cam- paign upon a definite program, fully stating its funda- mental principles and doctrines. Instead of two parties, therefore, the political forces are broken up into number- less groups representing almost every phase of national life ; and when a government comes into power, it is confronted by the "difficult problem of trying to har- monize the interests of a sufficient number of represen- tatives to form a working majority. This splitting up of the political forces into groups is largely due to the system of voting. The second ballot is in almost general use. The theory is that where three SOCIALISM IN THE PARLIAMENTS 21/ or four candidates are in the field, one may be elected without having obtained the support of an actual major- ity of the constituents. The first ballot enables all the various groups to vote for a candidate directly represent- ing their own interests ; but at the second election only the two candidates that received the highest number of votes remain in the field. This electoral method enables the various sections to test their strength at the first ballot, knowing that if they fail in electing their own representative, they have still an opportunity to elect the one who seems to them the better of the two candidates remaining in the field. As a result it is possible for the voters on the continent to maintain a party with princi- ples, instead of being forced to vote at all times for the one whom they consider the better of two candidates put forward by the opposing political machines. How- ever inefficient or dishonest the candidates may be, no other choice exists where only two parties battle for supremacy. This is, of course, what happens repeatedly in Amer- ica. Except for an occasional independent campaign, and the nominees of the prohibition and socialist parties, the voters are forced to select one of two can- didates, both of whom may be unprincipled and in- efficient. When it occurs, as it does frequently, that the two main political organizations are secretly united for the purpose of betraying the people, representative democracy becomes a farce, and government by the people degenerates into government by two unprinci- pled and predatory machines. The evil is not a new one, and various independent political parties have been alive to its dangers. In 1874 a party was formed in Cahfornia, which denounced in its program the doctrine 2l8 SOCIALISTS AT WORK of party fealty and the tyranny of party discipline as the greatest political evils of the time. Twenty years later the Populist party declared that the nation had been brought to the verge of moral, political, and material ruin by the corruption which dominates the ballot-box, the legislatures, the congress, and the ju- diciary. " We have witnessed," the program says, "for more than a quarter of a century the struggle of the two great political parties for power and plunder." Again and again these independent movements have arisen with the idea of breaking down machine rule. Both the Greenbackers and the Populists obtained the rank of national parties, with seats in Congress, and even in the Senate ; but as soon as they began to ex- ercise a really important influence one of the old parties adopted their program or some of their candidates, with the result in every case of destroying the organ- ization. The first campaign of Henry George in New York and the recent one led by William R. Hearst were destroyed in a similar manner. There is no question but that it would have been easier for these movements to have continued independent if the second ballot had been in use ; but even without the second ballot a party with the highest principles, and with a consciousness of the power which a hostile third party can exercise, even in the face of formidable opposition, might have come to occupy a position similar to that held by like parties in Europe. Unfortunately the Americans seem not yet to realize that an independent movement, which can force one of the old parties to adopt its program, might exercise a similar power in other directions by continuing its independent methods. In nearly every country of Europe the old parties have SOCIALISM IN THE PARLIAMENTS 219 pursued the tactic of partially adopting the socialist pro- gram for the purpose of destroying the movement, but in each case the attempt has failed. The socialists have considered this as only the beginning of their in- fluence as an independent political force. The lack of principles and political foresight, and especially the overwhelming desire to win power im- mediately and by strategy, which often distinguish the " reform " movements from the sociaUst movement, have enabled the bosses to outwit and divide every sincere body of radicals, with the result that the corporations are now in complete control of all our law-making bodies, leaving America with the unenviable and unique distinction of being the only large country where work- ing men have no representation in its chief legislature. The House of Representatives is a striking instance of the dominant power of capitalism. Neither the farmers nor the working-class as such have any directly controlled representatives. The Senate is largely a body of millionaires and their legal retainers. As a rule over 60 per cent are lawyers, and the rest are nearly all capitalists, without the slightest interest in or sympathy with the workers. It is the same in the House, where again not less than 60 per cent are also lawyers ; that is to say, railroad attorneys and the representatives of the great monopolies and favored business interests. In case "a friend of the Peepul," as he would be called in Washington, happens to get into the House or the Senate, the legislative machines are so strong that they effectually prevent the recal- citrant individual from being heard. The speaker of the house is often referred to as a Czar, and he ex- ercises a tyranny over the representatives which would 220 SOCIALISTS AT WORK not be tolerated in any other parliament. The United States Congress is, therefore, the least democratic legis- lature in any advanced country ; and for this reason we are the most backward in all forms of legal protection of the life and interests of the masses. Passing from these striking contrasts between the parliamentary situation with us and that existing in Europe, we find that the socialist groups in the various parliaments occupy a pecuhar position among the other political representatives. To begin with they are con- trolled by a large party membership, which, through its representatives, has agreed upon a complete politi- cal program and devised a conscious and definite par- liamentary policy. The other parties of Europe are ordinarily without organization, sometimes consisting of little more than electoral groups or national clubs. The parliamentary representatives are, therefore, not as a rule bound to any program. In the case of the sociahsts the parliamentary group is always under the direct control of the party, and this constitutes a rather striking innova- tion in political methods. The general scheme of politi- cal organization was worked out first by the Germans, whose socialist party is older by far than that of any other country. As early as 1867 there were eight repre- sentatives in the Reichstag, and by 1884 there were twenty-four. So that the Germans began to exercise a parliamentary influence nearly twenty years before the socialists of any other country. France did not win any seats until 1887. The Belgians obtained representation first in 1894, and the Italians, while winning their first victory in the early eighties, exercised no influence until 1895. The German movement, therefore, was early forced to meet problems unknown to the workers of SOCIALISM IN THE PARLIAMENTS 221 other countries, and to fight out its parliamentary policy and electoral tactics without precedents to be guided by. It was natural that there should have been some con- fusion during the early days, and indeed the leaders were greatly divided as to what policy the party should pursue in parliament. The Lassallians were wilUng to make the most of parliamentary