There are some industries which anyone can see are all ready for public ownership; and when the people have once found out the way, they will be very impatient with all remaining forms of rent, interest, profit and dividends. Also, the exploiters will soon learn to give way. Just as soon as the proprietors of department stores find that the people seriously intend to open a public store in every city, and to sell goods at cost, they will be glad to sell out for a few cents on the dollar; just as soon as the bankers find out that there is really to be a national bank, charging no interest, and incapable of failing, they will do the same with their buildings and outfits. To quote a paragraph from “The Jungle” (page 405), “The coöperative Commonwealth is a universal automatic insurance company and savings bank for all its members. Capital being the property of all, injury to it is shared by all and made up by all. The bank is the universal government credit account, the ledger in which every individual’s earnings and spendings are balanced. There is also a universal government bulletin, in which are listed and precisely described everything which the Commonwealth has for sale. As no one makes any profit by the sale, there is no longer any stimulus to extravagance, and no misrepresentation, no cheating, no adulteration or imitation, no bribery, no ‘grafting.’”
There remains only one other great problem to be mentioned—that of agriculture. I think no one will want to interfere with the farmer, any more than with the cobbler, the small storekeeper, the newsman or any other petty business. The farmer will stay on his land, and make money—and study the situation. He will find in the first place that coöperation is a success, and has come to stay. He will find that while he is working with his hands, the rest of society is working with steam and electricity, and leaving him far behind. He will find that he can no longer hire help—that his hired man is employed as a coöperative worker, and receiving several times more than the farmer himself. He will understand that to get his share of all the good things of the new civilisation, he will have to put his land into the common fund, and work for the commonwealth and not for his own wealth. In this case, of course, all the risks and losses of his trade will be shared by the whole community—the result of a bad crop in Maine being made up by a good crop in California, so that the farmer who works will be as certain of gain and as free from care as the factory hand.
And now let us consider the effect of this new system upon certain of the leading features of our civilisation. What, for instance, will be the effect of Socialism upon crime? The man who becomes a criminal at present finds himself in a world where he is compelled to work for some other man’s profit, and to have flaunted in his face every hour the wealth which has been exacted from his toil. But now he will find himself in a world from which luxury and pauperism have been banished, and in which coöperation and mutual fellowship is the law. He will find that he gets just what he produces, and that he can produce in a day more than he can steal in a month. Don’t you think that the criminal may find these powerful motives to become a worker? He may be a degenerate, of course, in which case we shall put him in a hospital; we should do that now, if we did not feel dimly that it would be of no use, because our social system is making criminals faster than we can pen them up, and makes the life of the majority of the working-class so horrible that men have been known to steal on purpose to get into jail.
I have tried in “The Jungle” to give a picture of the process whereby the forces of commercialism turn honest workingmen into criminals and tramps. There is also another story to which I would refer the reader who cares to have more acquaintance with such conditions—“An Eye for an Eye,” by Clarence Darrow.—And also, while we are considering this subject, let us not forget how the change would affect the criminals of the future, the wretched children of the slums and gutters, who will now be cared for by the State, and made into decent citizens in public asylums and hospitals, training schools and playgrounds.
What will be the effect of Socialism upon prostitution? Any young girl can go to the public factories or stores, to the coöperative boarding houses and hotels, the schools and nursery playgrounds, and secure employment for the asking, and support herself by a couple of hours’ work a day in decent and attractive surroundings. She will, moreover, be able to marry the man who loves her, because the problem of a living will no longer enter into the question of marriage. She will be able to restrict her family to as many as she and her husband care to support, because she will be as intelligent and sensible as the women of our present upper classes.
The question of the relationship of the system of wage-slavery to the lives of women is too vast a one to be even outlined here; suffice it to say that the Socialist battle is the battle of woman, even more than it is the battle of the workingman. I cannot do better than to refer the reader to another book in which the whole question of the effects which age-long conditions of economic inferiority has wrought in the minds and bodies of women is discussed in scientific and yet fascinating form—Mrs. Gilman’s “Woman and Economics.”
What will be the effect of Socialism upon drunkenness? Under Socialism the workingman will have a decent home, and attractive clubs, reading rooms, and places of entertainment of all sorts, with plenty of time to frequent them. He will have steady employment, wholesome food, a pleasant place to work in, and—railroad fares being almost nothing—a trip to the country when he fancies it. His wife will not be an overworked, repulsive drudge, and his children will not be starving brats. When he wants a drink he will go to a public drinking-place and get it; what he gets will be pure, and will be sold him by a man who has no interest in getting him drunk. On the contrary, the attendant may be getting a royalty upon all nonintoxicating drinks he sells, and the drinker will quite certainly be paying a big tax upon all the intoxicating drinks he buys. Do you not think that all this may have some effect upon the nation’s drink bill, which now is doubling itself every decade?
Recently I was invited by the Christian Herald to contribute to a symposium upon the question of prohibition. I wrote as follows: “In my opinion the drink evil is primarily an effect, and not a cause; it is a by-product of wage-slavery. The working classes are to-day organised as the bond slaves of capital. The conditions under which they live are such as to brutalise and degrade them and drive them to drink. As I have phrased it in “The Jungle,” if a man has to live in hell, he would a great deal rather be drunk than sober. The solution of the drink evil waits upon the coming of Socialism.
“As a part of the capitalist system, you have liquor sold for profit, and the liquor interests are one of the forces which dominate the land. Therefore, you are unable to effect any legislation to correct the evil. Liquor is sold in order to make money out of the victim, therefore every inducement and temptation is laid before him. Under Socialism, the only barkeeper would be the community, and the community would have every object in limiting the traffic. The children of the masses would be taken in hand and taught the secret of right living; and when they grew up they would have enough to eat and the means of keeping in working condition, and would know other sources of happiness than drunkenness. At present, attempts to reform the evil are attempts to sweep back the tide. Moreover, it is to be noticed that many of those who are most active in the work are themselves busily engaged in exploiting the working-class in their private business, and are therefore directly identified with the cause of the evil they are attempting to combat.”
What will be the effect of Socialism upon war? The New York Sun recently expressed the opinion that the end of war will come only with the Golden Age. If so, the Golden Age is within sight of all of us. Socialism will abolish war as inevitably, as naturally and serenely, as the sunrise abolishes the night. The cause of war is foreign markets; and under Socialism the markets will all be at home. Under Socialism the existence of the workers of the United States, of England, Germany, and Japan, will not be dependent upon the ability of their masters to sell their surplus products for profit to Chinamen. Under Socialism an international Congress will take in hand the backward nations, will clean out their sewers and wipe out their plagues and famines, their kings and their capitalists, their ignorance, their superstition and their wars. It will do these things because they need to be done—it will not do them as a mere pretence to cover greed for gold mines and markets. Outside of mines and markets there is no longer any cause of war, save the old race hatreds which these have begotten; and race hatreds are not known among Socialists. In their last International Congress a Russian and a Japanese shook hands upon the platform, while their countrymen were flying at each other’s throats in Manchuria. The Socialist movement is a world movement—it has brought under its banners, working shoulder to shoulder, men and women of all religions, races and colours. With their victory, and only with their victory, will the efforts of “Peace Congresses” bear fruit.