Fifty years in Wall Street

by Henry Clews

We know this, also, from the fact that the strongest characters have been worked out in brave and patient competition and conflict, often under difficult circumstances; whereas the men who have never been thrown upon their own resources rarely amount to anything.

After this preliminary description of the worth and salient influence of Individualism, under which our country has grown to be the greatest nation of the world, let us now turn to Socialism—a system which, if adopted, would call a halt to our progress, tear down our established institutions, and turn our great prosperity into ruin and decay.

It is difficult to tell just what is meant by Socialism in the more modern sense of the term.

It has appeared in the United States under five different and almost totally disconnected forms. It has appeared as a movement towards the establishment of Socialistic communities or communisms; it has appeared as Fourierism, as German or International Socialism, as Nihilism and Christian Socialism.

Professor Mallock, the eminent English writer, in his lectures in New York, made a careful analysis of Socialism, and exposed its plausible sophistries, some of which, Socialists boast, are grounded on our defined principles of political economy, which the learned writer asserts are rather incomplete. It may be admitted that this is so, and that fuller and clearer distinctions could well be added to our text books on the subject. But, joining the issue in a clean-cut way, between Individualism and Socialism, obviates all necessity at this time of further considering such distinctions, and clarifies our respective positions in this debate.

It was noticeable that, during the delivery of these lectures, hints and remonstrances were freely thrown out that the structure that Dr. Mallock was attacking was not Socialism at all, in the modern acceptation of the term, but something else that had long ago been abandoned.

Now, while I have no unfriendliness whatever with the honest Socialist (mistaken, deluded and sadly out of place in this grand Republic, as he may be), I do say, that this position is but too often the wily subterfuge, sought to be taken advantage of by the insincere agitator or pretended reformer, when he sees that he is beaten. His invariable answer to an irrefutable argument is: “Oh, that which you talked about is not modern Socialism!”

For the purpose of this discussion, however, we can agree that, as contradistinguished from Individualism, Socialism opposes and denounces competition as an injurious and unnecessary force in society, and advocates the collective ownership, through the State, of all the means of production and distribution.

Socialists would, in other words, fence up the great field of free opportunity, deaden all incentive or inspiration for great achievement, and not only curtail, but wholly remove, the right to compete and excel, and make it impossible to write “success” as the result of individual effort.

Just think of that! Why, the very thing that the Socialists attack, as untenable and wrong in government—individual competition—has done more than anything else to make us what we are as a nation to-day; has kept alive the precious fires of liberty and freedom and has preserved the institutions of our country. Take away the spirit of Individualism from the people, and you at once eliminate the American Spirit—the love of freedom—of free industry—free and unfettered opportunity—you take away freedom itself!