alliances in order to obtain an amelioration in the condition of the workers, while Liebknecht was at first violently anti-parhamen- tary, fearing lest the energies of socialism should be en- gulfed in the swamp of parliamentarism. He wished to go to the Reichstag merely to protest against the capitalist regime, and especially against the " blood and iron" policy of Bismarck, and after protesting, to leave without resigning his seat. It was a rather melo- dramatic method for a party to pursue, but it must be remembered that the government was then carrying on a ferocious policy of persecution against socialists. The organization itself was illegal, and it was next to impos- teible for its leaders to entertain the idea of a working arrangement with anybody not actually a member of their secret organization. It was Bebel who first broke away from this negative policy, and when in 1869 he took an active part in the discussion upon the revision of the industrial laws, and even took a place upon the commission instituted to study the question, Liebknecht at a public meeting pronounced a severe criticism of his action. He maintained that it was impossible to obtain anything except by force from a parliament made up of the enemies of labor. "What practical object have we then," he asked, "in making speeches in the Reichstag.-' None whatever ; and to speak without an object is a fool's pleasure." 222 SOCIALISTS AT WORK It was not long, however, before Bebel and Liebknecht came to an understanding, and at the congress of the Social Democratic Party in 1870 the delegates, after dis- cussion, adopted a definite parliamentary policy. They agreed that the main purpose in taking part in elections was to carry on the socialist propaganda, but that the parliamentary group, while maintaining in general a strictly negative attitude, should nevertheless take part in all discussions of proposed legislation affecting the interests of the workers. But even this policy, while more advanced than the other, became inadequate as the party grew in power. At nearly every election their votes increased, and from little more than 100,000 in 1 87 1 the number increased to over 2,000,000 in 1898. As its following became greater, its responsi- bilities grew heavier, and every one saw that a broader parliamentary policy was necessary. At the national congress in 1897 Liebknecht himself took the initia- tive, and frankly stated that events, and especially the growth of the party, had forced him to alter radically his theory of parliamentary tactics. He criticised un- sparingly his own former policy of anti-parliamentarism, which he called contemptuously the tactic of talk ; and advocated with eloquence and power a complete and practical parliamentary policy with all liberty to the party's representatives in working for specific legisla- tion intended to ameliorate the condition of the workers. " That is the necessary tactic of the party, a tactic infinitely more revolutionary than the tactic of talk," he said amidst tremendous applause. " Yes, comrades, he who does nothing at all except to mouth revolutionary phrases is at his ease to judge and to condemn ; he who does nothing can make no mistakes. But he who acts, SOCIALISM IN THE PARLIAMENTS 223 he can easily make mistakes ; but he is in the struggle, and that is of much more account than the making of beautiful phrases." But despite the fact that the party did not revise its parliamentary policy until the nineties, the movement itself was exercising a profound influence upon the course of legislation. As early as the seventies the German government began to fear the rising tide of socialism, and in 1878 Prince Bismarck told the Reichs- tag : " I will further every endeavor which positively aims at improving the condition of the working-class. . . . As soon as a positive proposal comes from the socialists for fashioning the future in a sensible way, in order that the lot of working men may be improved, I will not at any rate refuse to examine it favorably, and I will not even shrink from the idea of state help for those who have the disposition to help themselves." Along with this statement came the proposal for the compulsory insurance of the working-class. A few years later Bismarck proclaimed his belief in the justice of the socialists' contention that every man should have the right to work ; and in comment he said : " Give the working man the right to employment as long as he has health. Assure him care when he is sick, and maintenance when he is old. If you will do that with- out fearing the sacrifice, or crying out 'state socialism' directly the words ' provision for old age ' are uttered, . . . then I believe that the gentlemen of the Wyden (Social Democratic) program will sound their bird-call in vain ; and as soon as the working men see that the government is earnestly concerned for their welfare, the thronging to them will cease." These two quotations from Bismarck's speeches in the 224 SOCIALISTS AT WORK Reichstag show the already great influence of the so- cialist movement. Even the socialists were astonished at the change in the attitude of the government ; and it seemed a remarkable victory to have forced auto- cratic Germany to revolutionize its economic policy. If the government had ceased persecuting the social- ists, while granting these concessions to their program, it might have disarmed them. But as it was, the so- cialists and not the government obtained the entire credit. Bebel said at the time, in the humorous and confidential manner he occasionally assumes toward his opponents in the Reichstag : " I will frankly tell you something. If anything has furthered the social democratic agitation and tendency, it is the fact that Prince Bismarck has to a certain extent declared for socialism and social reform ; only one must remember that we are in this case the master and he the scholar. People are saying everywhere : When to-day Prince Bis- marck with his great authority comes forward and not only acknowledges the existence of a social question, — which only a few years ago was emphatically denied by the ruling authorities, — but even declares for so- cialism, and regards it as his duty to introduce meas- ures on the subject, then it may well be concluded that social democracy is at bottom right." At this time the two chief leaders in the German movement were Liebknecht and Bebel. Liebknecht was the older of the two, and a man of exceptional education. " As far back as the beginning of the eighteenth century," Edward Aveling says, "an an- cestor of his was professor and rector of the Univer- sity of Giessen," and in the middle of the sixteenth century a forebear, Martin Luther, " was making some SOCIALISM IN THE PARLIAMENTS 22$ Stir in the world." His thorough education and schol- arly instincts led Liebknecht to think of a university- career, but strong democratic sympathies forced him to take a part in the various revolutionary outbreaks which were occurring in 1848, in all parts of Europe. He lay in prison for nine months as a result of his revolutionary ardor, and finally he was exiled and forced to live in England for nearly thirteen years. There he met Marx, and carried on his studies directly under his influence and tutelage. In 1862 there was an amnesty for political offenders, and Liebknecht re- turned to Germany. A few years later, having been banished from Prussia, he went to Leipsic, where he met Bebel. The trade unions were then growing in power, and Bebel and Liebknecht joined forces. In 1867 the latter was again imprisoned, but nevertheless in September of the same year he was elected to the Reichstag, where as a result of his superior educa- tion he was more than a match for his parliamentary opponents. Bebel, on the contrary, was a working man, and in the early days of his parliamentary career his language was rough and unpolished. Occasionally he made gram- matical errors, and was hooted at by his opponents, who even called out that one who could not speak German properly ought not to pretend to talk to educated peo- ple. Nevertheless, Bebel represented infinitely more than