Socialism and American ideals | Page 2

life, who would overlook the fact that man is a
human being and not a mere animal, will wander far astray into unreal
bypaths of crass materialism.
On the other hand, it would be hard to find an economic explanation for
the emigration of the Pilgrim Fathers to Plymouth, for the Quaker
agitation that supported John Woolman in his war upon slavery or for
most of the Christian missionary enterprises of the present day. Also it
would take a mental microscope to find the economic cause for the
extermination of the Moriscos in Spain by Philip III. or the expulsion
by Louis XIV. of the Huguenots from France. These two great crimes
of history had important economic consequences, but the cause behind
them was religious prejudice. Prof. James Franklin Jameson, of the

Carnegie Institution at Washington, rightly has stressed a study of the
religious denominations in the United States, of the Baptist, Methodist
and other "circuit riders" of the old Middle West, as one of the most
fruitful sources for a fuller knowledge and understanding of the history
and development of the American nation. Neither George Whitefield,
Peter Cartwright, nor Phillips Brooks of a later day, can be explained in
terms of economic interpretation.
This false and entirely materialistic conception of the development of
society and civilization is a mistake not only of the learned, but of the
pseudo-learned, of the men and women of more or less education
whose mental development has not progressed beyond an appreciation
of Bernard Shaw, Henrik Ibsen and H.G. Wells. Most of them are
estimable people, but the difficulty is that they are so idealistic that, so
to speak, they never have both feet upon the ground at the same time.
This is especially true of our esteemed contemporaries, the Socialists.
These cheerful servants of an idealistic mammon pride themselves
upon completely ignoring human nature. A few years ago, at a London
meeting of the "parlor Socialists" known as the Fabian Society which,
by the way, was presided over by Bernard Shaw, an old man began to
harangue the audience with the words, "Human nature being as it is--"
At once his voice was drowned out by a chorus of jeers, cat-calls and
laughter. He never made his address, for the audience was unwilling to
hear anything about "human nature." No Socialists in general are
willing to do so, for human nature, with the mental and spiritual sides
of life, is just the element with which their fallacious creed cannot deal,
and they know it. But the human element must enter into business and
trade in the problems of direction, management, even in the form of
competition itself, and cannot possibly be eradicated.
It is amusing to note that these same Socialists are busily occupied with
pointing out what they consider to be the failures of government, as
well as of "business and capitalism." Yet they do not realize that they
are thus condemning their own system, for if the governments of the
world have failed to do the work at present laid upon them, how can
they ever undertake the gigantic additional political and capitalistic
burden that Socialism would impose? Thomas Jefferson, the patron

saint of the party that President Wilson now leads, always expressed a
fear of "too much government." It would appear that the present
Administration and the Democratic members of Congress have
wandered far from their old beliefs, and if recent legislation is the result
of it, their Socialistic experiments have not been much of a success.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: _The English-Speaking Peoples_, p. 203.]

SOCIALISM--IS IT AMERICAN?
I
ITS CONFLICT WITH THE IDEA OF EQUALITY OF
OPPORTUNITY
One of the main difficulties in discussing Socialism is to find a working
definition; for this political or social movement is based upon a system
of a priori reasoning which often is vague and lacking in deductions
from practical experience. Socialism also is unreal in its assumptions
and impractical in its conclusions, so that a person finds it almost
impossible to give a definition that will include within its scope all the
Socialistic vagaries and explain all the suppositions based upon
nonexistent facts. Bearing this difficulty in mind, perhaps the following
will serve as a working definition for the purposes of the present
discussion. Socialism is the collective ownership (exerted through the
government, or society politically organized) of the means of
production and distribution of all forms of wealth. This means wealth
not alone in mere terms of money but in the economic sense of
everything that is of use for the support or enjoyment of mankind. Of
course "production and distribution" means the manufacture and
transportation of all forms of this economic wealth.
Inevitably this system would imply the substitution of the judgment of
the government, or of governmental officials, for individual