Socialism As It Is Part 12

The size of the farms the government is promoting in New Zealand proves that the country is deliberately preparing for a cla.s.s of landless agricultural laborers, and Australia is following the example. Since these new farms average something like two hundred acres, we must realize that as soon as they are under thorough cultivation they will require one or more farm laborers in each case, to be obtained chiefly from abroad, producing a community resting neither on "State Socialism"

nor even on a pioneer basis of economic democracy and approximate equality of opportunity similar to that which prevailed during the period of free land in our Western States.

Unmistakable signs show that in New Zealand an agrarian oligarchy by no means friendly to labor has already established itself. Even the compulsory arbitration act which bears anything but heavily on employers in general, is not applied to agriculture. After two years of consideration it was decided in 1908 that the law should not apply on the ground that "it was impracticable to find any definite hours for the daily work of general farm hands," and that "the alleged grievances of the farm laborers were insufficient to justify interference with the whole farming industry of Canterbury" (the district included 7000 farms). Whatever we may think of the first justification, the second certainly is a curious piece of reasoning for a compulsory arbitration court, and must be taken simply to mean that the employing farmers are sufficiently powerful politically to escape the law. The working people very naturally protested against this "despotic proceeding," which denied such protection as the law gave to the largest section of workers in the Dominion.

What is the meaning, then, of the victory of a "Labour Party" in Australia? Chiefly that every citizen of Australia who has sufficient savings is to be given a chance to own a farm. A large and prosperous community of farmers is to be built up by government aid. Even without "State Socialism" or labor reform the working people would share temporarily in this prosperity as they did to a large degree in that of the United States immediately after the Civil War, until the free land began to disappear. It was impossible to pay exceptionally low wages to a workingman who could enter into farming with a few months' notice.

The Labour Party hopes to use nationalization of monopolies and the compulsory regulation of wages to insure permanently to the working cla.s.ses their share of the benefit of the new prosperity. How much farther such measures will go when the agricultural element again becomes dominant is the question. It is already evident that the Australian reform movement, like that of New Zealand, includes, or at least favors, the same cla.s.s of employing farmers. The fact that a Labour Party is in the opposition in New Zealand, while in Australia a Labour Party has led in the reforms and now rules the country, should not blind us to the farmers' influence. The very terms of the graduated land tax and the value of the farms chosen for exemption show mathematically the influence, not alone of the small, but even the middle-sized farmers. Estates of less than $25,000 in value are exempt, and those valued at less than $50,000 are to be taxed less than one per cent. Such farms, as a rule, must have one or more laborers. Will these employees come in under the compulsory arbitration law? If they do, will they get much benefit? The experience of New Zealand and the present outlook in Australia do not lead us to expect that they will.

Many indications point to a coming realignment of parties such as was recently seen in New Zealand, when in 1909 it was decided to form an opposition Labour Party. And it is likely to come, as in New Zealand, when the large estates are well broken up and the agricultural element can govern or get all they want without the aid of the working people.

Already the Australian Labour Party is getting ready for the issue. Its leaders have kept the proposed land nationalization in the background, because they believe it cannot yet obtain a majority. But it may be that the party itself is now ready to fight this issue out on a Socialist basis, even if, like the Socialist parties in Europe, such a decision promises to delay for a generation their control of the government. If the party is ready, it has the machinery to bring its leaders to time, as it has done on previous occasions. For it already resembles the Socialist parties in Europe in this, that it makes all its candidates responsible to the party and not to their const.i.tuents. That is to say, while it does not represent the working people exclusively, it is a cla.s.s organization standing for the interests of that group of cla.s.ses which has joined its ranks, and for other cla.s.ses of the community only in so far as their interests happen to be the same.

Already the majority of the Labour Party voters are undoubtedly working people. When it takes a definite position on the land question, favoring one-family farms and short leases or else cooperative, munic.i.p.al, or national large-scale operation, and states clearly that it intends to use compulsory arbitration to advance wages indefinitely, including those of farm laborers, there is every probability that, having lost the support of the employing farmers, it will gradually take its place as a party of permanent opposition to capitalism, like the Socialist parties of Europe--until industry finally and decisively surpa.s.ses agriculture, and the industrial working cla.s.s really becomes the most powerful element in society.

s.p.a.ce does not permit the tracing of the "State Socialist" tendency in other countries than Great Britain, the United States, and Australasia. Originally a brief chapter was here inserted showing the similar tendencies in Germany. This is now omitted, but the frequent reference to Germany later in dealing with the Socialist movement makes a brief statement of the German situation essential.