Liebknecht, personifying, as it were, the entrance to power of the men of toil. One can understand that it must have been annoying to the aristocrats to have had this rough agitator break into their midst, and at first Bebel had to suffer day by day the ridicule and even the insults of the representatives of the educated 226 SOCIALISTS AT WORK classes. But Bebel had the natural power of oratory, and even in those days he often humiliated his proud opponents. Princess Catherine Radziwill gives an interesting picture of Bebel in her recently published memoirs of life at the German and Russian courts. It was at the time Bismarck was trying to force through the Reichstag the anti-socialist laws ; and she says the debates between Bebel and Bismarck were listened to feverishly by all those who could get access to the house. " They were opened," she says, "by the Chancellor himself, who spoke for over an hour, and to him Bebel replied in a speech which deserved to go down to posterity as an example of eloquence. Never were such impassioned accents heard within the walls of the old building ; every one felt moved by the strange persuasiveness with which this remarkable man appealed to the sense of justice and humanity of the whole German nation, ab- juring it not to make outcasts of thousands of its chil- dren. In listening to those savage accents one seemed to hear, made vocal, the writing on the wall, which amid the splendors of the Persian king's supper appeared to remind him that ' for all these things he would be brought into judgment' It is impossible," she continues, " not to be moved by an argument when it comes from the lips of Bebel. He speaks of poverty, of misery, of vice, as a man who has known and suf- fered from these things. He knows how to excite his listeners' pity, not for imaginary facts, but for painful and sad truths. He knows how to make them touch with their finger all the evils of which he speaks to them, — he surpassed himself, but his efforts were doomed before they were made." SOCIALISM IN THE PARLIAMENTS 22/ It is a curious example of the irony of fate that the crude, rough working man of forty years ago is to-day one of the greatest powers in Europe. He was always an orator, and to-day he is the ablest parliamentarian in Germany. Now one of the oldest and most experi- enced men in the Reichstag, his memory and his inti- mate knowledge of the events of the last half century give to his utterances an authoritative value that is not equalled even by those of the emperor. Despite the fact that he represents in the Reichstag a small minority, no other member exercises a personal influence equal to his ; and one can actually feel a thrill of excitement pass through the chamber when he rises to speak. Professor Theodor Mommsen, the great German histo- rian, once said, " Everybody in Germany knows that with brains like those of Bebel, it would be possible to furnish forth a dozen noblemen from the east of the Elbe in a fashion that would make them shine among their peers." It would serve no useful purpose to treat in detail one of the many great debates that have occurred in the Reichstag between the socialists and their opponents. Hardly a month passes without one of importance. And I have already shown the immense influence of the movement in obtaining the most revolutionary re- form legislation that exists in any country in Europe. The running fire of criticism and the hostility of the socialists have simply broken down and shattered all of the cherished principles of economic liberalism. The government has been driven to abandon one after an- other, and by the sheer force of socialist opposition it has been obliged to grant a series of fundamental social and industrial rights. Bismarck granted in principle 228 SOCIALISTS AT WORK the right to employment, and the imperial legislation grants the right of compensation to the aged, to the sick and infirm, and to those injured in industry. The right of trade union organization, of striking, and of peaceful picketing are also now assured by the law, and the government throws upon the manufacturing classes the entire responsibility for accidents. The right of the community to its natural resources, to its public utili- ties, and to the unearned increment arising from the sale and transfer of land, have also been won in prin- ciple, and in no small degree worked out in practice. The real significance of the parliamentary victories of the socialists lies in the fact that the workers are no longer at the complete mercy of the capitalists. They have won for themselves important means of defence, and instead of being forced individually to deal with their employers they have acquired entire freedom in their battle to force collective contracts. Some of the worst forms of capitalist exploitation are done away with by labor legislation, which establishes a certain standard of conditions to be observed in industry ; and if an em- ployee is rendered incapable of further labor, he and his family are insured care and protection, instead of being forced to become beggars and paupers. While the sociahsts are pressing upon the state a higher con- ception of its social duties, they are at the same time breaking down the polity which acknowledges that all natural resources and all forms of profitable enterprise are divinely estabhshed for the benefit of the capitaHst ; and as a direct result, the state is taking into its own hands some of the most important and socially necessary of the capitalistic enterprises. The German party is the oldest, and because of that SOCIALISM IN THE PARLIAMENTS 229 it has more to its credit than any other movement, but the influence of sociahsts is quite as clearly seen in the parliaments of other countries. In the chapter on the British movement some details are given of the power exercised by the Labor Party during the last two years. The gain in legislation is considerable, but the most striking change to be noticed as a result of the advent of labor is the new atmosphere in the House of Com- mons. What used to be " the most exclusive and inter- esting gentlemen's club in Europe " has been invaded by working men, and their presence alone has revolu- tionized the old order. Their election is a direct impu- tation that the Liberals and Tories have neglected the public welfare, and that the public know it and have lost confidence in them. Probably no other aristocracy in Europe has in the past enjoyed a power so free from restraint and criticism on the part of the lower classes as the British, and it realizes instinctively the funda- mental danger of the present situation. This feeling is entirely a product of the last two years, although Hardie has from the beginning irritated and offended the representatives of the old order. Shortly after his entrance to parKament he found the House one day in the midst of rejoicing because a son had been born in the royal family. There was a great demonstration, and messages of congratulation and felicitation were sent to the mother. At almost the same moment there occurred in Wales a terrible colliery disaster in which many miners were buried alive, and Hardie arose in the midst of the parliamentary rejoic- ings to ask the House to send to the wives, mothers, and sisters of the miners some expression of its sym- pathy. It would be impossible to describe the effect of 230 SOCIALISTS AT WORK his request. The members of what was supposed to be the nation's house of representatives were so completely bound up in their narrow family circles that to them the death of these workers was no more than a passing newspaper story ; and the mere mention of this terrible accident during the progress of the festivities was an unwarrantable piece of impudence and bad taste. It was certainly awkward and annoying, but it was significant of the broad horizon that the representatives of the work- ing men bring with them when they enter parliament. It seems a breaking down of class lines ; but while it does not go as far as that, it has nevertheless worked a revolution in the psychology of the House of Commons. One day the question of the unemployed was being debated, and