A friend offers to give you a good house-dog; but someone tells you it is mad. Your friend will be wise to satisfy you that the dog is not mad before he begins to tell you how well it can guard a house. Because, as long as you think the dog will bite you, you are not in the frame of mind to hear about its usefulness.
A sailor is offering to sell an African chief a telescope; but the chief has been told that the thing is a gun. Then before the sailor shows the chief what the glass is good for, he will be wise to prove to him that it will not go off at half-cock and blow his eye out.
So with Socialism: before I try to show you what it really is, I must try to clear your mind of the prejudice which has been sown there by those who wish to make you hate Socialism because they fear it.
As a rule, my friends, it will be wise for you to look very carefully and hopefully at anything which Parliament men, or employers, or pressmen, call bad or foolish, because what helps you hinders them, and the stronger you grow the weaker they become.
Well, the men who have tried to smash your unions, who have written against you, and spoken against you, and acted against you in all great strikes and lock-outs, are the same men who speak and write against Socialism.
And what have they told you? Let us take their commonest statements, and see what they are made of.
They say that Socialists want to get up a revolution, to turn the country upside down by force, to seize all property, and to divide it equally amongst the whole people.
We will take these charges one at a time.
As to Revolution. I think I shall be right if I say that not one Socialist in fifty, at this day, expects or wishes to get Socialism by force of arms.
In the early days of Socialism, when there were very few Socialists, and some of those rash, or angry, men, it may have been true that Socialism implied revolution and violence. But to-day there are very few Socialists who believe in brute force, or who think a revolution possible or desirable. The bulk of our Socialists are for peaceful and lawful means. Some of them hope to bring Socialism to pass by means of a reformed Parliament; others hope to bring it to pass by means of a newer, wiser, and juster public opinion.