The truth about socialism

by Allan L. Benson

Each of these questions must be answered in the affirmative. Mr. Roosevelt, himself, would not dare, even if he were so inclined, to answer them in the negative. The facts are notorious and scandalous. They are scandalous because poverty, in this rich country, is unnecessary.

Yet, Mr. Roosevelt is not wholly to blame. He is only partly to blame. A President is not the government. He is only part of the government. As part of the government, Mr. Roosevelt advocated measures, some of which were enacted into law, that he believed would do good. Subsequent events have proved that he was in error. The measures he believed would help have not helped. If they had helped, times would be better than they were, instead of worse.

Therefore, we are brought face to face with these questions:

“If Mr. Roosevelt, during seven and one-half years in the White House, could do nothing to make the conditions of the average man’s life easier, how long should we have to elect him President in order to give him time to do something worth while?

“If we were to elect him for life, are you sure that the rest of his lifetime would be long enough?

“In any event, are you prepared to wait so long to be helped?”

Mr. Roosevelt’s friends, following this thought, reply that he is not the same man that he was when he left the White House; that he has grown, with vision enlarged.

No, he is not the same man. The American people have forced him into the advocacy of some things. They have forced even some Socialist measures upon him. The initiative, the referendum and the recall are Socialist measures. For a good many years, Mr. Roosevelt tried to damn them with faint praise combined with a medley of doubts and strangling provisos. But after these measures, in one winter, fought their way into every state capitol west of the Mississippi, as well as into some of the state capitols of the East, Mr. Roosevelt saw a great light. Then he became in favor of them.

When Mr. Roosevelt was President he had nothing to say against the courts. He criticised individual judges, as he criticised Judge Anderson of Indianapolis, whom he called “a damned jackass and a crook.” But Judge Anderson, be it remembered, had just decided against Mr. Roosevelt in the libel suit that he brought against several newspapers because of articles reflecting upon the part played by himself and others in the acquisition of the Panama Canal property.

Now Mr. Roosevelt is convinced that our judicial system is in need of reform. In reaching this opinion, however, he is somewhat late. The courts are no longer popular. The people have not yet begun to strike at them, but they are watching them out of the corners of their eyes. Mr. Roosevelt senses the situation and responds with a proposition to give the people the right to recall, or set aside, the decisions of state courts. He says nothing about giving the people the right to recall the decisions of the United States Supreme Court, though he must know this court is the chief judicial offender. Yet we are asked to believe that Mr. Roosevelt, in belatedly joining the fight against the tyrannical power of the courts, is but giving proof of the greatness to which he has grown and the increased fearlessness with which he fights.