Hardie sat alone, stung and embittered by the lack of all consideration or sympathy for the un- happy starving wanderers, until, unable to contain him- self longer, he called out, " You well-fed beasts ! " It was not a remark that one expected to hear in the House ; but it had its effect on the tone of the discus- sion. ' Upon a similar occasion. Will Crooks said with some fire, in answer to the Liberals and Tories who had been saying that the unemployed were lazy, lounging vagabonds who did not want work, that he had observed a goodly number of vagrants about Rotten Row — a fashionable English promenade — dressed in top-hats and spats. On still another occasion, when a bill was before the House for the feeding of school children, the gentlemen of the old parties had been saying over and over again that the children were hungry not so much because of poverty as because their mothers did not know how to cook, or preferred drinking in the saloons, or gossiping with their neighbors, to attending to their SOCIALISM IN THE PARLIAMENTS 23 1 household duties. This would have passed without comment in the old House ; it would have been thought perfectly proper to have referred in this manner to several million mothers. But in the new order it was taken as an insult by the men on the labor benches, and one can imagine the electric effect on the House when Hardie remarked that it was embarrassing for the labor members to sit quietly in their seats while hearing their wives described as slatterns. These are, of course, the merest incidents of debate, but I cannot help think- ing they are more significant than legislation. In- stead of merely a few landowners, younger sons of noblemen, barristers, solicitors, capitalists, and other gentlemen spending their time largely in discussing their own affairs, and with some annoyance philanthrop- ically deciding to give an occasional evening to a bill having to do with remedying the frightful abuses of the EngHsh slums, and the wretched conditions of a dete- riorating populace of some 12,000,000, there are now at least a few representatives of the underworld who have forced their way into the midst of these oligarchs, to insist upon the necessity for social reform. To say the least, the upper classes do not like it, and being rather put to it to find a way out, they have begun an attack upon socialism which is far from observing that spirit of fair-play upon which the Briton has always prided himself. At every new election fought by labor, and at every sign of its increasing power, the bitterness grows more intense ; until now the propertied interests have entered upon a crusade against socialism and are trying to prove that it advo- cates free love, the destruction of the family, atheism, and the outright confiscation of private property. 232 SOCIALISTS AT WORK Many well-known men, including some prominent nobles, are at present issuing manifestos warning the people of the danger to England of this new movement. At first the campaign was so absurd that the socialists looked upon it complacently, and even considered it a valuable asset to their propaganda, but the din grew, until at present these attacks from thou- sands of platforms and nearly all the newspapers have become too serious to be ignored. Finally Bruce Glas- ier, the able editor of " The Labour Leader," like a lion at bay, has turned upon the accusers, and for several weeks has answered their charges by a series of articles so damaging to the Liberals and Tories that they plan already to abandon their method of attack. In answer to the charge that socialism is spoliation, Glasier has given the shameless facts of confiscation, bribery, and corruption, that have been practised by prominent English families in building up their vast fortunes. In answer to the criticism that socialism wishes to alter the marriage relation and to estabhsh a licentious system of free love, he takes up one after another of the Liberals and Tories who have advocated the loosest of sexual relationships, and lived lives of the grossest im- morality. As a testimony upon upper-class ethics, he quotes one marquis to the effect that " There is no law of nature, human or divine, in man's present state which confines him to one woman, and that not one man in ten thousand could on his deathbed swear that he had truly obeyed the marriage law." He prints the infamous memorandum of Lord Roberts, a Tory, issued in June, 1886, which instituted compulsory medical ser- vice for the inspection of prostitutes for the Indian Army, and drew from an under ofificer a request that SOCIALISM IN THE PARLIAMENTS 233 more young and attractive women should be sent out. In answer to the accusation that socialism is agnostic, Glasier pursues the same policy of proving that for every militant agnostic among the sociaHsts of any im- portance there are many among the Liberals and Tories. He shows that socialism has nothing in common with confiscation or spoliation, with any change in the mar- riage relation, or with any alteration in the religious views of the individual. The response of the socialists to these attacks is by no means limited to this effective work of Bruce Glasier in "The Labour Leader." Rob- ert Blatchford and all the other journalists have taken a hand in the fight, and the campaigners of both the labor and socialist parties are addressing enormous audiences at about two thousand meetings every week. I have dealt at length with this situation in Eng- land because it illustrates what occurred in other coun- tries of Europe , as soon as socialism began to force its way into parliament. Similar arguments were used against it in Germany during the seventies, when the movement began to be formidable there; and by imput- ing to it responsibility for some attacks upon the life of the emperor, and repeatedly referring to it as a criminal organization advocating every immorality, Bismarck was enabled to force through the Reichstag his iniqui- tous measures which made outlaws of all sociaHsts. In France during the eighties and early nineties the same thing occurred, and in Italy, although the so- cialists oppose the anarchists, they are invariably held responsible for the work of the latter in encourag- ing insurrection and violence. What is happening at the present moment in England is, therefore, typical, but this form of attack has nowhere in Europe availed 234 SOCIALISTS AT WORK to defeat socialism. Indeed, with hardly a single ex- ception it may be said to have aided the movement, for as soon as the people have discovered that the attitude of the upper classes is one of intentional misrepresen- tation they have turned to the socialists with increasing enthusiasm. And when the upper classes in other countries have learned that misrepresentation and false- hood have only a momentary effect, and are followed by a strong reaction, they have settled down to a policy of social reform. We are beginning to see the same change in attitude on the part of the British upper classes.