Now, in this year, 1908, it is very different. There are hundreds of excellent books and pamphlets available to the American worker and student of Socialism, dealing with every conceivable phase of the subject. Whereas ten years ago none of the great industrial countries of the world had a more meagre Socialist literature than America, to-day America leads the world in its output.
Only a few of the many Socialist books have been issued by ordinary capitalist publishing houses. Half a dozen volumes by such writers as Ghent, Hillquit, Hunter, Spargo and Sinclair exhaust the list. It could not be expected that ordinary publishers would issue books and pamphlets purposely written for propaganda on the one hand, nor the more serious works which are expensive to produce and slow to sell upon the other hand.
The Socialists themselves have published all the rest—the propaganda books and pamphlets, the translations of great Socialist classics and the important contributions to the literature of Socialist philosophy and economics made by American students, many of whom are the products of the Socialist movement itself.
They have done these great things through a co-operative publishing house, known as Charles H. Kerr & Company (Co-operative). Nearly 2000 Socialists and sympathizers with Socialism, scattered throughout the country, have joined in the work. As shareholders, they have paid ten dollars for each share of stock in the enterprise, with no thought of ever getting any profits, their only advantage being the ability to buy the books issued by the concern at a great reduction.
Here is the method: A person buys a share of stock at ten dollars (arrangements can be made to pay this by instalments, if desired) and he or she can then buy books and pamphlets at a reduction of fifty per cent.—or forty per cent. if sent post or express paid.
Looking over the list of the company's publications, one notes names that are famous in this and other countries. Marx, Engels, Kautsky, Lassalle, and Liebknecht among the great Germans; Lafargue, Deville and Guesde, of France; Ferri and Labriola, of Italy; Hyndman and Blatchford, of England; Plechanoff, of Russia; Upton Sinclair, Jack London, John Spargo, A.M. Simons, Ernest Untermann and Morris Hillquit, of the United States. These, and scores of other names less known to the general public.
It is not necessary to give here a complete list of the company's publications. Such a list would take up too much room—and before it was published it would become incomplete. The reader who is interested had better send a request for a complete list, which will at once be forwarded, without cost. We can only take a few books, almost at random, to illustrate the great variety of the publications of the firm.
You have heard about Karl Marx, the greatest of modern Socialists, and naturally you would like to know something about him. Well, at fifty cents there is a charming little book of biographical memoirs by his friend Liebnecht, well worth reading again and again for its literary charm not less than for the loveable character it portrays so tenderly. Here, also, is the complete list of the works of Marx yet translated into the English language. There is the famous Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels, at ten cents, and the other works of Marx up to and including his great master-work, Capital, in three big volumes at two dollars each—two of which are already published, the other being in course of preparation.
For propaganda purposes, in addition to a big list of cheap pamphlets, many of them small enough to enclose in a letter to a friend, there are a number of cheap books. These have been specially written for beginners, most of them for workingmen. Here, for example, one picks out at a random shot Work's "What's So and What Isn't," a breezy little book in which all the common questions about Socialism are answered in simple language. Or here again we pick up Spargo's "The Socialists, Who They Are and What They Stand For," a little book which has attained considerable popularity as an easy statement of the essence of modern Socialism. For readers of a little more advanced type there is "Collectivism," by Emil Vandervelde, the eminent Belgian Socialist leader, a wonderful book. This and Engels' "Socialism Utopian and Scientific" will lead to books of a more advanced character, some of which we must mention. The four books mentioned in this paragraph cost fifty cents each, postpaid. They are well printed and neatly and durably bound in cloth.
Going a little further, there are two admirable volumes by Antonio Labriola, expositions of the fundamental doctrine of Social philosophy, called the "Materialist Conception of History," and a volume by Austin Lewis, "The Rise of the American Proletarian," in which the theory is applied to a phase of American history. These books sell at a dollar each, and it would be very hard to find anything like the same value in book-making in any other publisher's catalogue. Only the co-operation of nearly 2000 Socialist men and women makes it possible.