But, friend Jonathan, that is due to the fact that the advantages of the trust form of industry are not used as well as they might be. They are all grasped by the master class. The trouble with the trust is simply this: the people as a whole do not share the benefits. We continue the same old wage system under the new forms of industry: we have not changed our mode of distributing the wealth produced so as to conform to the new modes of producing it. The heart of the economic conflict is right there.
We must find a remedy for this, Jonathan. Labor unionism is a good thing, but it is no remedy for this condition. It is a valuable weapon with, which to fight for better wages and shorter hours, and every workingman ought to belong to the union of his trade or calling. But unionism does not and cannot do away with the profit system; it cannot break the power of the trusts to extort monopoly prices from the people. To do these things we must bring into play the forces of government: we must vote a new status for the trust. The union is for the economic struggle of groups of workers day by day against the master class so long as the present class division exists. But that is not a solution of the problem. What we need to do is to vote the class divisions out of existence. We need to own the trusts, Jonathan!
This is the Socialist position. What is needed now is the harmonizing of our social relations with the new forms of production. When private property came into the primitive world in the form of slavery, social relations were changed and from a rude communism society passed into a system of individualism and class rule. When, later on, slave labor gave way before serf labor, the social relations were again modified to correspond. When capitalism came, with wage-paid labor as its basis, all the laws and institutions which stood in the way of the free development of the new principle were swept away; new social relations were established, new laws and institutions introduced to meet its needs.
To-day, in America, we are suffering because our social relations are not in harmony with the changed methods of producing wealth. We have got the laws and institutions which were designed to meet the needs of competitive industry. They suited those old conditions fairly well, but they do not suit the new.
In a former letter, you will remember, I likened our present suffering to a case of appendicitis, that society suffers from the trouble set up within by an organ which has lost its function and needs to be cut out. Perhaps I might better liken society to a woman in the travail of childbirth, suffering the pangs of labor incidental to the deliverance of the new life within her womb. The trust marks the highest development of capitalist society: it can go no further.
The Old Order changeth, yielding place to new.
And the new order, waiting now for deliverance from the womb of the old, is Socialism, the fraternal state. Whether the birth of the new order is to be peaceful or violent and painful, whether it will be ushered in with glad shouts of triumphant men and women, or with the noise of civil strife, depends, my good friend, upon the manner in which you and all other workers discharge your responsibilities as citizens. That is why I am so anxious to set the claims of Socialism clearly before you: I want you to work for the peaceful revolution of society, Jonathan.
For the present, I am only going to ask you to read a little five cent pamphlet, by Gaylord Wilshire, called The Significance of the Trust, and a little book by Frederick Engels, called Socialism, Utopian and Scientific. Later on, when I have had a chance to explain Socialism in a general way, and must then leave you to your own resources, I intend to make for you a list of books, which I hope you will be able to read.
You see, Jonathan, I remember always that you wrote me: "Whether Socialism is good or bad, wise or foolish, I want to know." The best way to know is to study the question for yourself.