6. A more equitable system of state inspection and grading of grain.
7. Equal taxation of property of railroads, mines, telegraph, telephone, electric light and power companies, and all public utility corporations, as compared with that of other property owners.
Adding to these the “national demands”—“that the government refuse to return to private hands ownership or operation of those public utilities owned, operated, or controlled by the government during the war,” and “that the conscription of wealth begun by the government through income and excess-profit taxes shall be continued and increased, that surplus wealth may be compelled to pay the money cost of the war”—the program still falls far short of being revolutionary. On the whole the underlying spirit and purpose are more or less precisely those of the earlier agrarian Free Soil, Greenback, Populist, Single Tax, and Free Silver movements.
The Progressive movement of 1912, given extra “steam” by the magnetic personality of Mr. Roosevelt and the hero worship of his followers, was a far more powerful influence in drawing common support from farms and cities. And its support, like that of the Nonpartisan League, was essentially American, as distinguished from foreign-born Socialistic support. It is interesting to speculate upon the attitude of the people generally toward the Progressive movement, if one could imagine it coming into being during the war. To what extent would its platform and the utterances of its leaders have been regarded as “seditious”?
ULTRARADICAL MOVEMENTS NONPOLITICAL
From the beginning of any really radical movement in this country, its unity of spirit has been broken by profound differences of opinion as to the effectiveness of the appeal to the ballot box. For more than half a century the anarchists and other advocates of “direct action” in the labor movement in America have been telling the more conservative elements that it would be of no use to resort to political measures, to the election of public officers pledged to carry out radical programs.
“The moment you succeed in winning enough votes to elect any considerable number of your candidates, the representatives of the capitalists will throw them out and nullify your victory.”
The great service which the New York State Assembly in 1920 rendered to the ultraradical wing of the Socialists when it ejected legally elected Socialist members of that house of the state Legislature was in the verifying this prediction. It strengthened the hands of the “Reds” not only all over this country, but all over the world. It made it just that much harder for moderates everywhere to convince workingmen that their grievances could be remedied by parliamentary action; that it was really worth while for them to pay any attention to the ballot box.
The history of the Socialist parties in America is checkered with the ups and downs of the controversy over this question. In every labor organization since the beginnings of the Labor movement in America there has been a continuing warfare between those who advocated political action as the means to social reform, and those who scorned anything except economic pressure and even terrorism. It is a curious fact that in the line-up on this issue, Mr. Gompers and the American Federation of Labor logically belong with the direct-actionists; he and his supporters always have opposed the entrance of the Labor movement as such into politics. It is only fair to add, however, that one of his principal motives was that of keeping the solidarity of labor from being broken by the ordinary appeals and influences of the politicians.
The National Labor Union of 1864, the Knights of Labor of 1869, the International Working People’s Association of 1883, the Sovereigns of Industry of 1874, the Workingmen’s party of 1876, the organizations of brewery workers and miners, the American Railway Union, the American Labor Union, the Socialist-Labor party—in fact, virtually all the general labor organizations from the beginning of them until to-day—have fought back and forth over this question. And the abiding fact which remained after every battle seems to have been that the tendency of the Americans and the foreign born longest in the country on the whole has been to favor action through the ballot box and parliamentary methods generally; the distinctively foreign elements have inclined to favor economic and industrial measures, with the “lunatic fringe” running on toward “direct action,” sabotage, and the methods of the terrorist.