Edmond Kelly

“ I think it will become clear that it is the peculiar province of Socialism to rescue the vast majority of men from conditions which make the development of the individual impossible, and to put opportunities of individual development at the disposal of all; that, indeed, the highest type of individualism can be realized only in a coöperative commonwealth that will give to every man not only opportunity for developing his individual talents, but leisure for doing so—the very leisure of which the vast majority are deprived under the present system and of which the few who have it profit little. ”

“ And were there no economists in the chair, no stock exchange, no factory, no strikes, no unemployed; did our theologians' stomachs never themselves clamor for food, or their bodies cry out for shelter and heat, they too would be excusable. But with our tenements steeped in misery; with misery pitilessly leading to crime, vice, disease; with the demands of the body brought home to every one of them a thousand times a day, is it not time for theologians at last to remember that men have bodies as well as souls? ”

“ Just as Christianity derived its strength from the discontent of the oppressed, so Socialism has pushed its first roots in the misery of the proletariat. But we do not judge of a flower exclusively from its roots. So must we not judge Socialism exclusively from that part of it which at present flourishes in dark tenements and in the misery of the unemployed. It is our fault that the tenements are dark, that the unemployed suffer. It will be our fault if Socialism remains the Gospel of the Poor when we can make of it the final Gospel of the whole human race. ”

“ I do not suppose there is any man living so prejudiced or so dull as to deny that, if Socialism could present a system by which all could be made to profit from the elimination of the waste of the competitive system in such a manner that the profit of each shall be proportional to the amount which each contributes, Socialism would be justified. The only point upon which there can be discussion is whether it is possible to suggest a workable plan under which the evils of competition can be eliminated, and the blessings of coöperation take their place. ”

“ It may appear to the unsophisticated that for a workingman to endeavor to escape from the tyranny of the employer by subjecting himself to the tyranny of the trade union is but a jump from the frying-pan into the fire. But such a conclusion would display woeful ignorance as to the whole trend of human development; that is to say, from involuntary subjection to a power over which we have no control, to voluntary subjection to a power over which we have control. This is the history of the development of all popular government. ”

“ Capitalism keeps the masses of workingmen in poverty, destitution, physical exhaustion and ignorance. It drags their wives from their homes to the mill and factory. It snatches their children from the playgrounds and schools and grinds their slender bodies and unformed minds into cold dollars. It disfigures, maims, and kills hundreds of thousands of workingmen annually in mines, on railroads and in factories. It drives millions of workers into the ranks of the unemployed and forces large numbers of them into beggary, vagrancy and all forms of crime and vice. ”

“ Socialism is not Communism. On the contrary it demands that workingmen be assured as nearly as possible the product of their labor.
[52] Socialism does not propose to eliminate competition, but only to abolish excessive competition that gives rise to pauperism, prostitution and crime.
Socialism is not hostile to the home. On the contrary, it seeks to remove the evils that make the homes of our millions insupportable.
Socialism is not immoral. On the contrary, it seeks to make the Golden Rule practical.
Socialism does not propose to abolish property or distribute wealth. ”

“ The flow to this industry, therefore, of both capital and labor, inevitably reduces not only wages by the direct competition between workingmen, but also the profit out of which high wages were originally paid.
Employer, therefore, and employee are both slaves of the market; the employer cannot get more than the market price for his goods, and out of this he has to pay for his raw material, the cost of running the factory, and the wages of his men. He cannot reduce the price of raw material nor the cost of running the factory—rent, fuel, etc. ”

“ The directors of our large corporations corrupt our legislatures; they endow universities and pervert our education; they support the churches and prevent them from preaching the doctrines of Christ; they determine elections so as to secure legislators whom they can control. They are masters, not only of our whole system of production and distribution, but of our government and our laws. And this democracy which in theory is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, turns out to be a government of the people, by financiers, for financiers. ”

