Social Anarchy; or, Competition.

 By Lawrence Gronlund.

Author of " 'The Co-operative Commonwealth," 

" Our Destiny," &c.

"Competition gluts our markets, enables the rich to take advantage of the necessities of the poor, makes each man snatch the bread out of his neighbour's mouth, converts a nation of brethren into a mass of hostile, isolated units, and finally involves capitalists and labourers in one common ruin.— Greg.

The wage-system may be said to be of vital interest only to the wage-workers. They are a considerable part of the nation. They include not only the operatives in our factories and mines, but the whole army of railroad employees, all agricultural labourers, all clerks engaged in stores and mercantile establishments ; all, in fact, who help to create values and receive a stated salary. But, though the wage-workers are an important fraction of the population of every country, they, nevertheless, are but a fraction. If Socialism had regard to them only, it were nothing but a class movement.
We claim that there is a something-wrong in society which vitally affects the whole nation and every individual in it. In prosperous years it may not obtrude itself on the attention of thoughtless people ; but let " hard times " come on, and it makes everybody feel uneasy. What is this " something-wrong " ? Socialists say that it is nothing less than the method, the policy which governs all activities of the principal nations of our time. It is spreading itself in Catholic societies and through out the whole world, but it arose in Protestant countries. It is, in fact, simply the exaggerated form of one of the principles of Protestantism — the independence of the individual, which exaggerated individual independence we properly call individualism. We can also call the policy the " let alone " policy ; its admirers give it a more euphonious name. — Private Enterprise.
Let alone whom — what?
In the middle ages the feudal barons erected castles, from which they issued forth their retainers, when they espied merchants and adventurers approaching on the contiguous highways laden with wealth, stopped them, and levied tolls. All that these barons desired was to be "let alone." In our ages it is the successors of these merchants and adventurers who have grown powerful fattened on " fleecings." They, in their turn, demand to be " let alone " ; they demand that society shall be an unrestricted hunting-ground for their " enterprise." They are let alone ; we shall now note with what results to the different classes of society.
Before our present industrial system got into full swing— that is, before the power of steam was utilised—the master workman was an adept in his trade, and owned his tools and the raw materials he used. This is all now changed. The workman is now divorced from his implements and raw materials, which have got under the complete control of the Capitalist class ; he now has nothing left but his naked labour. This it is, again, which enables employers to buy labour in the market, for a price much below the productivity of that labour — that is, at a value much below its worth.
This monopoly has made employers into a class of autocrats, the labourers into a class of dependants — of hirelings. As Jesse Jones has said: "A class is fixed, when nine-tenths of those comprising it can never get out of it. . . . Why mock workingmen by putting rare exceptions for a general rule ? "
The labouring men are dealt with by our managers as mere tools. They are spoken of as tools, as things. This humanitarian age counts steers and sheep by "heads" and the workers by "hands." A pity God did not make them only "hands!"
It is a paltry evasion to say that the workers are free to consent or refuse the terms of an employer. It is, as Dickens says in Hard Times, " an evasion worthy of the man who asked permission of the Virgin to rob her of her necklace — and then did it, taking silence for consent." The labourers have to consent. If they refuse the terms, Capitalists simply stop business ; they can stand it. " Hard times " are really only hard on those whose subsistence depends on having work to do. The wives and daughters of Capitalists do, as a rule, not leave off during " hard times," attending operas in their silks, satins, and diamonds; do not, as a rule, quit their luxurious mansions, or dismiss their liveried servants.
Henry George, in his Progress and Poverty, epitomises the position of our labourers as follows :— " Compelled to more continuous labour than the savage, the labourer — a mere link in an enormous chain of producers and consumers, helpless to separate himself and helpless to move, except as they move — gains the mere necessaries of life, just what the savage gets, and loses the independence of the savage." And, as to security, he is not much better off. The irregularity of his employment, the frequency with which he is out of work, is the most alarming feature of the workman's condition. And that irregularity is often, purposely brought about by the employing Capitalist class. For instance, in order to put up the price of anthracite coal, of the working days of a month nine to twelve are frequently made idle days by the coal companies of Pennsylvania. The mining is interrupted to limit supply, and the miners are left to do the best they can with work for two days out of every three.