For this purpose it will be sufficient to quote a few of the princ.i.p.al statements of the excellent summary and a.n.a.lysis by William C. Dreher ent.i.tled "The German Drift towards Socialism":

"The German Reichstag pa.s.sed a law in May, 1910, for the regulation of the potash trade, a law which goes further _in the direction of Socialism_ than any previous legislation in Germany. It a.s.signs to each mine a certain percentage of the total production of the country, and lays a prohibitory tax upon what it produces in excess of this allotment. It fixes the maximum price for the product in the home market, and prohibits selling abroad at a lower price. A government bureau supervises the industry, sees that the prices and allotments are observed, examines new mines to determine their capacity, and readjusts allotments as new mines reach the producing stage....

"But the radical features of the law are not completed in the foregoing description. The bill having reduced potash prices, the mine owners threatened to recoup themselves by reducing wages. But the members of the Reichstag were not to be balked by such threats; they could legislate about wages just as easily as about prices and allotments. So they amended the bill by providing that if any owner should reduce wages without the consent of his employees, his allotment should be restricted in the corresponding proportion....

"While the law is indeed decidedly Socialistic in tendency, it is not yet Socialism. It hedges private property about with sharper restrictions than would be thought justifiable in countries where, as in the United States, the creed of individualism is still vigorous; and yet it is, in effect, hardly more than a piece of social reform legislation, though a more radical one than we have hitherto seen....

"In Germany, 'the individual withers' and the world of State and Society, with its multifarious demands upon him, 'is more and more.' This is, of course, a Socialistic tendency, but the subst.i.tute that the Germans are finding for unlimited compet.i.tion is not radical Socialism, but organization....

"The State, of course, takes hold of the individual life more broadly, with more systematic purpose. The individual's health is cared for, his house is inspected, his children are educated, he is insured against the worst vicissitudes of life, his savings are invested, his transportation of goods or persons is undertaken, his need to communicate with others by telegraph or telephone is met--all by the paternal State or city.

"Twenty-five years ago the Prussian government was spending only about $13,500 a year on trade schools; now it is spending above three million dollars on more than 1300 schools....

"The Prussian State had also long been an extensive owner of coal, potash, salt, and iron mines. In 1907 a law was pa.s.sed giving the State prior mining rights to all undiscovered coal deposits. In general, however, it must cede those rights to private parties on payment of a royalty; but the law makes an exception of 250 'maximum fields,' equal to about 205 square miles, in which the State itself will exercise its mining rights. It has recently reserved this amount of lands adjacent to the coal fields on the lower Rhine and in Silesia. The State has already about 80 square miles of coal lands in its hands, from which it is taking out about 10,000,000 tons of coal a year. Its success as a mine owner, however, appears to be less marked than as a railway proprietor; experienced business men even a.s.sert that the State's coal and iron mines would be operated at a loss if proper allowances were made for depreciation and amortization of capital, as must be done in the case of private companies. The State also derives comparatively small revenues from its forest and farming lands of some 830,000 acres, which were formerly the property of the Crown....

"The most important State tax is that on _incomes_, which is in all cases graduated down to a very low rate on the smallest income; in Prussia there is no tax on incomes less than $214. The cities also collect the bulk of their revenues from incomes, using the same cla.s.sification and sliding scale as the State.

"A highly interesting innovation in taxation is the 'unearned increment' tax on land values, first adopted by Frankfort-on-the-Main in 1904, and already applied by over 300 German cities and towns....

"The bill before the Reichstag [since become a law--W. E. W.]

extends sick insurance to farm laborers and household servants, a change which will raise the burden of this system for employers from $24,000,000 to $36,000,000. The bill also provides for pensioning the widows and orphans of insured laborers at an estimated additional expense of about $17,000,000....

"A better result of the insurance systems than the modest pensions and the indemnities that they pay is to be found in their excellent work for protecting health and prolonging life. Many offices have their own hospitals for the sick, and homes for the convalescent....

"All these protective measures have already told effectively upon the death rate for tuberculous diseases. In the three years ending with 1908, deaths from pulmonary tuberculosis dropped from 226.6 to 192.12 per 100,000.

"The accident system has also had a powerful effect in stimulating among the physicians and surgeons the study of special ways and means for treating accident injuries, with reference to preserving intact the strength and efficiency of the patient....