* The more far-seeing political leaders begin to realize that the campaign of nastiness and falsehood is not hurting socialism, and they are now exerting themselves to stop this method of attack. Lord Milner openly rebukes the anti-socialist campaigners, and suggests a response similar to that of Bismarck to the rising tide of revolu- tionary feeling. "The true antidote to sociahsm," he says, " is practical social reform," and he urges with * There is a faint rumor that many of the sincere radicals in the Lib- eral Party are becoming convinced that this campaign is a cloak for reac- tion, and that back of it are men in the Liberal and Tory parties who desire not only to oppose revolutionary socialism, but also every effort to ameliorate the condition of the masses. These reactionaries are notori- ously unsympathetic toward every democratic aspiration, and consistently, both in politics and in business, fill their own pockets at the expense of the community. Some of the more high-minded Liberals and Tories find the present situation intolerable; because however much they differ from the views of the extreme sociahsts they differ as much from the class self- ishness and inhumanity of the reactionary elements. Therefore it is rumored that unless a majority is to be found for the support of a con- structive policy of social reform, the more public-spirited of the younger men may form a new party resembling in some respects the radical- socialists of France. SOCIALISM IN THE PARLIAMENTS 235 passionate intensity the necessity for remedying the wrongs of private property in time to save the country from getting into the hands of the revolutionary ele- ments. Many other prominent leaders are expressing the same views, and it is unquestionable that the pres- ent inadvisable method of meeting advancing socialism will be revised. It is not improbable, therefore, that within the next few years we shall see both the Liberal and Tory parties competing with each other to intro- duce social legislation as radical in character as the state socialism of Germany. In both Germany and England, therefore, we find that socialism is a powerful parliamentary force, and even occupies a foremost place in the thought of the entire community. And this is not less true of France and Italy. In the Latin countries the fear of sociaHsm on the part of the upper classes has become almost a mania. Two causes lie at the bottom of this dread. The first is the revolutionary tradition among the Latin peoples ; and secondly, there is hardly an upper- class man in Italy or France who does not fear that the slightest change in events may bring the socialists into power. In talking with well-to-do men one fre- quently hears it said, with a kind of despair, that socialism is inevitable. Among the masses it arouses unbounded enthusiasm, and it is unquestionable that it is fast taking hold of the entire working-class. It is sometimes difficult to account for its influence, be- cause as a rule the movement is badly organized in these countries, and most of its adherents rarely read sociahst books or pamphlets. It is more of an instinc- tive movement than one finds in England, which gives an Anglo-Saxon the feeling of unsafe foundations. 236 SOCIALISTS AT WORK In Italy the political leaders of the older parties lack the power to concentrate the propertied classes upon really effective measures of social reform. The reactionaries are extremists with no faith in any other method of dealing with discontent than massacring the people at every sign of an uprising, and limiting the right of free speech, combination, and the suffrage. Their retort to the cry of misery is martial law, a permanent form of which they tried to force through parliament in 1899. The effect of repression is, of course, not what they hope for, as instead of pacifying they inflame the masses until they resort to violence and lawlessness. The parties of the Right will not see that the workers are driven by starvation to bread riots and strikes, and they refuse the demands of the socialists for remedial legislation. As a result a situa- tion is created with which no party is able to cope. Between the reactionaries above and the anarchists below the socialists are the only constructive force in Italy. The middle parties are weak and wavering. Without principles they seek and obtain power under the cover of one or two leaders of excellent character who are popular in the country. The radicals, the republicans, and the socialists, who form the extreme Left, are unable to come to any permanent agreement because of vital differences in their views. Recent parliamen- tary history is, therefore, a continuous record of repeated upheavals resulting from these clashing forces. The failure to agree upon any measures for amehorating the poverty-stricken condition of the masses leads the latter more and more to despair of parhamentary methods. Anarchism is again making headway among SOCIALISM IN THE PARLIAMENTS 237 the most wretched of the workers, and leading them to desperate revolts and insurrections, which the social- ists, with all their power, cannot prevent, or when once started, control. Recently when a radical ministry came into power, the socialists gave it support upon the assurance that it would carry out a program of social reform. One was actually drawn up that included extremely im- portant and advanced legislation in the interests of the people. The king himself seemed favorable, and it looked for a time as if Italy had settled down to a constructive parliamentary policy which promised relief to the masses ; but after a time some strikers were shot. The union between the radicals and the socialists was then broken, and the same old parliamentary antago- nisms flared up again. This is the darker side of Italian parliamentary Hfe, and it is really difficult to see how the situation will work itself out. As I have said in the chapter on Italy, the socialists have performed an enormously useful work in the exposure of corruption. They have unquestionably the ablest leaders in Italian political life. Every fair-minded Italian realizes the moderation of their minimum program, which even Professor Villari, a conservative leader, says every sensible man could indorse almost in its entirety. But there seems no immediate prospect of the socialists gaining a par- liamentary majority, and until that is accomplished misery on the one side and brutal reaction on the other make peaceful methods barren, while violence only results in increasing misery and suffering for the unfortunate workers. The situation in Italy presents stupendous difficulties to the socialists, and while no 238 SOCIALISTS AT WORK one can help admiring their parliamentary leaders, and recognizing the superior ability of Ferri and Turati, who are so fearless and honest, so passionate in debate, so careless of consequences to themselves, one cannot think of the future without some misgiving. Of all parties the French socialists seem the most fortunate. They have many able orators, and both Guesde and Jaures are skilled parliamentarians. Un- fortunately, while I was in Paris last winter, ill-health forced Guesde to be away, so that I did not see him at work in the chamber ; but I heard Jaures many times. It would be difficult to imagine a person who possessed in a larger degree the necessary qualities of a parliamentary leader. He is not a small man among small men ; he is a big man among big men. I mean by that that the French chamber contains more brill- iant orators and debaters than any other parliament in Europe. First and foremost among them is Clemenceau. He has a remarkable attraction for the French people, as he is radical and fearless and personally disinter- ested. He has fought upon the popular side against all waves of reaction, including the ones led by Gam- betta. Ferry, and the Boulangists. He has upset more governments than any other man in France. His record in the Dreyfus affair was one not to be for- gotten. He has a real sympathy for the aspirations of the people, although he is a strong individuahst. A man of high education and cultivation, he is one of the most formidable debaters in the French chamber ; and his skilful phrase, epigrammatic sentence, and burning satire make him feared by those who find themselves in opposition. His high individualist idealism, together with a deep-rooted cynicism, lends to his political views SOCIALISM IN THE PARLIAMENTS 239 a complexity which is the despair of opponents. He is the kind of man the genial, idealistic Jaures might be expected to fear, but again and again these two extraordinary men cross swords in battle. When the radicals came into power early in 1907, it seemed a necessity to the logical French mind clearly to define the difference in policy between the radicals and the socialists. The ministry was nominally under the control of Sarrien, although really completely in the hands of Clemenceau ; and between the latter and Jaures there occurred a significant debate upon funda- mental social and political principles. For the first time in the political life of Clemenceau he faced an opposition with views more extreme than his own, and he taunted the socialists with being a party of negation, destruction, and violence. He defied