Your pay envelope

JOHN R. MEADER EDITOR OF “THE COMMON CAUSE”
NEW YORK THE DEVIN-ADAIR COMPANY 437 FIFTH AVENUE 1914
Copyright, 1914, by THE DEVIN-ADAIR COMPANY
Dear Mr. Smith,
I am glad that you have asked me if the soap-box orator told the truth when he said that all the arguments against Socialism are either “lies” or “foolish misrepresentations.”
The soap-box orator wants you to believe that all the wise men in this world are Socialists, and that those who do not accept the teachings of Karl Marx are either ignoramuses or wicked men.
You tell me that your “common sense” teaches you that “there are two sides to every question.” This statement shows that you are an honest and a practical man. You say that you are a worker, a trade unionist, a Christian—all of which means that you are a good citizen. These frank statements are the best introduction you could offer. It is this kind of man who insists upon having “facts,” and who is not likely to be carried away by theories—even by plausible theories. He insists upon knowing that there are plenty of “facts” to back up the theories before he accepts them.
Hence, I am going to write to you at some length—to you and to all the rest of the John Smiths. In these letters I shall express myself as simply and as clearly as possible. I shall give you plenty of facts—“the hardest of hard facts”—and a mass of cold, logical reasons that cannot fail to appeal to “robust common sense” and the “love of fair play.”
As you have said, there are two sides to every question, and the question of Socialism is no exception to this rule. The reason that the soap-box orator attracts so large a crowd is because he tells the people who listen to him a lot of things which they know are true.
He tells them, for example, that wages and the expense of living have not kept equable pace with each other—that the smaller rate of wage which the worker received fifteen or twenty years ago may really have been a higher rate of wage because the man who got it was able to buy more with it. He tells us that it is a bad thing that children should be compelled to work for a living at an age when they ought to be in school or playing the games which nature intends children shall play. He points to the employer as he rides by in his $4,000 touring car, and he asks how long it has been since you have had a ride in an automobile. He reads to you the newspaper report of an elaborate dinner given by “society women” to their poodle dogs, and supplements it with another item, from the same paper, telling the number of people who have died of starvation during the past six months. With eloquent words, vibrant with sympathy, he paints a picture that makes your blood boil with indignation, and the worst of it is that the things he describes are true.