The plan also recognizes the dignity of all labor; and provides that the idler shall be had in remembrance before the Lord.[[2]] Idleness is an offense against the doctrine of the gospel and has received God's severe condemnation; for he has declared that the "idler shall not eat the bread, nor wear the garments of the laborer,"[[3]] nor have place in the church, except he repents.[[4]]
It will be observed that the plan revealed through Joseph Smith, while differing from the present selfish and competitive system, is neither state socialism nor communism. It neither makes man the creature of the state, nor invades the sanctity of his fireside. It preserves a healthy individualism in that it allows each man control of his own stewardship, and makes him the disposer of his own time. It provides for the general welfare in that it centralizes all the surplus means of the community and places it at the disposal of the wisest men who apportion it out to the improvement of enterprises or stewardships under the management of men of demonstrated ability and approved integrity; or who employ it in the development of new enterprises, or distribute it in new stewardships to those who as yet may not have received them. This system therefore guards against want and destitution on the one hand; while on the other it collects the surplus means to be used in those new enterprises, the success of which shall remove the community further and ever further from poverty and wretchedness which is now at once the world's anxiety and shame.
By this plan the anxiety of the fathers to secure estates or a fortune for their posterity is relieved, since their children will have claim upon the surplus property of the community for a stewardship when they are prepared to start in life. And since the prosperity and success of their children depends upon the success and prosperity of the community, the fathers shall in that find an incentive to honorable exertion. The children find no fortune to squander, no opportunity to grow up in idleness, or contract those vices which unfit them for life's serious affairs. But trained from youth to be industrious, and starting with a stewardship that by industry and economy shall minister to their necessities, and enable them to contribute something to the general good, they have an opportunity by wise management of their stewardship, the improvement and enlargement of it, to demonstrate their abilities, rise in public esteem and have more and still more entrusted to their control, until they reach a position where they can do all the good they are capable of doing, or that is in their hearts to accomplish.
The two prime objections to co-operative methods, state socialism and communism are, first, that by taking the proceeds of individual industry, talent or transcendent financial abilities and applying them to the common good rather than to individual aggrandizement, one of the chief incentives to earnest endeavor is stricken down; and second, by creating an assurance in the minds of individuals that their wants will be provided for out of a common fund and that necessity cannot overtake them, the other chief incentive to industry is swept aside. In other words it is held that ambition and the fear of coming to want are the chief incentives to human activity. Remove these incentives to action, it is contended, and you have, of course, a listless, idle and hence non-progressive community, that all too soon from want of motive principle would come to poverty, ignorance and at last to dissolution.
These are held to be the vices of the schemes of socialists and communists, so far as the industrial phase of their plans is concerned, and I anticipate that the same objections will be urged to the plan for the temporal salvation of mankind revealed through Joseph Smith.
Volumes have been written upon the unworthiness of a desire for personal aggrandizement, and man's necessities being regarded as the chief incentives to human activity; and it is not my purpose to add anything to the mass of matter that exists on that subject. Indeed, taking average humanity as it is, rather than what idealists would have it or believe it to be, and I am rather of the opinion that the objection urged against socialism and communism in regard to the industrial phase of these schemes is a good one; and that however unworthy the gratification of personal ambition and the fear of want may be as incentives to industry, they are, nevertheless, the prime incentives to action; and if removed, there is grave reason to fear that what the objectors to community of effort and of interests predict, would come to pass. My point is that this objection can be of no force against a system in which individualism is not stricken down. A man's success in the management of his stewardship in the plan revealed through Joseph Smith, depends upon his individual effort; and though the system requires the consecration, from time to time, of the surplus arising from the management of the stewardships, it is also provided that the stewards shall have claim upon the general fund for whatever means they may require to improve or enlarge their stewardships. But the chances of obtaining means to make such improvement or enlargement depends upon the capabilities the individual has developed, in the management of that already committed to his care; hence his advancement, his growth and standing in the community, together with the comfort, convenience and beauty of his surroundings depend primarily upon his individual exertion.
Furthermore, it must be remembered that the system revealed through Joseph Smith teaches as a religious duty the consecration and employment of individual abilities for the common good; and it also teaches that industry and economy are religious duties.
It is by preparing the units of which society is composed through the acceptance and practice of the gospel; by preserving all that is desirable in individualism and at the same time abundantly providing for the common good; by recognizing the religious sentiment and righteousness as elements necessary to its success; by teaching that it is the duty of those possessed of transcendent abilities to employ them for the common good; by inculcating that humility that shall make those possessed of humbler abilities willing to labor in less exalted spheres, and, above all, by depending upon the enlightening and directing influence of the Holy Ghost, as well in each member of the community as in the appointed leaders, that the plan for the amelioration of the present distressed condition of society, revealed through Joseph Smith, hopes in the end to achieve success.
If I am told that the success of this plan depends upon too many contingencies; that the attainment of all of them is impracticable; that humanity can never be brought to that excellence of individual and community righteousness that the plan requires; my answer would be that the condition of the world, then, is hopeless; for this is the only plan which can bring to pass the amelioration of the hard conditions under which mankind is sinking. But I do not at all despair of the success of it. If it cannot immediately be made universal, its success will be made manifest in the church of Christ; and as the peace, prosperity and happiness of those that accept it indicate the wisdom that constructed it, more and more will seek its benefits, until all the children of men shall bask in its blessings.