Evolution Social and Organic

by Arthur M. Lewis

“True indeed it is that the main pillar and prop of the political greatness and prosperity of our country is manufacture, which, as now carried on, is destructive of the health, morals, and social comfort of the mass of people engaged in it. It is only since the introduction of the cotton trade that children, at an age before they have acquired strength or mental instruction, have been forced into the cotton mills—those receptacles, in too many instances, for living, human skeletons, almost disrobed of intellect, where, as the business is often now conducted, they linger out a few years of miserable existence, acquiring every bad habit which they may disseminate throughout society. It is only since the introduction of this trade that children and even grown people were required to labor more than twelve hours in a day, not including the time allotted for meals. It is only since the introduction of this trade that the sole recreation of the laborer is to be found in the pothouse or ginshop, it is only since the introduction of this baneful trade that poverty, crime, and misery have made rapid and fearful strides throughout the community.

“Shall we then go unblushingly, and ask the legislators of our country to pass legislative acts to sanction and increase this trade—to sign the death warrants of the strength, morals, and happiness of our fellow-creatures, and not attempt to propose corrections for the evils which it creates? If such be your determination, I, for one, will not join in the application—no, I will, with all the faculties I possess, oppose every attempt made to extend the trade that, except in name, is more injurious to those employed in it than is the slavery of the poor negroes in the West Indies, for deeply as I am interested in the cotton manufacture, highly as I value the extended political power of my country, yet knowing as I do, from long experience both here and in England, the miseries which this trade, as it is now conducted, inflicts on those to whom it gives employment, I do not hesitate to say: Perish the cotton trade, perish even the political superiority of our country, if it depends on the cotton trade, rather than that they shall be upheld by the sacrifice of everything valuable in life.”

Compare these noble utterances of the great-souled utopian Socialist with the sneers at the most unfortunate element of the working class which disfigure the pages of “The Man Versus the State” and let the Individualist take whatever satisfaction he can get from the contrast.

But Spencer’s reactionary views did not stop with opposition to every attempt to alleviate the condition of the wealth producers of his day.

As an individualist, he would tolerate no “government interference” with the rights of individuals who wished to shoot sea-birds which they could not get, but which usually flew out to sea, and died floating, with a broken wing. Why should these lofty minded people be interfered with? Were they not the prototypes of our own Roosevelt, who is always ready to manifest his love of nature by killing everything in sight?

What a pity these individualists were not allowed to have the British telegraph system managed by a gang of financial pirates like the owners of the “Western Union” and the “Postal” of this country.

State repression of knowledge having proved such a bad thing in the middle ages, state encouragement of learning must of course, needs be equally bad in the nineteenth century. “Government endowment of research,” indeed! Not for the individualist champion. And yet England holds the world’s honors in biology, because of Darwin, whose opportunity came through the government exploration of “The Beagle,” and Huxley, who began his brilliant career with the government expedition of the “Rattlesnake.” As England led the world in the middle of the century so France had held first place during its first quarter, and that because the French government sent out scientific expeditions to the tropics, which, on their return loaded down the shelves of the “Jardin des Plantes” with specimens which made possible those greatest of her thinkers, Lamarck, Cuvier and Geoffrey St. Hilaire.

When the feeding of school children is thrown as a charge against Socialism, we are proud to plead guilty. It is our glory that the only cities in the world that have no starving children behind school benches are those cities such as Lille, Ivry, Montlucon, etc., with a Socialist majority in the town councils, which removed the disgrace.

Such then were the arguments of this flag bearer of Individualism, who has supplied the opponents of Socialism with objections these thirty years. His individualist philosophy is now so thoroughly discredited as to call for no answer were it not for the fact pointed out by Huxley, that erroneous ideas do not die just simply because they have been killed.

It is not necessary to wheel into position the heavy artillery of Marx to overthrow this house of cards. Spencer is a sufficient reply to Spencer.