“ But it is not extravagant to assert that it imposes upon the majority a bet involving a thing quite as precious as life—I mean health. A man who bets his life and loses is free from pain on this earth at any rate; but the man who bets his health and loses is committed to a period of misery not only for himself, but for all those around him so long as breath is in his body.
The greatest evil that attends the competitive system of production is that it commits all engaged in it to a game the stake of which is the life happiness not only of himself, but of all dependent on him. ”

“ Now this "friction and loss," when expressed in money and wealth, seem to us socialists stupid because avoidable; but when expressed in human life and misery, they seem so intolerable that we are prepared if necessary to shatter to bits the whole system that underlies them, in order to "remould it nearer to the heart's desire." We are relieved then when we discover that by applying wisdom instead of temper to the solution of the problem, it is unnecessary to do any shattering, that we can remould it without violence, and that this is what Socialism proposes to do. ”

“ We can continue to fight labor; to crush it; to create unemployment one day and wring our hands over it the next; to arm labor, educate it, and force it to organize an army of discontent that will eventually outvote capital and, with little or no preparation for its task, seize the reins of government. ”

“ We are at this moment in the midst of one of those industrial breakdowns that periodically paralyze the life of the nation. The much-boasted era of our national prosperity has been followed by one of general misery. Factories, mills and mines are closed. Millions of men, ready, willing and able to provide the nation with all the necessaries and comforts of life are forced into idleness and starvation. Within recent times the trusts and monopolies have attained an enormous and menacing development. They have acquired the power to dictate the terms upon which we shall be allowed to live. ”

“ We leave our currency, which is the lifeblood of our industrial system, in the hands of men entitled under our law to consider this currency a mere method of increasing their private wealth; we offer to these men monopolies of transportation, of water, of gas, from which they can make gigantic fortunes and through which they can control our politics, and then we expect the very legislatures they control, the very legislators they elect, and the very officers they appoint, to control them. ”

“ Trusts, therefore, do in one sense succeed where trade unions fail; that is to say, they do succeed in getting all to join them that they want; whereas the trade unions do not, the essential difference between the two being that the trust is essentially monopolistic whereas the trade union is essentially democratic. The one wants to benefit a few at the expense of the many; the other wants to benefit all at the expense of none. As the competitive system favors the policy of the trust and disfavors that of the union, the trust succeeds where the union fails. ”

“ To unite the workers of the nation and their allies and sympathizers of all other classes to this end, is the mission of the Socialist Party. In this battle for freedom the Socialist Party does not strive to substitute working-class rule for capitalist-class rule, but by working-class victory to free all humanity from class rule and to realize the international brotherhood of man. ”

“ No one will, I think, deny that the most practical business men to-day in America are Rockefeller, Pierpont Morgan, Havemeyer, and the others who have been engaged in organizing our great trusts. Now the only object of a trust is to eliminate the unnecessary waste of competition; and the only difference between the Socialist and the trust magnate is that the Socialist wants the benefit derived from reducing competition to be shared by all; whereas Rockefeller, Pierpont Morgan and the other trust magnates want the profit secured by the elimination of waste all to themselves. ”

“ Nothing less than a picture of industry actually in operation without capitalism will suffice; and this, therefore, I have attempted to draw. No pretence is made that the picture is the only possible Socialist state, or that it will ever be realized in the exact shape in which it is drawn. The only claim to be made for it is that it furnishes a fair account of an industrial community from which exploitation, unemployment, poverty and prostitution are eliminated; that such an industrial community is more practical because far more economical than our own ”

“ New York, April 19, 1910.
II
An immense revolution, a wonderful revolution, is opening in the mind of the human race; a new driving force is taking hold of the souls of men—the devotion to the welfare of the whole; a new sense, with all the intensity of a new-born feeling, is emerging in the consciousness of men—the sense that one cannot himself be healthy or happy unless the race is happy and healthy. ”

“ Yet the strange anomaly of existing conditions is that while the majority of the citizens of New York have shown year after year for a century that they want bad government and mean to have it, these citizens are not bad men, but want to be good. It is the folly of our economic conditions that makes them want bad government, and no more pitiable sight was ever presented to gods and men than this city of New York, or indeed any other of our great cities, full of citizens animated with the best intentions, forced by economic conditions to be bad. ”

