However, the advisability of Municipal Ownership under present conditions is a purely academic question, for the reason that the capitalist will never give us a chance to try it. The capitalist is in possession, and he “stands pat.” When you talk about “reform,” he will make you as many fine speeches and deliver you as many moral discourses as you wish; but when it comes to giving up any dollars—he has spent all his lifetime learning to hold on to his dollars.
You are thinking, perhaps, of President Roosevelt, who is hailed as a successful reformer. In the first place, it is of importance to point out that President Roosevelt is a complete anomaly in our political life; he was probably the last Republican in the country who would have been selected to rule us. He made himself governor by a shrewd device called “the Rough Riders;” he was made President for the first time by the bullet of an assassin, and the second time by the death of Mark Hanna. By a series of such blind chances as these the people have been given a chance to vote for what they want, and they of course have seized the chance. But assuredly it was no part of the “System’s” plan to ask them what they wanted, nor even to let them find out what they wanted themselves.
Under the peculiar circumstances, there has been nothing for the “System” to do but make sure that the President accomplishes nothing; and that it has done as a matter of course. In saying this, let me remind the reader once more of my distinction between moral revolt and economic remedy. I have no wish to under-estimate the tremendous importance of President Roosevelt’s services in awakening the people; but I say that so far as actual concrete accomplishment is concerned, he might just as well never have lifted a finger. In one case, that of the suit against the Paper Trust, he did effect a lowering of prices; but in that case he was simply a pawn in the struggle between two trusts—of which the Newspaper Trust proved to be the stronger. In no case where the people alone were concerned has he effected any economic change whatever. The Northern Securities decision was evaded by another device; the Beef Trust and the Standard Oil suits ended with nominal fines. Over the rate regulation question we had two years’ agitation—and not one single rate has been lowered. In the struggle for life-insurance reform, to which the President gave all his moral support, a few grafting officials were hounded to death; but the real and vital evil, the exploitation of the surplus for purposes of stock-manipulation, was scarcely even touched upon. And then came the Chicago packing-house scandals—and I can speak with some knowledge of them. Sometimes, when I look back upon them, it seems like a dream—I can hardly believe that I ever played my part in that cosmic farce. Only think of it—we had the President and Congress and all the newspapers of the country discussing it—we had this entire nation of eighty million people literally thinking about nothing else for months—nay, more, we had the attention of the whole civilised world riveted upon those filthy meat-factories. We uncovered crimes for which the condemnation of every dollar’s worth of property in Packingtown would have been a nominal punishment; and then we settled back with a sigh of contentment, because we had put a few more inspectors at work and forced the whitewashing of some slaughter-house walls. And we left the monster upas-tree of commercialism to flourish untouched—to go on year after year bearing its fruit of corruption and death!
There is nothing whatever to be got from the capitalist. I used to think that the same thing was true of the politician. In common with most Socialists, I thought that the Revolution would have to wait until the people had come to full consciousness of their purpose, and had elected a Socialist president and a Socialist congress. But at the time of the coal-strike, when Dave Hill came out for government ownership of the coal mines, I realised that the politician is the jackal and not the lion. Of course we have amateur politicians—capitalists who play at the game—and they will not give way; but the professional politician is not a rich man—the competition has been too keen. He has served the capitalist because it paid; and when the people get ready to have their way, it will pay to serve the people. This is really a very important matter, for our political machinery is complicated, and the people have got used to it. It would be a frightful waste of energy to create new machinery—in fact, I do not think that our Constitution could stand the strain.
We will now assume that the industrial crisis has come. What will be the political consequences? It takes two or three years for industrial conditions to get themselves translated into political acts in this country; it means an immense amount of agitating—tens of thousands of meetings have to be held and hundreds of thousands of speeches made; and then there is all the machinery of conventions and elections. The panic of 1893, for instance, resulted in the Bryan movement of 1896. That movement was a revolt of the debtor class; if it had succeeded it would have precipitated a panic, and that would have been a misfortune, for the reason that both the people and their leaders were ignorant, and instead of the Industrial Republic, we should have had a severe reaction. Mark Hanna was a cunning man; but if he had been still more cunning, he would never have raised six million dollars to buy the presidency for William McKinley—he would have let the people have free silver, and then he would have had the people.
We came to the election of 1900 on the crest of a prosperity wave; but prosperity too takes its time to be realised, and so Hanna took the precaution to raise four million dollars and buy the election again.[[6]] And then came 1904, which, I think, was the most interesting election of them all. With the politicians the prosperity boom still held sway. Mark Hanna had Roosevelt all ready for the shelf; and the old-time “state-rights” Democrats arose and buried Mr. Bryan in the deepest vault of their party catacombs. But then came the people—with the country trembling on the verge of another “hard times.” They gave President Roosevelt the most tremendous majority ever recorded in America; and incidentally, as if this were not enough to show how they felt, they gave nearly half a million votes to Eugene V. Debs!
[6]. Figures quoted, evidently upon inside information, by the Washington Post, in 1906.
This election, according to my schedule, corresponds with the election of 1852 in the Civil War crisis. The “safe and sane” Democracy, which received its death-blow in 1904, corresponds with the old Whig party. It will probably make independent nominations in 1908 and 1912, exactly as did the Whigs, and will receive the votes of all those who believe in dealing with new conditions according to old formulas.
In the meantime, the real contestants of the coming crisis are forming their lines. Under ordinary circumstances the Republican party would have been the party of disguised but unrelenting conservatism; and our Presidents in 1904 and 1908 would have been either figureheads like Fairbanks and Shaw, or shrewd beguilers of the people like Cannon and Root. As it is, it looks now if President Roosevelt were to remain the master of his party, in which case we shall have in 1908 a mild reformer like Taft, or possibly even Governor Hughes. The one thing certain is that whoever receives the Republican nomination will be the next President. If it is a Roosevelt man, the President’s prestige will elect him; or if the “System” concludes to have its own way, he will be put in by bribery. In any case, he will go in, and it is best that he should go in. So long as we are to have Capitalism, it is proper that the capitalist should have a free hand. Personally I should consider the election of a radical in 1908 a calamity; for “hard times” will be just about to break, and I greatly desire to see Cannon and Aldrich and the rest of them “caught with the goods on.”
Who will be the Democratic candidate? Will it be the champion of the Western farmers, or of the proletariat of our Eastern cities? I do not know, but I am inclined to think that it will be Mr. Bryan; and I am sorry, in a way, because that will put him out of the race in 1912. I conceived an intense admiration for Mr. Bryan after his last speech in New York City.