Jaures to pro- duce anything constructive in their policy. In answer Jaures delivered what is perhaps the clearest state- ment that has yet been made in any parliament of the constructive ideas of socialism, and for that reason it deserves special and extended consideration in this place. It was the intention of Jaures to make an authoritative declaration and as far as possible to ex- press the views of the international party, and he, there- fore, quoted decisions made in party council, and the views of the chief leaders. Consequently it can be considered not only as the deliberate statement of an eminent leader of one of the largest national parties in Europe, but also in the main as the view of the international movement. In the first part of his address he gave a hurried sketch of what he thought would be the main outlines of the new social order under socialism, and he prom- 240 SOCIALISTS AT WORK ised, if the chamber would give him time, to place before it a more comprehensive and detailed plan of the legislation which would bring about the transition, and the main institutions which would exist under socialism. As the new social order would have to evolve out of present-day society it would have to be largely influenced by national institutions, and for this reason the first part of his address applies particularly to France. Passing, however, from this consideration, he endeavored to answer the question whether or not the socialist order would be established by the con- fiscation of capitalist property. Jaures confessed that he could not foretell with any certainty what would take place. " It is not because my own thought on this question is uncertain or hesi- tating," he said. " It is because in these matters pro- grams, even when they are clearly determined and deliberately planned, are subordinate to the force of events. You have had a proof of this during the great French Revolution, which began with decrees of expropriation with compensation, with the thought of purchasing most of the feudal rights ; and which afterward, carried away and exasperated by the struggle, proceeded to that expropriation without in- demnity. And you now see, gentlemen, at this hour, a similar crisis at the other end of Europe. There is there a great gathering, the first national gathering of the Russian people, which is studying the means of giving the land to the peasants by large expropriations. The leading parties of that assembly propose to give compensation for the large private estates which will be expropriated. Gentlemen, it will not depend upon them whether they can bind the future to this scheme. SOCIALISM IN THE PARLIAMENTS 24I It will be realized if freedom is established there by legal evolution ; but if the government blindly resist, there will be risings and rebellions, and it is Hkely that the expropriations will be carried out in a very different manner. " That is the reservation I wanted to make, and for my part I have no pretension of laying down in advance conditions to the working-class, to the world of labor. I know, and I declare, that the rights of labor are sov- ereign, and I shall assist with all my heart, and with all my mind, in any effort necessary to establish a new society. But I have the right before parliament, before the working-class, to assume the hypothesis of a legal transformation of a regular and peaceful evolution ; for I ardently wish that such a consummation may be realized, and toward its realization I will work, we will all work, my friends and I, with all our strength, for a policy of democratic reforms which will increase the legal power and regular means of action of the working- class. " It is with this thought, with this hope, that I invoke the authority, freely admitted by our reason, of all the great socialist theorists who have advised, in various ways and in the interest of the social revolution itself, expropriation with compensation. It was Marx who, according to Engels, uttered these words: 'It will still be, if we can proceed by compensation, the cheap- est way to achieve the revolution.' He meant that by this means it would not be necessary to suspend for one moment the productive activity of the country. Kautsky, in his commentary on the sociahst program of Erfurt, said, ' Expropriation does not necessarily mean spoliation.' Our friend Vandervelde has spoken 242 SOCIALISTS AT WORK in the same sense, and I ask of the House permission to read the powerful and beautiful declaration of Lieb- knecht : — " ' Social democracy is the party of the whole people, with the exception of two hundred thousand great and small proprietors, capitaHsts, and priests. It ought then to turn toward the people and, as soon as occasion offers, by practical proposals and projects of legislation of general interest, to give positive proof that the good of the people is its only aim, and the will of the people its only rule. It must follow the path of legislation without doing violence to any one, but with a firm purpose and unerring aim. Even those who now enjoy privileges and monopolies ought to be made to under- stand that we do not propose any violent or sudden measures against those whose position is now sanc- tioned by law, and that we are determined, in the interest of a peaceful and quiet evolution, to bring about the transition from legal injustice to legal justice, with the utmost consideration for the individuals who are now privileged persons. We recognize that it would be unjust to hold those who are now privileged by the sanction of bad legislation personally responsible for that bad legislation and to punish them personally. We declare expressly that in our opinion it is the duty of the state to give an indemnity to those whose in- terests will be damaged by the necessary abolition of laws which are detrimental to the common good in so far as this indemnity is consistent with the interests of all. We have a higher conception of the duty of the state toward the individual than our adversaries, and we will not lower it, even if we are dealing with our adver- saries.' " SOCIALISM IX THE PARLIAMENTS 243 Following this statement of the views of the leading socialists as to the method the party would pursue in establishing the new order, Jaures declared that society had reached a stage of development wherein it was no longer of public utility for it to be divided into two classes, the one possessing all the means of production, and the other unable to make use of its labor except on conditions which the first class was willing to concede. He showed that the efforts of some radicals to estab- lish compulsory arbitration would not affect this an- tagonism ; that the present civil war only shows itself on the surface by means of strikes, but is going on at other times as well. It is at the very bottom of the present system of society, of a system of property which gives power to one class and inflicts obedience on the other. This economic civil war will continue, now apparent, now hidden, now loud, now silent ; but ever with the same sufferings, the same exaspera- tions, so long as the world of production is divided into two antagonistic camps. He admitted that there were means of softening the shocks, but he declared that this permanent fundamental antagonism results from the very privilege of property, and can never be entirely prevented until the capital necessary to social labor is absorbed by the workers. " There must be but one directive force," he said ; " namely, the crea- tive force of labor." Considering, therefore, that the greatest public neces- sity at the present moment was to harmonize the relations between capital and labor by making them one in power and direction, Jaures answered the assertion that if this were accomplished by compensation, there would still exist some rich and some poor and, therefore. 