"Bismarck once, in a speech in the Reichstag, explicitly recognized the laborer's right to work. Some twenty German cities have given practical effect to his words by organizing insurance against nonemployment; and the governments of Bavaria and Baden have taken steps to encourage this movement. Under the systems adopted, the laborer pays the larger part of the insurance money, and the city the rest; in a few cases money has been given by private persons to a.s.sist the insurance."[82] [N.B. The word "Socialistic" is used by Mr. Dreher in the sense of "State Socialism," as opposed to what he calls "radical Socialism."]

FOOTNOTES:

[78] Special Correspondence of _New York Evening Post_, dated Sidney, Dec. 12, 1909.

[79] The data upon which this chapter is based is also obtained chiefly from Mr. Victor Clark's "Labour Movement in Australasia," and "State Socialism in New Zealand," by Stewart and Le Rossignol.

[80] Victor S. Clark, _op. cit._

[81] Stewart and Rossignol, _op. cit._

[82] The _Atlantic Monthly_, July, 1911.

CHAPTER VII

"EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY"

Many reformers admit that no reforms can bring us towards democracy as long as cla.s.s rule continues. Henry George, for example, recognizes that his great land reform, the government appropriation of rent for public purposes, is useless when the government itself is monopolized, "when political power pa.s.ses into the hands of a cla.s.s, and the rest of the community become merely tenants."[83] In precisely the same way every great "State Socialist" reform must fail to bring us a single step towards real democracy, as long as cla.s.ses persist.

That strongly marked social cla.s.ses do exist even in the United States is now admitted by Dr. Lyman Abbott, Andrew Carnegie, and by innumerable other, by no means Socialistic, observers.

"The average wage earner," says John Mitch.e.l.l, "has made up his mind that he must remain a wage earner. He has given up the hope of a kingdom to come where he will himself be a capitalist."[84] This feeling is almost universally shared by manual wage earners, and very widely also by salaried brain workers. Large prizes still exist, and their influence is still considerable over the minds of young men. But, as was pointed out recently in an editorial of the _Sat.u.r.day Evening Post_, they are "just out of reach," and the instances in which they actually materialize are "so relatively few as to be negligible." Even if these prizes were a hundred fold more numerous than they are, the children of the wage earners would still not have a t.i.the of the opportunity of the children of the well-to-do.

To-day in the country opportunities are no better than in the towns. The universal outcry for more farm labor can only mean that such laborers are becoming relatively fewer because they are giving up the hope that formerly kept them in the country, namely, that of becoming farm owners.

Already Mr. George K. Holmes of the United States Bureau of Statistics estimates that in the chief agricultural section of the country, the North Central States, a man must be rich before he can become a farmer, and so rapidly is this condition spreading to other sections that Mr.

Holmes feels that the only hope of obtaining sufficient farm labor is to persuade the children of the farmers to remain on the farms.

"Fifty years ago," said _McClure's Magazine_ in a recent announcement, which sums up some of the chief elements of the present situation, "we were a nation of independent farmers and small merchants. To-day we are a nation of corporation employees." There can be no question that we are seeing the formation in this country of very definitely marked economic and social cla.s.ses such as have long prevailed in the older countries of Europe. And this cla.s.s division explains _why the political democracies of such countries as France, Switzerland, the United States, and the British Colonies show no tendency to become real democracies_. Not only do cla.s.ses defend every advantage and privilege that economic evolution brings them, but, what is more alarming, they utilize these advantages chiefly to give their children greater privileges still. Unequal opportunities visibly and inevitably breed more unequal opportunities.

The definite establishment of industrial capitalism, a century or more ago, and later the settlement of new countries, brought about a revolutionary advance towards equality of opportunity. But the further development of capitalism has been marked by steady retrogression. Yet nearly all capitalist statesmen, some of them honestly, insist that equality of opportunity is their goal, and that we are making or that we are about to make great strides in that direction. Not only is the establishment of equality of opportunity accepted as the aim that must underlie all our inst.i.tutions, even by conservatives like President Taft, but it is agreed that it is a perfectly definite principle. n.o.body claims that there is any vagueness about it, as there is said to be about the demand for political, economic, or social equality.

It may be that the economic positions in society occupied by men and women who have now reached maturity are already to some slight degree distributed according to relative fitness; and, even though this fitness is due, not to native superiority, but to unfair advantages and unequal opportunity, it may be that a general change for the better is here impossible until a new generation has appeared. But there is no reason, except the opposition of parents who want privileges for their children, why every child in every civilized country to-day should not be guaranteed by the community an equal opportunity in public education and an _equal chance for promotion in the public or semi-public service_, which soon promises to employ a large part if not the majority of the community. _No Socialist can see any reason for continuing a single day the process of fastening the burdens of the future society beforehand on the children of the present generation of wage earners_, children as yet of entirely unknown and undeveloped powers and not yet irremediably shaped to serve in the subordinate roles filled by their parents.

