And it was only, as we have seen, after the war that the accentuation of the labour problem brought it into prominence in the American cities. Whenever, thereafter, Whitman, leaving the comparative quiet of his own surroundings, revisited the metropolis, or wandered to some great western centre of industry, he realised dimly the progressive approach of the crisis.
The increase in the accumulation of wealth was far outrunning even the rapid increase in population; but a large proportion of this wealth was being concentrated in a few hands which threatened to control the national policy. Manufacture was facilitated by the immense influx of immigrants who swelled the dependent city populations, and these immigrants coming more and more from the south-east of Europe, that is to say, from the most backward, ignorant and turbulent nations, promised by their presence to create a social problem in the North and Middle West not less acute if less extensive than that of the negro in the South.
Democracy looks with suspicion on the very poor,[669] quoth Whitman, meaning that the poverty of the poor incapacitates them for citizenship. That, I think, is one of the great and final arguments against the policy of laissez faire under existing circumstances.
Things would go very well if left to themselves, says the philosophic theorist, and so even Whitman is often inclined to declare.[670] But just as the organised party of slavery, in the fifty years before the war, refused to leave things to right themselves, so the party of property to-day interferes, more or less unconsciously, with the principle which it so loudly proclaims. It is because of the existence of innumerable sacrosanct parchments, customs and traditions, and all the subtly clinging fingers of mortmain, that laissez faire remains an empty phrase. If we could burn the parchments and loose the fingers, men might go free. But still for the sake of the nation’s health the poor would need to be assisted to rise out of the helpless condition into which society has allowed them to be thrust and held.
We have noted Whitman’s hearty approval of Canada’s benevolent institutions for the incapable; he fully recognised the duty of society toward such as these.[671] And however hesitating his declarations on a subject which he was willing to leave to younger men, the main principle of his social economy, the right of each individual to be well born, carries us far from the policy of any party dominant to-day in our political life.
He recognised this right as far more fundamental than any secondary privilege which has been accorded to property for social convenience. And it is because this right continues to be denied to millions of future citizens, to the most serious peril of the whole Republic, and apparently for no better reason than that its recognition must impede the present rate of increase in material development, that the Socialist party has arisen in America. It is safe to say that it is the only party which deliberately aims at social amelioration and the equal opportunity of all citizens; and in this respect it seeks to realise Whitman’s ideal. In so far, however, as it clings to European theories, and identifies itself solely with a section of the nation, proclaiming a class-war in the interests, not of America or of Humanity, but of Labour—large, and inclusive as the term may be—it seems directly to antagonise that ideal.
Whitman would certainly be belied by the label of “Socialist”; but “Individualist” would as little describe him. He was, and must always remain, outside of parties, and to some extent in actual antagonism to them; for while recognising its purpose and necessity, he was essentially jealous of government and control. He wanted to see the Americans managing their own affairs as little as possible by deputy, and, as far as possible, in their own persons. That, I take it, is the only form of collectivism or social life which is ultimately desirable; and all political reform will aim at its practical realisation. It depends most of all upon the simultaneous deepening of social consciousness and sympathy and increase of the means and spirit of individual independence. Only by these simultaneous developments can we hope to see established that Society of Comrades which was the America of Whitman’s vision.
On the practical side of the Labour Question the old man occasionally expressed his emphatic dislike of certain sides of Trade Unionism, and probably misunderstood, as he clearly mistrusted the movement. “When the Labour agitation,” he would say, “is other than a kicking of somebody else out to let myself in, I shall warm up to it, maybe.”[672] And of the workman he added: “He should make his cause the cause of the manliness of all men; that assured, every effort he may make is all right”.