Andrews, Martin Register. (College Professor and Editor.)
I have listened attentively to the talks of Socialist orators, who seem to be honest, earnest men, who have a strong desire to do something for the betterment of "poor, sad humanity." With many of the reforms for which they plead I am heartily in sympathy.
Pease, Charles Giffin, M.D. (Reformer and Author.)
I am in favor of Socialism, the fundamental basis of which, as I understand Socialism, is economic co-operation or the individual laboring for the good of the whole; for the reason that competition is based upon selfishness, and stimulates selfishness.
Competition or doing business for individual gain is responsible for the placing of liquor saloons on almost every other block of some of our avenues; for the opening of a still larger number of tobacco stores for the sale of the most poisonous weed grown; for the opening of gambling halls, race tracks, questionable resorts and brothels of all kinds. Doing business for personal gain is an incentive to foister upon the people intoxicating liquors, tobacco and other harmful drinks and articles by means of alluring advertisements; the adulteration of foods; the maintaining of high prices, thus depriving the poor, who are victims of the competitive system, of the necessities of life.
Under the present system, the anxiety of the employed upon the advent of "dull times," lest they may lose the needed employment; the unrest, the chicanery, the criminality and the perversion of normal appetites resulting therefrom, is opposed to the best interests of the race morally, mentally and physically.
Competition or doing business for personal gain, develops the worst there is in man. Co-operation or the individual laboring for the whole, brings out or develops the best there is in man and establishes true brotherhood. The greatest benefactors the world has ever known have labored for the uplift of the race without personal material gain as an incentive, but with the full knowledge that their labors would mean for them persecution or perhaps the Cross.
Under Socialism, the whole moral atmosphere would be changed and the individual, and consequently, the race would be enriched in the development of qualities that make for peace, joy, love and normality, as man would merge from the influence of the present conditions into the influence of the conditions under Socialism.