244 SOCIALISTS AT WORK a class antagonism, by saying that the bonds of com- pensation given to the holders of capital at the time of expropriation would be limited in their power by the very nature of the new society. At the present time title-deeds and bonds enable their holders either to purchase the means of production and of profit, such as factories, buildings, shares, etc., or else to purchase products for consumption. In the new society, when capital shall have been socialized, when the community shall have put at the disposal of the organized workers the means of production, the bonds of compensation which will be given to the former capitalists will not enable them to purchase further means of production ; they will only enable them to purchase the products of labor. Illustrating this argument, he said that when the law aboHshed slavery and compensated slave-owners, the latter were not able to use their compensation for the purchase of new slaves, and when capitalist prop- erty shall have been socialized, the holders of compen- sation deeds will not be able to purchase either fresh means of production or producers. " Thus, gentlemen," he said, " to those who put forward the objection that if, when expropriating capital, compensation is not given, it is sheer robbery, and, if it is, capitalism will be recon- stituted, I reply that between the title-deeds of socialized society and those of capitalist society there is this fun- damental difference : that the latter are means of domi- nation and exploitation, which are constantly renewed at the expense of human labor by the play of interest and profit, whereas the others will only be means of consumption and will exhaust themselves by degrees, leaving labor unhampered and organized." Jaur^s then declared that whatever the judgment of SOCIALISM IN THE PARLIAMENTS 245 his opponents might be as to the wisdom of the sociahst order, they must nevertheless admit that they were in the presence of doctrines that offered a precise and defi- nite solution of the present antagonism between labor and capital. And he further declared that, having stated the socialist position, the socialist party had a right to demand of " the party of democracy and prog- ress " what its doctrine was. " What can you do.? " Jaures demanded. " What can you republicans and radicals do to liberate and organize labor.?" He then showed that Clemenceau and all the radicals had for over twenty years criticised the existing order with the same severity as the socialists, and that even Clemenceau had once signed a manifesto declaring that "whoever is not a socialist is not a republican." This conscious stirring up of class strife, he said, was wicked and immoral unless those doing it had also at the same time some means for remedying the evil. " It is a great mistake to discredit in the eyes of the workers a system which you do not know how to abolish. While you were in opposition, it was perhaps natural that your attitude should be critical; but now," he continued, "you are not only in power, you are the power, not only in appearance, not only in part, but by the simultaneous arrival of a government whose members are radicals and of a radical-socialist majority. You have full power and therefore full responsibility. I ask you then : What are you going to do .-' " Taking up the radical program, he showed its inconsistencies and fundamental weak- ness. They had sent representatives to the Hague to support any proposition for the limitation of military expenditure, and they had begun their government by an increase in that expenditure. They had said nothing 246 SOCIALISTS AT WORK on the question of railways, and in passing upon some new mining laws, they had not attempted to insure to the workers better conditions or a higher reward for their labor. He traced this weakness to the fear of the government lest a policy which should be in the shghtest degree positive in these matters would frighten investors and alarm the stock exchange. Clemenceau, answering Jaur^s, stated that he and the cabinet were in entire agreement with the socialists in nearly all of their practical program. In his opinion the socialists and the radicals could move together for some time upon the lines of their immediate program, and that ought to sufifice. But he condemned the larger scheme of socialization, which he said would only pro- duce a disastrous catastrophe if it were attempted to put it into operation suddenly. "Here is a list of M. Jaures' immediately realizable reforms," he said. " An eight-hours day, the right of state employees to com- bine, national insurance against unemployment and sickness, a progressive income tax and death duties, the return to the nation of the monopolies, and propor- tional representation. Why, that is a horribly bourgeois program, and when M. Jaures asked me, ' What is your program ? ' I could scarcely refrain from answering at once, ' My program .'' Why, it is in your pocket. You have picked it from mine.' " But Clemenceau's old individualist views forced him in opposition to Jaures with regard to strikes. " I hold that every man who wants work," he said, " has the right to ask society and the public powers to protect him in the exercise of that right." The government must use its power to put down violence and to maintain order. Jaures, in his reply, showed the difference between SOCIALISM IX THE PARLIAMENTS 247 the position of the capitalists and that of the workers. " What you mean by the maintenance of order," he said, " is the repression of all excesses on the part of the workers, while admitting violence on the part of the employers. You forget the difference between the con- dition of laborers and employers. Yes ; violence is gross, visible, when used by the workers. A threaten- ing gesture, a brutal act; they are seen and noted. Their author can be promptly dragged before judges, and dealt with. But how about the employers ? They have no need to indulge in violent language, in gestures. Their violence can be carried out in orderly fashion. A few men meet in private, in full security, Hke an or- derly board meeting, around a table. And, like diplo- matists, without violence, without shouting, without gestures, they calmly decide that a reasonable wage shall be refused. They decide that those workers who keep up the fight shall be excluded ; that by some secret sign in their work-book they shall be known to all em- ployers, — that they shall be marked men. That is the silent method; it is the murderous engine which has caught the unfortunate victim and silently crushes him, without any grating noise in the machinery. " When it is sought to fix personal responsibility in any trouble, the same difference is seen. The work- man's share is easily fixed ; any violent act is soon brought home and punished. But when it comes to the responsibilities of the masters, in such a case as the Courrieres disaster (a terrible mining disaster which killed 1500 men), then difficulties arise. Their responsi- bilities are wrapped up in the complications of anonymous capital, of Hmited liability companies. There are subtle evasions which can defeat the ends of justice. An 248 SOCIALISTS AT WORK engineer can say that although men were sent down into the mine when it was known to be on fire, according to chemical and theoretical discoveries there was no reason to fear the danger which, as events proved, existed. And thus, while the workman's violence is ever appar- ent, palpable, and easily repressed, the deep and mur- derous responsibility of the great employers, of the great capitalists, ever disappears in obscurity." Aside from the really fundamental differences be- tween the two parliamentary groups, Jaures agreed that there was something in common in their immediate pro- grams, and he assured the radicals that the socialists would give them every assistance in carrying out their program of reforms. " If you are in earnest," he de- clared, "in your desire to nationalize railways and mines, and to carry out reforms, let it be clearly stated, and you will have our support. No reform will be wrecked by our opposition, but while our method is that of peaceful reform our goal will ever remain the revolu- tion ; namely, the complete transformation of the present social system." I once heard Jaures speaking to an audience of per- haps 7000 people. In that immense hall he seemed a different man from the one I knew in the chamber. His voice