Terhune, William Lewis. (Publisher.)
Socialism, to my mind, means the overthrow of all the advancements of the past one hundred years or more. The man of brains and energy would stand but little show or encouragement under a government controlled by Socialism or Socialistic ideas. I believe that, the man who is capable of making his way in this world, is smart and energetic enough to build up a business and with it a fortune, is entitled to all he can possess through honest efforts. I do not believe in government ownership of public utilities, but I do believe in a controlling power of the government to in some way supervise these corporations so they will be obliged to keep in the path of honesty in all their transactions with the public. Individual freedom is the watchword of our great country. When we lose that, we lose ourselves.
Scheffauer, Herman. (Author.)
I am opposed to theoretical Socialism wherever it threatens to interfere with the full and unhampered development of the individual or to lower his worth. Being a mass philosophy, Socialism must logically strive to sacrifice the individual to that mass. I hold that it is only through the channels of a free, noble, self-restrained individualism that man may naturally attain to his supreme development in happiness, culture and power.
Theoretical Socialism is a splendid fallacy that shines like a truth when contemplated beneath the skies of the future already reddened by the sanguine color of the creed. But it is a fallacy based upon another fallacy, that of the virtue in the sovereign mass or democracy, which in turn is based upon certain fallacies of Christianity.
These systems of the multitude amount to mob rule, and will never evolve the highest type of men—the intellectual and moral samurai of whom H.C. Wells has written, the rulers by nature, training and fitness, the men who, in Nietzsche's phrase, are to surpass men.
In practical matters Socialism may be said to be already operative, and largely operative for good. It is correcting many ancient evils and bringing a certain degree of order and balance into the world. That is its chief value—an industrial and economic one. It is a means and not an end. For in the last analysis of human things it will be undone by that iron fiat which decrees that every man must be an end in himself and unto himself.