The universal ballot gives every male citizen an equal political opportunity. The common ownership of all the means of production and distribution would give everybody an equal chance at music, art, sport, study, recreation, travel, self-respect, and the respect of others. I, for one, cannot see why those things should be concentrated more and more in the hands of a few.
Two hundred years ago a proposition for equal political opportunity would have seemed more absurd than to-day seems the proposition for equal opportunity in all things on this earth for which men strive.
I have hardly read a book on socialism, but that which I have just enunciated I believe in general to be its theory. If it be its theory, I am a socialist. You will find, and other advanced liberals and radicals who believe as I do will also find, that you are merely paltering with skin-deep measures when you stop short of socialism.
Interviewed regarding his conversion to socialism, Mr. Patterson adds:
When we say that things should be divided equally we mean that every man should have a chance. Men like Schwab and Carnegie have risen from poor young men to wealth; but they are the extraordinary young men. The ordinary young man is not able to rise above his birth, and the extraordinary young man is one in a million.
I don't mean that all the money in the country should be cut up into equal parts. What I mean is that the people should own in common all the means of production, the sources of wealth, and divide the results. The talk of economical equality is no more ridiculous now than was the talk of social equality years ago.
Suppose Alfred G. Vanderbilt has five million dollars invested in his railroads. Say there are twenty-five thousand employees. Out of his investment he receives, say, five per cent, which is two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year. He doesn't turn a wheel, he doesn't move a locomotive, he doesn't do a thing for the railroad. He simply owns it. He doesn't contribute toward making the road safe. Those men earn so much money for him. Suppose he should give them what they earn, instead of taking it himself?
My idea is to have things equally divided so that when a man dies his children shall not inherit wealth.
Mr. Patterson is a son of a wealthy family. His father, Robert W. Patterson, proprietor of the Chicago Tribune, is a conservative, opposed to his son's beliefs. But he adds: "I am a firm believer in letting everybody think as he pleases, including my son." He says, however, that if the young man runs for office on the socialistic ticket, the Tribune certainly will not support him.