If this were true—and that were all there was to it—I might be a Socialist. It is because it is impossible for it to be true that I am writing these letters; and, before I have finished, I think you will admit that I shall have proved that the soap-box orator is talking “through his hat.”
I do not ask you to reject the teachings of Socialism because they are new or untried. Every good thing was new once, and I am not so foolish as to imagine that every possibly-good thing has been tried. Indeed, a great many ideas and inventions that have proved of the greatest advantage to the world were once denounced as impracticable. The telephone is one of them. I can remember the time when the best business men laughed at the idea of anybody’s buying stock in a telephone company; they admitted that people could talk over the wire, but it was impossible to make them believe that the instrument could be made strong enough to carry the sound of the human voice more than a few blocks. They said it was all right as a “toy,” but that it had no “commercial utility”—which meant that they did not think they could make any money out of it.
To tell the truth, some of the basic ideas in Socialism are not at all new. They are very, very old; but, if they were as old as a dozen Methuselahs, this fact would not make them any more true. It is not the age of a theory that makes it true; it is the principle underlying it. And I propose to show you that, instead of being the combination of all wisdom, the principles of Socialism are so unreasonable that it is difficult to understand how any thinking man can accept them.
To prove this, I shall resort chiefly to facts and very little to theoretical argument. I shall not ask you to believe that a thing is so, merely because I say that it is so. When I present an argument, I shall explain all the facts upon which it is based, and you may consider the argument on its own merits.
In doing this, I must ask you to forget yourself. A prominent Socialist writer has told us that it is necessary to “get out of the body to think.” As he explains, “that means that when a problem is before you, you should not let any personal prejudice, or class feeling, come between that problem and your mind; that you should consider a case upon the evidence alone, as a jury should.”
I shall be satisfied if you will follow this advice. I can ask you to do no more than to forget your own condition, your own troubles, your own life-problems, and consider this question simply as a man—as a jury-man, if you will. If you were asked to figure how much you can earn in three days and two hours and fifteen minutes at your present rate of wage, you would not think whether you were a Republican or a Democrat, would you? You would simply apply the rules of arithmetic to your sum, and I ask you to read my letters and decide, by the same kind of unbiased judgment, whether I am right or wrong.
By way of anticipation, let me assert that it is possible for us to solve every problem that confronts us to-day without resorting to the proposed “remedy” of Socialism. We have here a country, big enough and productive enough to give all the people plenty of room and all they want to eat. There are facilities to supply all the children with a good education and ample opportunities for recreation. The fact that so many of the people do not succeed in securing plenty, shows that something is wrong. But, is the “wrong” in our system of industry, or are we ourselves—and, when I say “we,” I mean the whole people, not you and me alone—to blame for these conditions? That is the important question.
Socialism promises that it will right all wrongs and asserts that this cannot be done in any other way. I do not believe that Socialism could “make good,” and it is here my task to prove it.
CHAPTER II
WHAT SOCIALISM IS AND ISN’T
Dear Mr. Smith,