This condition has been rendered yet enormously more precarious by the remarkable industrial inventions of the age.
These victories of man, of society, over nature's physical forces ought certainly to have been unqualified blessings to all.
Yet how often have they proven instruments of torture to the working class? How many has the introduction of new machinery thrown out of employment ? How many existences have thereby been destroyed ?
We are familiar with the commonplace, that the outcry of labourers against " new fangled machinery " is a complaint born of ignorance ; that in the end the working classes are as much benefitted as other classes. This outcry is, by no means, nothing but an ignorant childish complaint. Machinery would be an unqualified blessing if the temporary injury which it so often has caused to individuals and whole bodies of men were considered in a spirit of social justice and brotherliness. That has never been done where the working classes are considered, either in this (America) or any other country. In their case our legislators persistently repudiate the duty to take care of the interests of those who are sacrificed for the benefit of their fellow-citizens and of posterity. But whenever other classes have been thus affected there never has been the slightest hesitation to liberally compensate those prejudiciously affected. It is the action of society that has made machinery an evil. This is the real meaning of the outcry against " new-fangled machinery."
And we deny that workpeople hitherto have been essentially benefited by machinery at all. The sewing machine is a pointed illustration. That was thought, at all events, to be a blessing to the overworked, famishing needlewoman. Yet what has followed ? That she is now still more overworked, more poorly paid, and her health still more endangered.   But, to be sure, those inventions were not adopted by Capitalists for the benefit of workpeople, or for the general benefit. No, indeed! For, of course, this machinery and these inventions have also gone into the hands of Capitalists, and are controlled by them for their exclusive benefit, and with admirable results. It has been calculated that two-thirds of all benefit arising from the use of machinery have gone to these "pushing" fellows and the remaining one-third to the consumers. Even our patent laws, with the general advantage for their primary idea, have become a means of enabling those Capitalists, in no sense inventors, to levy heavy tribute upon the community for an indefinite length of time.
" Ah ! but the workers are also consumers, we should think, and from the majority in fact of all consumers."
Hold on, sir ! Has machinery lightened the days's toil of any work ? That is what ought to measure the benefits of machinery to him. Let us see if it has.
Here is one picture: Massachusetts is a model State, we suppose. Well, a statute of that State in 1860 made ten hours a maximum working day for children under twelve years of age. In 1867 her legislators became a little more humane, and enacted that no child under fifteen years of age should work more than sixty hours a week. Go to Pennsylvania and see children ten years old taken down every morning into the mines to work !
Here is another picture : In England, 200 years back, ten hours— aye, in the fifteenth century eight hours — were a normal working day for strong blacksmiths and robust agricultural labourers.
But compare the comforts of our labourers 200 years ago. What a wonderful betterment in that respect !"
What of it? What comfort is that to our labourers ? You might as well compare their condition with that of a savage in Africa, who does not need a coat, does not need soap. Just so ; the labourers of a former age did not need a good many things which now are the necessaries on decencies of life. We say their condition has not improved, because it takes considerably more toil to procure the needful now than it did then, as testified to, among others, by Hallam : " The labourer is much inferior in ability to support a family than were his ancestors four centuries ago." Why, before the beginning of the Capitalistic system, labourers could, in England, live a whole week upon the earnings of four days ; now, in Massachusetts, he cannot live a week upon the earnings of a week of much more continuous toil. No, in many cases he is obliged to disrupt his family, and send his wife and children to the factory.
For that is the greatest curse of machinery — or, rather, of "individualistic " monopoly of machinery — that capital can be, and is, coined out of women, and even out of infancy ; that women and children can be, and are, substituted for men. Thus, not alone are men turned into wares, governed by demand and supply, but men are made to scramble for a precarious living with their wives, sisters, and children. In the cotton and woollen factories of enlightened Massachusetts, women and children now compose two-thirds of the working force. The necessary result is a great reduction in wages. It is notorious that the wages thus earned by a whole family do not, on an average, exceed those of the head of the family in occupations where it has not yet become habitual to employ women and children.