But the reformers other than the Socialists are not even working in this direction, and their claims that they are, can easily be disproved. Mr.

John A. Hobson, for example, believes that the present British government is seeking to realize "equality of opportunity," which he defines as the effort "to give equal opportunities to all parts of the country and all cla.s.ses of the people, and so to develop in the fullest and the farthest-sighted way the national resources."[85] But even the more or less democratic collectivism Mr. Hobson and other British Radicals advocate, if it stops short of a certain point, and its benefits go chiefly to the middle cla.s.ses, may merely increase middle-cla.s.s compet.i.tion for better-paid positions, and so obviously _decrease_ the _relative_ opportunities of the ma.s.ses, and make them _less equal_ than they are to-day.

Edward Bernstein, the Socialist, says: "The number of the possessing cla.s.ses is to-day not smaller, but larger. The enormous increase of social wealth is not accompanied by a decreasing number of large capitalists, but by an increasing number of capitalists of all degrees."

Whether this is true or not, whether the well-to-do middle cla.s.ses are gradually increasing in each generation, say, to 5, 10, or 15 per cent of the population, cannot be a matter of more than secondary importance to the overwhelming majority, the "non-possessing cla.s.ses," that remain outside. n.o.body denies that social evolution is going on even to-day.

But the ma.s.ses will probably not be willing to wait the necessary generations and centuries before present tendencies, should they chance to continue long enough (which is doubtful in view of the rapid formation of social castes), would bring the ma.s.ses any considerable share of existing prosperity.

To secure anything approaching equality of opportunity, the first and most necessary measure is to give equal educational facilities to all cla.s.ses of the population. Yet the most radical of the non-Socialist educational reformers do not dare to hope at present even for a step in this direction. No man has more convincingly described what the first step towards a genuinely democratic education must be than Ex-President Charles W. Eliot of Harvard, perhaps our most influential representative of political as opposed to social democracy.

"Is it not plain," asks President Eliot, "that if the American people were all well-to-do they would multiply by four or five times the present average school expenditure per child and per year? That is, they would make the average expenditure per pupil for the whole school year in the United States from $60 to $100 for salaries and maintenance, instead of $17.36 as now. Is it not obvious that instead of providing in the public schools a teacher for forty or fifty pupils, they would provide a teacher for every ten or fifteen pupils?"[86]

The reform proposed by Dr. Eliot, if applied to all the twenty million children of school age in the United States, would mean the expenditure of two billion instead of three hundred and fifty million dollars per year on public education. Ex-President Eliot fully realizes the radical and democratic character of this proposed revolution in the public schools, and is correspondingly careful to support his demands at every point with facts. He shows, for instance, that while private schools expend for the tuition and general care of each pupil from two hundred to six hundred dollars a year, and not infrequently provide a teacher for every eight or ten pupils, the public school which has a teacher for every forty pupils is unusually fortunate.

Dr. Eliot says that while there has been great improvement in the first eight grades since 1870, progress is infinitely slower than it should be, and that the majority of children do not yet get beyond the eighth grade (the statistics for this country show that only one out of nineteen takes a secondary course). "Philanthropists, social philosophers, and friends of free inst.i.tutions," he asks, "is that the fit educational outcome of a century of democracy in an undeveloped country of immense natural resources? Leaders and guides of the people, is that what you think just and safe? People of the United States, is that what you desire and intend?"

In order not only to bring existing public schools up to the right standard, but to create new kinds of schools that are badly needed, the plan suggested by Dr. Eliot would take another billion or two. He advocates kindergartens and further development of the new subjects that have recently been added to the grammar school course; he opposes the specialization of the studies of children for their life work before the sixteenth or seventeenth year, favors complete development of the high school as well as the manual training, mechanics, art, the evening and the vacation schools, greater attention to physical education and development, and, finally, the greatest possible extension and development of our inst.i.tutions of higher education. He also advocates newer reforms, such as the employment of skilled physicians in connection with the schools, the opening of public s.p.a.ces, country parks, beaches, city squares, gardens, or parkways for the instruction of school children. He specifies in detail the improvements that are needed in school buildings, shows what is urgently demanded and is immediately practicable in the way of increasing the number of teachers, paying them better and giving them pensions, indicates the needed improvements in the administration of the school systems, urges the development of departmental instruction through several grades, and the addition of manual training to all the public schools along with a better instruction in music and drawing.