CHAPTER XXII[ToC]
MY SOCIALISM, MY RELIGION AND MY HOME
My vision spiritual came to me out of the unknown. The facts and experiences of life led me to Socialism. In each case it was a rebirth.
"The Way" of Jesus was at first a state of mind; it had no relation to a book; it had no connection with a church. Socialism is a passion for the regeneration of society, it is a state of mind, a point of view. The religion of the peasant Saviour and the movement for industrial democracy expand as they are understood. Both thrive under opposition and are retarded only by unfaithful friends. I caught the spirit, then studied the forms. I got tired of doling out alms. It became degrading to me either to take them from the rich or to give them to the poor. Almsgiving deludes the one and demoralizes the other. I had distributed the crumbs that fall from rich men's tables until my soul became sick. I expected Lazarus the legion to be grateful; I expected him to become pious, to attend church, to number himself with the saved, and he didn't.
Almsgiving not only degrades the recipient but the medium also. The average minister or missionary is looked upon by the middle and upper classes as a sort of refined pauper himself. So, like a mendicant he goes to the merchant and trades his piety for a rebate of ten per cent.; or he travels on a child's fare on the railroads. I have scores of times given away my own clothes and have gone to the missionary "Dorcas Room" and fitted myself out with somebody's worn-out garments; and I, too, was expected to be grateful and to write of my gratitude to the person who, "for Jesus' sake," had cleaned out his cellar or garret. In the West I have been the recipient of Home Missionary barrels packed in some rich church in New York or New England—annual barrels in which there is usually a ten-dollar suit for the missionary, bought by some dear old lady to whom all men were alike—in size. This whole process is hoary, antiquated, stupid and degrading.
My Socialism is the outcome of my desire to make real the dreams I have dreamed of God. It came to me, not through Marx or Lassalle, but by the way of Moses and Jesus. Twenty years' experience in reform movements taught me the hopelessness of reformation from without. It was like soldering up a thousand little holes in the bottom of a kettle.
For a hundred years men and women have been begging the industrial lords to spare the little children of the poor. Have they? Ask the census taker. Millions of them are the victims of the sweater—the dealer in human endurance. The cure for child labour is justice to the father, and justice to the father is his full share of the good things of life. As long as he has to pay tribute to a horde of non-producers, who have merely invested in his endurance, so long will he be unable to keep his child at school.
It is the daughters of the poor that become the victims of middle-class lust—Fantine is the daughter of a working man. She is multiplied by tens of thousands on the streets of great cities, selling her soul for a morsel of bread. We are hardened to that and we think we are meriting the approbation of angels when we start a rescue mission for her special class.
How pure in the sight of God is poor Fantine when compared with the cowards who will not smash the mill of which she is the mere grist. Just so long as there is a cash consideration in her life must capitalism bear the burden of her sin!
There were millions of men out of work last winter. The political parties took no notice. The leaders knew the minds of the electors. They knew that those millions of unemployed were too stupid to see any connection between government and work.