had the power of a great organ, with endless changes of tone and expression, with modulations with- out limit and with a sustained emphasis and climax that seemed to me as extraordinary as anything I had ever heard. His finished oration had the roundness and perfection of a poem. On another occasion I heard him speaking to the men of the street. His power in this instance was again of quite a different character. He became a mob orator equal to John Burns in his SOCIALISM IN THE PARLIAMENTS 249 best days. The influence he exercised over his audi- ence was such that if he had desired to lead this crowd of men to storm the streets of Paris, I think not one would have failed to follow him. In the chamber Jaures is clever and adroit. For nearly twenty years he has been in the midst of every important parliamentary crisis. He knows the secret of parliamentary influence, and he uses his knowledge of parliamentary tactics and his skill as a debater in a manner that attracts and fascinates the whole of Paris. When it is known that Jaures is to speak, the galleries are crowded, and hundreds and sometimes thousands beg for admittance. During the last few months his in- terpellations have covered a wide range of subjects, and in every case he has demonstrated to the public the de- sire of the socialists to support the radical ministry in all the reforms that it can be induced to carry through. At the same time with extraordinary skill he has put forward the difference between their programs. It is hardly too much to say that Jaures has done more during the last twenty years to form political thought than any other man in France. His battles against the royalists, the Bonapartists, the Liberals, and the nationalists, his extraordinary activity during the Dreyfus affair, and his exceptional power in harmoniz- ing the new socialist views with all the republican tra- ditions and freedom-loving aspirations of the French people, have given him a personal power and a following that are not equalled by those of any other man in the French chamber. As long as he had to battle with out and out reaction his position was comparatively easy, but at present he faces a more subtle form of opposi- tion. As was said, the present government is the most 250 SOCIALISTS AT WORK radical that France has known in recent years, and when Clemenceau, late in 1906, took the place of Sarrien at the head of the ministry, the first utterances of the cabinet were so advanced that it seemed as if the radicals had taken over everything except the revolutionary proposals of modern socialism. The cabinet declared for the separation of the church and state, the suppression of martial law, the abolition of the dangers of the white lead industry, the nationalization of the Western railways, the strict enforcement of the law providing one day's rest each week, and finally for old-age pensions and a graduated income tax. Besides, Clemenceau invited three socialists to take positions in the cabinet. Mille- rand refused, but Briand and Viviani both accepted re- sponsible posts. It would be difficult to convey an idea of the popular enthusiasm that prevailed in Paris over the announcement of the program and the composition of the new ministry. However, the situation seemed critical for the socialist party, for, if the program were carried out, and if the ministry were fearless and uncom- promising in its support of the working-class, the social- ist party might have been forced into a position where it would have been impossible for the people to distin- guish between its work and that of the radicals. It would be difficult, however, to imagine how any party could have met the situation better than the social- ist party. Without expressing confidence in the minis- try it definitely held that it would support all reforms of a truly fundamental character. In the chamber the so- cialists have pursued a most skilful course. They have forced the fighting. The ministry has been prodded and goaded. Its program, which now it almost wishes to forget, is placed before its eyes and those of the SOCIALISM IN THE PARLIAMENTS 2$ I country on every possible occasion. Unlike most op- position parties the socialists want to keep the radical ministry in power, and on one or two occasions it would have fallen if it had not been for their support and as- sistance. They take a long view, and see that nothing is so important at the present moment as to prove to the French people that the radicals will not carry out a pro- gram of fundamental reform. Thus it is necessary to keep them for a considerable period in a position of re- sponsibility so that they may be tested in the most thor- ough and conclusive manner. So long as radicals are always in the opposition (as, for instance, Hearst and Bryan are with us) they appear al- most as revolutionary as the socialists themselves. But now that the French socialists are fortunate enough to have them in power, it only remains to demonstrate the impossibility of their accomplishing any important re- form. In other words, it seems as if the French people are being conducted through the last stage of their illu- sions. When it is once proved that the radicals will not carry out their promises, it seems reasonable to think that the people will turn to the socialists. Even now the party is beginning to expose the barren record of radicalism. Le Socialiste asks, " Where are we now .•• The suppression of martial law 1 Mutilated. The law about white lead .-' Stillborn. The nationalization of the Western railways .'' In danger. The law about Sunday closing ? Nerveless and weak. Old-age pen- sions .■* Adjourned. Graduated income tax ? Proposed. But so absorbed are the radicals in fighting the working men that they cannot spare the time or effort to trans- form the proposition into an act." If the radicals can be kept in power for a few months 252 SOCIALISTS AT WORK more, and if they fail, as they have failed up to the pres- ent, to carry out a single one of their proposed eco- nomic reforms, it would seem probable that the socialist party alone can hope to win the adherence of an actual majority of the French people. The situation in France, from the point of view of the parliamentary power of socialism, is, therefore, at the present moment the most dramatic in Europe. In giving so much prominence to the parliamentary power of socialism in Germany, Italy, England, and France, I do not want to convey the impression that it is limited to, or of exceptional importance in, those countries. Vandervelde is at work in Belgium, Victor Adler in Austria, and other men of ability are at work in nearly all the other parliaments of Europe. Their strife against the established order is similar in charac- ter to that of the sociaHsts in the countries I. have men- tioned. They influence the thought of their countrymen to no less a degree, and in some cases they have accom- plished more for the welfare of the masses than the socialists of France, Italy, or England. And yet nearly everywhere the socialist parties have only a small minor- ity in parliament, as the reader will see from the table on the opposite page. In Austria and Finland at the mo- ment the socialists have the largest representation, and in Russia, if the electoral law permitted, they would easily obtain a majority. In the countries under review in this book, the tactics and the immediate ends of the party vary in many details from those in Russia and other countries. What I have given of the parlia- mentary effort of the socialists in certain countries is, therefore, not necessarily typical of their work in the others. The duties of a party are necessarily deter- SOCIALISM IN THE PARLIAMENTS 253 mined by the state of economic, political, intellectual, and moral development that exists in its particular field of action. *Russia .... 132 socialists out of total of 440 representatives Austria . ■ 87 « « 353 << Finland . . 80 <( « 200 « France . 52 « i( 584 i( Germany • 43 (( « 397 « England . • 32 (( « 670 (( fBelgium . • 30 « « 166 « Italy . . 25 « « 508 « t Denmark 24 tt « 114 « Sweden . 15 « « 230 « Norway . . 10 « (( 117 « Holland . 7 «