And do not venture to compare the independence of our working classes with the artisans of England of a former age, who partly worked for themselves and, possessed a cottage and a cow and a strip of land to cultivate. Our ox-eyed, docile wage-workers, restrained by arbitrary shop rules prescribed by their lord — rules that forbid them to talk to each other, or even to laugh (!) — will not for a moment bear comparison with the merry families of master and men of the despised middle age. The first result of the "let-alone" system, thus, is that Capitalists monopolise all the instruments of production, all the previous acquisitions of society, all increase in the productivity of Labour, and, therefore, exercise an autocratic control of all industries and over the whole working class.
The great weapon at the command of the Capitalists is competition.
" Competition," like most economic terms, is a very slippery word. At one time it means something which advances the successful, but leaves the unsuccessful on his former level ; that kind of competition muses the energy of the unsuccessful, as well as of the successful, and increases the capacity of both. We shall call that by a much more appropriate term — emulation.
At another time " competition " means the advancing oneself at the cost of others ; the pulling the many down, the elbowing the many aside, in order to advance the one. That " competition " is most cruel to the individual and, in the long run, most injurious to society.
It deserves the name of cut-throat competition, when the wage-workers are forced into a struggle to see who shall live and who shall starve.
But these are by no means the only sufferers. The small employers, the small merchants, are just as much victims of that cruel kind of competition as the wage-workers. For every one of the fleecers lives in a state of nature with all of his brethren ; the hand of the one is against the other, and no foe is more terrible than the one who is running a neck-to-neck race with him every day. The mammoth factory, the mammoth store is a most implacable foe. The fierce competition lessens the profit on each article, and that must be compensated for by a greater number of them being produced and sold — that is, the cheaper the goods, the more capital is required.
Precisely then for the same reason that the mechanic with his own shop and working on his own account nearly has disappeared in the struggle between hand-work and machine-work, the small employers with their little machinery, their small capital, and their little stock of goods are being driven from the field.
Look at those queer princes of ours — vulgar men, far from possessing eminent faculties or high attainments ; men having no more knowledge or mental capacity than is required in any mechanical pursuits — who, by the employment and power of their capital, yearly ruin multitudes of hard working merchants, and boast that they are selling more goods in a day than the whole " crowd " of other stores in a week ! Scores of such small merchants, driven to the wall by the proprietor of a mammoth establishment, have to be glad if the " prince " will make them his servants and graciously allow them to help swell his millions.
In short, the smaller fortunes invested in productive or commercial enterprises are by this cut-throat competition attracted to the great capitals, just as iron filings are to the magnet. The great Capitalist triumphs, the small Capitalist becomes a clerk, wage-labourer, or parasite of some kind or other; the middle class disappears little by little. Our social order may fitly be compared to a ladder of which the middle rounds are being torn away, one by one.
This, then, is another fruit of private " enterprise " — that the small employers are gradually being rooted out by the great Capitalists.
In former periods society was tormented with plagues, caused, as we now know, by ignorance, and consequent violation of the laws of health. Our era is cursed with crises, occurring far more frequently than plagues and causing with each occurrence as much misery.
Economists say that these crises are caused by over-production. "Overproduction ! " — a remarkable word, in truth, as long as one unfed and unclad human being, willing to work, roams the earth. Would not our ancestors of any preceding age have considered anyone who would have talked to them of overproduction a lunatic ? Could they, think you, have conceived of such an abnormity as that any nation could ever suffer from too much industry, too much commerce, too many tools, and too much food ? But we ought, in order to be fair, to take the word in the sense of these economists. They mean, by " overproduction " a too large production, compared with the effective demand. But, then, what is the cause of the too large production ?