“ As to the rest, it is the dream of a young doctor to get a large practice; and when his dream is realized, how much leisure does he enjoy? He is at the mercy of his practice, not only weekdays, but Sundays—days and nights. He is the slave of his own practice. It is the dream of the young lawyer to get rich clients and handle big cases. When he gets them, he discovers that he must have an office that costs between $30,000 and $50,000 a year to take care of them, and that he must earn these large sums before there is a penny left for himself. So he too is the slave of his own office. ”

“ Workingmen are dependent on their employers under conditions worse than negro slavery. For a slave owner had an interest in the life of his slave just as a farmer has an interest in the life of his stock. He therefore fed his slaves and did not overwork them. Nor was a slave subject to losing his job. The factory owner, on the contrary, not being the owner of his factory hands, is free to dismiss them as soon as they are worn out, and it is to his interest, by speeding up his machinery, to get the most work out of his hands possible, regardless whether he is overworking them ”

“ Socialism Will Free All Classes
The struggle between wage workers and capitalists grows ever fiercer, and has now become the only vital issue before the American people. The wage-working class, therefore, has the most direct interest in abolishing the capitalist system. But in abolishing the present system the workingmen will free not only their own class, but also all other classes of modern society: the small farmer who is to-day exploited by large capital more indirectly but not less effectively than is the wage laborer ”

“ Money is indispensable to the working of the industrial system. It may be regarded as the blood of the industrial system because no farmer can operate his farm, no factory owner his factory, no railroad company its road without money or the equivalent of money—credit. And if money can be compared with the blood in the human body, the banking system must be regarded as its heart; the organ that keeps money in circulation, accommodates circulation to the needs of the body, furnishes the economic body with as much as at periods of exercise it needs ”

“ For the power exerted by the Wall Street Group includes not only all the resources of the Treasury, but all the resources of the entire country. It holds the life blood of our economic system in its hands and, because it controls this life blood, it controls politics, education, morals, and religion. And this group of men was not elected [194] to the position it now enjoys by the majority of our citizens; it has usurped the position by virtue of its control over silver and gold. ”

“ Certainly no community before in America or Europe has ever had such a surplus, and never before has a great community applied what it had so meagerly to the rational purposes of human life. Not by gifts of libraries, galleries, technical schools, and parks, but by the cessation of toil one day in seven, and sixteen hours in the twenty-four, by the increase of wages, by the sparing of lives, by the prevention of accidents, and by raising the standards of domestic life, should the surplus come back to the people of the community in which it is created. ”

“ In the same fashion demand is ever beckoning labor and capital to seek new fields, tempting them from the low levels of low interest to high levels of high profit; and supply, increasing through their efforts, is forever bringing them back, like the force of gravitation, to the point whence they started; and the cycle is repeated over and over again, performing its mission of production and distribution on the way. ”

“ The larger the number of workers in every industry, the weaker are they on the economic field. It has been pointed out that unions tend to divide labor. They not only separate the labor world into two bitterly hostile classes—organized and unorganized—but by the high rate of wages that they demand they tend also to create jealousy within the trade union between the efficient who can earn these high wages and the less efficient who cannot. If the working population were so small that the demand [172] for labor was greater than the supply, then indeed the unions might control the situation. ”

“ Just as it has been demonstrated that Socialism is opposed to Anarchism, so can it be demonstrated that Socialism is opposed to the distribution of wealth or the abolition of property. Far from distributing wealth, the essence of Socialism is that it seeks to concentrate it. Far from wanting to abolish property Socialism seeks to put it on a throne. ”

“ Socialism is the only intelligent, practical system for providing humanity with the necessaries and comforts of life with the least waste, the least effort and the least injustice.
The competitive system under which these things are now produced and distributed has been condemned by the business men whose opinions the business world most respects, because it involves infinite labor to a vast majority of the race and useless cost to all, without, I venture to add, assuring happiness to any. ”