Krout, Mary Hannah. (Author.)
I am opposed to Socialism because it is impossible and un-philosophical. All the measures advocated by Socialists today—or most of them—were advocated by the French in the Revolution of 1785, with disastrous results.
Hovey, Lewis R. (Editor, The Record, Haverhill, Mass.)
I am opposed to Socialism because it is unscientific, unwise, and would destroy liberty and progress for the human race.
The bed-rock theory of Socialism is that under the present system, wealth and industry concentrates into fewer and fewer hands, that the big fish eat the little fish, and so on until society is confronted with a great proletarian class on the one hand, with nothing but their labor power, and on the other a few very rich plutocrats who own all the means of production and exchange. That this theory is unsound and unscientific is proved in a thousand ways by every blue book of every industrial nation on earth.
The number of wealth-owners in Europe has increased twice as rapidly as population during the past twenty years. In the United States we find that ownership of land, railways, banks, bonds, industrial stocks, etc., have actually increased three or four times as rapidly as the population. For instance: In 1901, the year of the organization of the "Steel Trust," so-called, there were just about fifty-five thousand men and women who owned all the iron and steel plants in this country, and at this time the Steel Company did seventy per cent. of the iron and seventy-five per cent. of the steel production of the nation. Today the U.S. Steel Company produces only forty-five per cent. of the iron and steel, and in place of fifty-five thousand owners of the iron and steel business, there are now over three hundred and fifty thousand owners. Seventeen years ago the Great Northern Railway was owned by one hundred and twenty-two stockholders; today that same railroad has eighteen thousand owners.
An investigation by the New York Journal of Commerce, a short while ago, proved that two hundred and thirty-one industrial and railway corporations had ten years ago less than two hundred and thirty thousand owners, but those same companies now have eight hundred and thirty-five thousand owners (round numbers). Like illustrations could be cited to fill pages of this book. This shows that the so-called scientific theory of Marx Socialism is a myth, a dream, an imagination from the brain of Karl Marx. Socialism would be unwise because it would be an attempt to change human nature by economic and political processes. This world has progressed in just that proportion as it has got away from things Socialistic. The imperialistic Socialism of ancient Rome destroyed that greatest of nations; the barbarian Socialism of Peru, with thirty million followers, was destroyed by a handful of Spanish adventurers.
The Socialization of railways, the municipal ownership of a street railway, a gas plant or an electric lighting plant, has, as a rule, proved a failure when all the facts are taken into consideration. This wild yell of the Socialists, that labor receives but a small part of the wealth it produces, has no foundation in fact and is but the uncouth and unintelligent expression of minds who were never made for statistical insight or investigation.
The promise of the "full value of your production" is a false promise and known to be such by every intelligent Socialist. The workers today do far less work, with less hours, and yet receive twice as high wages compared fifty years ago. This is due to organization and invention of the few. That is, a small minority of society have organized industry and made economic production possible; "they have made two blades of grass grow where one grew before." The Socialists would reverse this, for it is absolutely certain that under the blighting influence of economic Socialism, production would go down.