Private enterprise, Socialists say. Private enterprise compels every producer to produce for himself, to sell for himself, to keep all his transactions secret, without any regard whatever for anybody else in the wide world. But the producer and merchant — the small ones, especially — daily find out that their success or failure depends, in the first place, precisely on how much others produce and sell, and, in the second place, on a multitude of causes — or on things that may happen thousand miles away— which determine the power of purchase of their customers. They have got no measure at hand at all by which they can, even approximately, estimate the actual effective demand of consumers, or ascertain the producing capacity of their rivals. In other words: Private " enterprise " is a defiance of Nature's law, which decrees that the interests of society are interdependent; and Nature punishes that defiance in her own crude way by playing ball with those individualists, and, what is worse, by rendering all production, all commerce chaotic. Risk is nature's Revenge.
Just take a bird's-eye view of the way private "enterprise" manages affairs. Observe how every manufacturer, every merchant, strives in every possible way — by glaring advertisements, by underselling others, by giving long credits, by sending out an army of drummers — to beat his rivals. Not one here and there, not a few, do this ; they all do it. We shall suppose the season a favourable one; all of them receive orders in greater number than they expected. These orders stimulate each one of the manufacturers to a more and more enlarged production far ahead of the orders received, in the hope of being able to dispose of all that is being produced. But mark ! this production of all these manufacturers is, and must necessarily be, absolutely planless. It depends altogether on chance and the private guesswork of these "enterprising " individuals, who are all guessing entirely in the dark. That means that all their production, all their commerce, is in the nature of gambling. To a thoughtful observer nothing will seem more inevitable than that this planless production must end in the market being at some time overstocked with commodities of one kind or another — that is, that it must end in " overproduction " as to those goods. In that branch of production prices consequently fall, wages come down, or a great manufacturer fails, and a smaller or greater number of workmen are discharged.
But one branch of industry depends upon another ; one branch suffers when another is depressed. The stoppage of production at one point, therefore, necessarily shows itself at another point in the industrial network. The circle of depression thus grows larger and larger from month to month, failure succeeds failure, the general consumption diminishes, all production and commerce is paralysed. We have got the crisis. To those who were all the time planning and working in the dark everything seemed to be going on as usual ; it has naturally come on them like a thunder bolt from a clear sky.
Vast quantities of stored-up goods now have to be disposed of at great sacrifice, to the ruin not alone of their owners but of many others who thereby are forced, likewise, to sell under cost-price. Then it is we hear from everyone in every calling this the strongest of all condemnations of this Social "Order" of ours: "We have too many competitors ; half of us must perish, before the other half can live." All the result of planless work.
When such a crisis has lasted for years, when such sacrifice of goods and standstill of production has finally overcome the " overproduction," then the inevitable demand at length calls for renewed production ; and society commences to recover slowly, but only to repeat the old story. Producers want to idemnify themselves for what they have lost and hope to " make" sufficient before another crisis comes on. Because all producers act in like manner, each one trying to outflank the other, another catastrophe is invited. It responds to the call and approaches with accelerated strides and with more damaging effects than any of its predecessors.
These crises very much quicken the absorption of the smaller fortunes by the large ones, for the Capitalist with large resources is the only one capable, in the long run, of withstanding this rough treatment of outraged nature. The former Capitalists the crises swallow up like veritable mælstroms.
These mælstroms : the crises, then, are the direct production of private enterprise.
Again, we saw how the workingmen were driven out of their employment as producers, how the small employers were pushed out of their business by this cut-throat competition. In nine cases out of ten they have only one refuge left : that of squeezing themselves in between producers and consumers as shop-keepers, saloon keepers, peddlers, " agents," boarding-and-lodging-house keepers; that is, of becoming parasites.
It may seem hard to speak thus of persons who by no means lead an enviable existence, who honestly try to make some sort of a living, whose life often is a tread-mill of drudgery, and, if different from that of the workingman's, is only different in this, that while the latter struggles for the necessities of to-day, the former struggle for the threatened necessities of to-morrow. They are, nevertheless, parasites, unnecessary workers. Going along our streets you observe one small store, one boarding-house, crowding another, one saloon, and often several, in one block : you will have all kinds of men and women thrust their small stock into your face ; in your house you will be annoyed by all kinds of peddlars and " agents," so-called.
