SOCIALISM'S LATEST MILLIONAIRE CONVERT.
Views Expressed by J.M. Patterson, of
Chicago, Who Has Resigned Office
Because of His Convictions.
One of the most recent converts to Socialism is Joseph Medill Patterson, of Chicago. Though he is now only twenty-seven years of age, Mr. Patterson has had a strong taste of public life as commissioner of public works in Chicago. In the local campaign of 1905 he supported Judge (now Mayor) Dunne, who, after election, gave him his important appointment. He has now resigned the commissionership. In his letter of resignation he says:
It was through a common belief in the cause of municipal ownership of municipal utilities that I first became acquainted with you, and in this letter of resignation I desire to express publicly just how my views on this subject have changed. They have not diminished. They have enlarged.
I used to believe that many of the ills under which the nation suffers, and by which it is threatened, would be prevented or avoided by the general inauguration of public ownership of public utilities. But my experience in the Department of Public Works has convinced me that this policy would not be even one-fourth of the way sufficient.
He then goes on to say that in Great Britain—where municipal trading has been highly developed—the problem of the unemployed is becoming very intense; while in Germany—where municipal and government ownership of public utilities has become almost the rule—the gap between the possessions of the rich and the poor grows wider every day. The letter concludes:
The universal ballot gives every male citizen an equal political opportunity. The common ownership of all the means of production and distribution would give everybody an equal chance at music, art, sport, study, recreation, travel, self-respect, and the respect of others. I, for one, cannot see why those things should be concentrated more and more in the hands of a few.
Two hundred years ago a proposition for equal political opportunity would have seemed more absurd than to-day seems the proposition for equal opportunity in all things on this earth for which men strive.
I have hardly read a book on socialism, but that which I have just enunciated I believe in general to be its theory. If it be its theory, I am a socialist. You will find, and other advanced liberals and radicals who believe as I do will also find, that you are merely paltering with skin-deep measures when you stop short of socialism.
Interviewed regarding his conversion to socialism, Mr. Patterson adds:
When we say that things should be divided equally we mean that every man should have a chance. Men like Schwab and Carnegie have risen from poor young men to wealth; but they are the extraordinary young men. The ordinary young man is not able to rise above his birth, and the extraordinary young man is one in a million.
I don't mean that all the money in the country should be cut up into equal parts. What I mean is that the people should own in common all the means of production, the sources of wealth, and divide the results. The talk of economical equality is no more ridiculous now than was the talk of social equality years ago.
Suppose Alfred G. Vanderbilt has five million dollars invested in his railroads. Say there are twenty-five thousand employees. Out of his investment he receives, say, five per cent, which is two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year. He doesn't turn a wheel, he doesn't move a locomotive, he doesn't do a thing for the railroad. He simply owns it. He doesn't contribute toward making the road safe. Those men earn so much money for him. Suppose he should give them what they earn, instead of taking it himself?
My idea is to have things equally divided so that when a man dies his children shall not inherit wealth.
Mr. Patterson is a son of a wealthy family. His father, Robert W. Patterson, proprietor of the Chicago Tribune, is a conservative, opposed to his son's beliefs. But he adds: "I am a firm believer in letting everybody think as he pleases, including my son." He says, however, that if the young man runs for office on the socialistic ticket, the Tribune certainly will not support him.