Every fair-minded man is willing to have his economic cloth measured by that yard-stick. Only avaricious rogues object.
The Republican Party is committed to the practice of giving special privileges to a favored few. It is essentially a party of paternalism. The protective tariff is paternalistic. The railroad franchise is paternalistic, and land grants, and bonds, and subsidies. The national banking laws are paternalistic—and so, too, deposits of public revenues, and rentals on public buildings sold but never paid for. The net effect of all Republican legislation is to arm the possessors of great wealth with some sort of taxing power, whereby they may absorb still more wealth without rendering an equivalent. Incidentally, it is true, some measure of prosperity may come to the more humble possessors of property—but the general trend is beyond question plutocratic.
The so-called Democratic Party need not be considered here. It has no fixed policy for more than eight years at a time—except to be “agin’ the government.” It is the party of negation.
The Socialist Party presents the anomaly of a party with an elaborate “scientific” system of societary evolution, an excellent interpretation of history, and forecast of the supposedly final form which society will assume—yet without a program or hint of the specific manner in which industry will be carried on under “the collective ownership of all the means of production and distribution, with democratic management by the workers engaged in each industry.” It is admitted that we have no right to ask for prophecies—but we have a right to see a rough draft at least of the new building which is to be erected after the social revolution has torn down the old edifice. It is true that a few so-called Socialist papers pretend to tell us what will be “under Socialism”—vague, Utopian—pardon the term—“pipe dreams”; but none of them will give even an outline sketch of how collective industry might be carried on, preferring to hide behind the excuse that “we’ll cross that bridge when we reach it.” Alas! The bridge might happen to be washed out by the floods of social revolution.
Being an extreme on the side of materialism as opposed to idealism, or collectivism as opposed to individualism, Socialism is quite impossible as a scheme of government. Besides, the “materialistic conception of history,” upon which Socialism bases its prediction of the co-operative commonwealth, is not wholly scientific, because it fails to consider what changes may be wrought by invention. In a general way, it may be said that the invention of gunpowder destroyed feudalism, and that the discovery of steam power and its application to manufacturing broke up the guild system of masters, journeymen and apprentices, and ushered in the present wage system. Who has the hardihood to prophesy what an Edison may not do in the years to come, or to foretell what the effect may be?
The program of Populism is at once radical and conservative. It is radical, because it goes to the root of the difficulty and will effect a profound change. It is conservative, because it will enable the great mass of wealth producers to conserve what they now have and what they produce in future, by exempting them from the legalized robberies committed by railroads, banks, trusts and other forms of predatory wealth.
Populism, recognizing the institution of private property, and the people’s veneration and love for it, looks back over history’s pages and sees two things which, up to the recent past, have always been regarded as prerogatives of the state. One is the coinage, issue and control of money; the other, the ownership and control of highways.
Under the term “money” we may properly include all those modern makeshifts which are armed with partial legal-tender power, or even those without such power, if they generally perform the offices of money. Without discussing it in detail—because thousands of volumes have been written upon the subject without exhausting it—it seems quite certain that if Congress is to really exercise its right—and undoubted duty—“to coin money and regulate the value thereof,” there can be no “free” coinage of either gold or silver; and the Government must go into the banking business.
Under the term “highways” we may properly include railroads, canals, telegraphs, telephones, expresses—in short, all means of transportation and communication.
Most of the trust oppressions grow directly out of private ownership of the means of transportation and transmission of intelligence—the highways—and the private issue of money. Populism asks that these great evils be corrected—and that the individual be allowed to conduct his own private business with the least possible interference by government. There will always be work for the reformer; but wisdom dictates that the greatest evils be first eliminated, so that many of a minor character may be allowed to correct themselves.