All these people live. Somebody must earn their living for them.
In the first place, they live by enhancing the price of provisions, and all other goods, twice and three times what the producers get. The difference between their prices and wholesale prices makes just the difference between healthful plenty and half-satisfied hunger for the poor. It is a great mistake to suppose that competition always, or necessarily, lowers prices. It often has just the contrary effect. Probably two-thirds of existing small shop-keepers can not make a decent living without extravagant profits. Or, if the prices cannot be enhanced, then—
In the second place, they live by depreciating the quality of their goods and by short weights and measures. Adulteration of provisions and merchandise is notoriously carried on in every branch of trade that will permit of it; has, indeed, become a social institution, against which no law can make any headway. A representative of a leading spice-house lately said : "We sell to the trade more adulterated goods than pure. We cannot help it. We simply sell the retailer what he wants. It would ruin the trade to prohibit adulteration." Competition in drugs is now so hot dealers, in order to live, are compelled to adulterate, to weaken, and to substitute. It has gone so far that manufacturers of " mineral pulp," now boldly importune respectable millers and grocers to mix rock-dust with their flour and sugar.
The labouring class, more than any other, is the natural prey of these parasites. Remember that the labourers' ware, his labour, is never paid for till it has been used ; that he must give his employer credit always for a week, often for two weeks or a month ; that he will have to wait for his compensation, even while the values he has created have been long since converted into cash in his employer's hands. It is a necessary consequence that he, on his part, must ask credit from his shopkeeper. He becomes the prey, bound hand and foot, of that shopkeeper. He dare not murmur at the price charged, dare not be over particular as to weight or quality. He is pretty much in the same fix as the fly in the spider's web.
Thus the portion of the industrial cake allotted to Labour is further considerably curtailed, and all on account of private " enterprise" ; for it, also, is exclusively responsible for these parasites.
Let us pass over to our farmers. They, as yet the majority of the working population of the United States, are still the great conservative force — the brake, so to speak, on the wheel of progress. Is it likely that they will continue to be ? We shall see.
Its farmers were, half a generation ago, considered, and are still considered, the most independent and prosperous class of the community.
True; the prosperity of the western farmer, especially, was and is not of a character to excite the envy of anybody. His whole life, and more particularly that of his wife, was one of toil. He had to break the lands and clear the forests. His family had to subject themselves to all kinds of privations for a lifetime of dreary years. The social life of the farmers' wives was a mockery of our civilisation ; their sisters struggling in the cities had, at least, the comfort of suffering in company. To the family of the farmer sugar, tea, and coffee were, for a series of years, luxuries, especially when droughts and grasshoppers destroyed the fruits of his toil, generally as severe as that of his horse. And his reward ? That of vegetating and " raising " a family, as we so expressively term it ; yes — and of being the owner of his farm.
But his ownership is, even now, frequently one in name only. The Capitalist has got hold of him also. Very many of the Western farms are covered with mortgages, which their nominal owners have no hope of ever raising. The fact is so well known that the N. Y. TIMES some time ago advised the farmers to prepare themselves for their fate. What fate ? That of becoming tenant-farmers like their brethren of Great Britain.
It is especially since the commencement of the last decade that they are falling victims to " Private Enterprise."
There is in the ATLANTIC MONTHLY for January, 1880, a most instructive article* entitled "Bonanza Farms," containing many facts which, in the near future, cannot but have an important bearing on the condition of our farmers. These "Bonanza farms " are vast cultivated tracts of land in Minnesota, Dakota, Texas, Kansas, and California, each containing thousands of acres of land owned by presidents and directors of railways, by bankers in St. Paul and New York, London, and Frankfort-on-the-Main. They are conducted on purely " business " — that is, Capitalist — principles. On these farms there are no families, no women, no children, no homes. There is no need for them. But there is plenty of " Labour " in the neighbourhood. There is such an abundance of unemployed men that the managers of the farms can hire all the labour they want for £3 4s. a month, during the busy season, with thirteen hours of daily labour, and for £1 12s. a month during the balance of the year.
