Socialism by. Roswell D. Hitchcock Chapter 1. part 2.

This essay on socialism was written in the late 19th century. Around the same time as Marx was doing his writing. To me this is fascinating reading and remarkable in it's pertinence to today. The Faux news talking heads would have us believe that this is the best of all worlds if we liberals would quit messing it up, but hey who has been in charge for the last three decades? This is part 2 of the first chapter.

This is due largely to the extraordinary ad-
vances made in manufacturing and commerce,
which have reacted even upon agriculture,
revolutionizing also its methods. Everywhere
now machinery carries the day. Inventors
are the potentates, replacing the Alexanders,
the Caesars, the Ghengis Khans, the Na-
poleons of the past. Look at the mowing-
machine, sweeping across the hay-field like
a charge of cavalry ; but anybody can learn
to manage it who has wit enough to whet
and swing a scythe. In one of our cotton
mills I saw a machine, called the Warper,
which, from 358 spools, was taking the 358
threads required for the warp of a web of
cloth, and was winding them upon a drum or
cylinder for the loom. When a thread broke,
the machine instantly stopped, to have the
ends tied. A child was tending the machine.
Which was master, the child or the machine ?
And which was servant, the machine or the
child? Our best pocket chronometers, that
used to be called by the names of their fa-
mous makers, Patek, Jiirgens, Frodsham, now
bear the name of the Massachusetts village
whose factory turns them out by the hundred,
as some other factory turns out its wooden
pails. Our machinery is marvelous. Al-
ready some of it talks. If only it could be
made to think, very little would be left for
brains to do, except, possibly, to invent a
new machine occasionally. Some of this
machinery certainly requires very careful
handling, but much of it may be handled by
almost anybody. The very design of it is
not merely to cheapen and stimulate produc-
tion, but also to supplement the scarcity of
skilled labor. And so, apparently, its tendency
has been to lower the average of artisan abil-
ity. It not only permits, but encourages the
employment of women and children, who
ought rather to be at home, or in school.
Machinery thus gets the better of manhood.
Our civilization becomes a pyramid, whose
base is broad and crushing. Steam drives
the machinery ; coal generates steam ; and
men go down for coal with something of the
risk of regiments going into battle. About
the year 1350, coal, which had been discover-
ed some fifty years before, on the banks of
the Tyne, began to be used for fuel in Lon-
don.* Now the coal mines of England, be-

* In 1373 its use was forbidden by proclamation on account
of its effluvia, supposed to be unhealthy. But about 1400 the
consumption of it was extended.


sides all the semi-barbarism they breed, are
costing" her, by accidents of one sort and an-
other, more than a thousand human lives a
yean In the old classic Levant, every sailor
was on deck, with a chance to be schooled by
sea, and sky, and star, and storm, into the
higher grades of service. Now we steam
round the globe in huge leviathans, at the
mercy of grimy firemen out of sight, deep
down where day and night, calm and storm,
summer and winter, are all the same.

On the whole, unhealthful employments
appear to multiply with the advancing arts.
More and more men take their lives in their
hands for their daily bread. Brave soldiers,
you tell me, do the same. Only mercenaries,
I reply, do that; and war, no matter how
righteous it may be, is always terribly de-
moralizing. Say what you will, things are
not just as they should be when a man is
forced into some loathsome and hazardous
employment because there is nothing else for
him to do ; and then is so exiled and humbled
by it, that his children after him shall be al-
most hopelessly foredoomed to the same employment.
Even in armies, where authority
is absolute, and obedience must be implicit,
volunteers are generally called for in forlorn
assaults, partly, to be sure, that only the very
best may go, but also because it is considered
simply fair that men should have always every
possible liberty of choice when their own
lives are at stake. Pensions likewise await
the widows and orphans of them that fall.
Ancient nations made unhealthful employ-
ments a part of their penal discipline. For-
feited life gained something by being sent
** to the mines.''

Another incidental evil, of considerable
magnitude, is the liability to over-production,
or, as some prefer to say, disproportionate
production, which is over-production in some
directions ; the very calamity, or one of the
calamities, upon us now. Plethora begets
paralysis. Hounded on by the hum of our
own machinery, we manufacture more than is
wanted. Mills stop, and workmen, narrowed,
dulled, dwarfed, almost crippled by our sys-
tem of labor, are flung out helpless upon the
street. They can not dig, to beg they are
ashamed. They ask only for work ; but, till
consumption catches up again with produc-
tion, there is no more work to be had.

In Europe another characteristic infelicity
of our present civilization, is the supposed
necessity of maintaining large standing armies.
The old Roman Empire, holding the better
part of Europe, and portions of Asia and Af-
rica, with a population of a hundred millions,
half freemen, half slaves, had a regular army
of 175,000 men. Of auxiliaries, furnished
by the provinces, there were about as many
more ; with some 75,000 naval troops. So
that the whole military strength of the Em-
pire was a little more than 400,000. Now,
instead of that one Empire, there are five or
six powerful kingdoms, several of which are
stronger in arms than Rome was. For ex-
ample, France and Germany, having each a
population of about 40,000,000, have each a
regular army of nearly 500,000 men. The
heart of Europe is one vast military encamp-
ment. Millions of men are under arms all
the time ; consuming without producing ; incapacitated
for any other employment.* The waste is
enormous. And in Germany especially, where the
discipline is sternest, Socialism waxes fiercer and
fiercer year by year. The cry is, '* Disarm." But no nation dares
disarm alone ; and they can not agree to dis-
arm together. To such a pass has our civili-
zation come in about four hundred years,
since Charles VII., in France, organized for
himself the first standing army of 22,000
archers and 900 horsemen ; just about the
size of our United States army, which an-
swers our purpose, only because the Atlantic
Ocean rolls between us and the politics of
Europe.

This inequality of social condition, thus far
increased, rather than diminished, by our ad-
vancing civilization, is very painful to think
of. One has no need to be a Christian, to be
grieved by it. It offends the most rudimental
sense of human brotherhood. How has it
come about that children of the same family

* See " The Armies of Asia and Europe," by Emory Up-
ton: 1878.

are so far apart in their fortunes? And what
can be done, not to bridge, but to narrow,
and, if possible, annihilate, the chasm between
them ? These are the two cardinal Socialis-
tic questions of our day, and of all days.
The former suggests what may be called the
diagnosis, the latter what may be called the
therapeutics of Socialism.

Socialism, in this sense of the word, is not
a bad thing. It seems very much like philan-
thropy, but they differ. Philanthropy con-
cerns itself about the whole nature, condition,
and destiny of man, for time and for eter-
ity. Socialism concerns itself about the out-
ward environment, and ends with time. So-
cialism claims to be more realistic than phi-
lanthropy ; it is, in fact, more likely to be sen-
timental. Pronounced and professional So-
cialism easily becomes a cant and a quackery.
Dealing so exclusively with outward prob-
lems, it prescribes for the symptoms and
misses the disease. It may not go so far as
to say, that the individual is for society, rather
than society for the individual ; men for insti-
tutions, rather than institutions for men. But
It does overrate society and underrate the in-
dividual ; it does overrate institutions and un-
derrate men. And so it dreams of regenera-
ting society, without regenerating the individ-
ual ; or, at all events, it insists upon regener-
ating society first.