This fact alone would render it absolutely out of the question for the surrounding small farmers to compete with the bonanzas. For the former have to support a family, and to feed, clothe, and shelter, and altogether provide for, the same number of persons throughout the whole year, while the latter only need to hire about one-fourth the number of persons, in proportion to the work to be done, and that for less than one-fourth of the year. But the small farmer has other and greater odds still to contend with — the discrimination practised by other large corporations. Thus, the bonanzas obtain special rates from the railroad companies : f. i. they are charged for the transportation of their produce, rates 50 per cent. below those which the other farmers are obliged to pay; they buy their machinery and farming implements of the manufacturers and dealers at a discount of 33 1-3 per cent. from the published rates. We ought, therefore, not to wonder when we are told that the surrounding small farmers are hopelessly in debt, while the owners of these bonanza farms — the aforesaid bankers and railroad-presidents — are amassing colossal fortunes; that they, even, with wheat at less than 3s. a bushel, realise 20 per cent. the first year on their capital, and the second year — 55 per cent.
The article concludes with the remark : " We are taking immense strides in placing our country in the position of Great Britain, and even worse." So it seems. For here the forms are practically homesteads, while the bonanza farms have nothing suggesting homes except a building for the bachelor superintendent, and the boarding-house for the " hands."
There is no doubt that these bonanzas will, in the near future, increase greatly in number. Thus our public lands, which were intended for happy homes, are in a fair way of becoming no better that penal colonies, and of being robbed of their rich soil for the benefit of Capitalist pockets. What will then become of our farmer "proprietors " but farmer tenants ? If they are already running behindhand now, how much time will it take for the bonanza farmers to put an end to their proprietor ship by means of private " Enterprise " — especially if the export to Europe on account of good harvest there, should happen to cease ? Bear in mind that the United States already now produces far more food than its population could possibly consume, and yet thousands of acres are yearly added to the area under civilisation.
Yes, the time will come when the farmers will learn that Socialism is the only refuge alike for them and the other working classes, and their eyes may be opened to the advantage of the Co-operative Commonwealth. The great dairy farms in New York State and elsewhere may also contribute their quota to this lesson.
Thus even the farmers of the United States, as yet the most splendid yeomanry the world has ever seen, are becoming the victims of private enterprise to fully the same extent as the workingman and small employer.
But our big Capitalists have a still more powerful sledge-hammer than that of Competition ready at hand— to wit, Combination.
These gentlemen know practical dialectics. They know that, though Competition and Combination are opposites, they yet may come to mean the same thing— to them. They have already found that, while Competition is a very excellent weapon to use against their weaker rivals, Combination pays far better in relation to their peers. It is evident that it is combination they mainly rely upon for their future aggrandisement.
Combination consists in one or several capitalists, or corporations, helping along a third on the condition of participating in the fleecings. We have already mentioned one such instance. We saw how railroad officers united with bonanza farmers to crush out the small farmers. We read of another instructive instance in an article published in the Atlantic Monthly for March, 1881, and headed : " The Story of a Great Monopoly."
It tells how the Erie and Pennsylvania Railroads and Vanderbilt "pooled" their interests with the "Standard Oil Company," how they agreed to carry, and did carry its oil at much lower rates than the oils of other companies, and in many cases absolutely refused to carry the oils of the latter. It tells how, by such discrimination, the fleecings of the "Standard " swelled to such an extent that, starting with a capital stock of £200,000, it paid to its stockholders a dividend of £200,000 a month, and had then piled up in undivided profits and other forms a capital of £6,000,000. Truly a "Great Monopoly," a very dangerous monopoly one should think, for Pennsylvania and the public at large.

"By the same tactics," says the writer, "the Railroads can give other combinations of Capitalists the control of the lumber, cotton, iron, and coal of the United States." In Europe such alliances between Rail roads and corporations would be impossible. But in the United States, where Private "Enterprise" runs rampant, where the "Let-alone " abomination is carried to its highest logical pitch, such alliances are certain to be a prominent feature of its future.
But the evils which flow from the something-wrong in society are not confined to wage-workers, farmers, and small employers. The at present existing relations of men constitute the comfortless mutual slavery of us all, as we shall find, wherever we turn. Professional men of every kind can, also, be divided into those who have and those who have not ; and those among them who have not, are fully as bad off as the wage-workers, indeed worse off, for their culture becomes an additional curse to them. We will suppose such a man has talents, that he has qualified himself by hard study for a responsible function in Society, yet this anarchic Society has no opening for him. He perhaps becomes a clerk, just as much dependent on his employer, just as much a hireling, as the wage-worker is ; he likewise must hold his tongue, and constantly be on the lookout to preserve the favour of his august autocrat, while he all the while is doing the work of others who really receive the pay.
John S. Mill was fully aware of this; these are his words :
" What a spectacle, for instance, does the medical profession present ! One successful practitioner we find burdened with more work than mortal man can perform — in the surrounding streets twenty unhappy men, each of whom as laborously trained, wasting their capabilities, starving, perhaps, for want. Under better arrangements these twenty would form a corps of subalterns under the really ablest physician — and not merely the most successful imposter— physicing people for headaches, while the latter treated only more difficult cases."
But now, even in all professions, the watchword is, "Everyone look out for himself, and the devil take the hindmost" — all due to unrestrained private " Enterprise."
Our era may be called the Jewish Age. The Jews have, indeed, had a remarkable influence on our civilisation. Long ago they infused into our race the idea of one God, and now they have made our whole race worship a new true God : The Golden Calf ; but, again, it is Jews who have sounded the alarm for the most determined battle against this very Jewism : it is to that noble Jew, Karl Marx, that we owe the scientific basis of Socialism ; it is to another noble Jew, Lasselle, that we are indebted for its popularisation. " Jewism," to our mind, best expresses that special curse of our age ; Speculation — the transfer of wealth from others to themselves by chicanery without giving an equivalent.
If there is one species of gambling more despicable than another it is gambling in grain. The sales of grain on our produce exchanges are merely gambling transactions. Cliques of the wealthiest men in Chicago, Milwaukee, and New York, having behind them banks and other moneyed corporations, make enormous combinations of capital to " corner " the market, locking up millions of bushels of wheat, and maintain famine prices in the midst of plenty. Their profits are enormous. So are those of another clique, who owns all pork. And where do those profits come from ? From the workers, of course; from the bread-winners, who thus earn the support and the wealth, not only of their employers, their so-called "bread-givers," but of those Vampires who use their backs as the green table on which to plan their games.
The Vampires are quite different creatures from the parasites of whom we already have treated. The latter are workers though superfluous workers; the former are not workers at all. But, then, they do not call themselves workers either, but "business men." There is quite a difference between work and business, as the word is now commonly used. " Work" is effort to satisfy wants, and may be either useful or useless ; but "business" is effort to benefit by the work of others, and if that is to be called " work," it is at any rate mischievous work ; in that sense our criminals also work and generally pretty hard. " Work " is being busy in benefit ; "business," being busy in mischief. Our parasites are useless workers ; our Vampires are not better than thieves and swindlers.
On a par with Speculation is much of our " Traffic." The " enterprise " of our mercantile " kings " and our " princes " is very often but another name for chicanery and swindling. " Suppose," John Ruskin says, " a community of three men on an island, Two, the one a farmer and the other a mechanic, are so far apart that they are wholly at the mercy of the third who travels between them and effects their exchanges. He is constantly watching his opportunities, and retains the products of the one with which he has been intrusted and which are needed by the other, until there comes a period of extreme need for them and he can exact enormous gains from their necessities. It is easy to see that, while he may in that way draw the whole wealth of the community to himself and make his principals his servants, he also in fact diminishes the amount of wealth by cramping the operations of his two customers and diminishing the effective results of their labours. That is Wealth acquired on the strict principle of Political Economy."
And the millions which go into the pockets of these mercantile men of ours as "profit" are by them called "reward for enterprise," "compensation for risks." Do we call the gains of the swindler or the robber " compensation for risks ? " No, commerce, which is the interchange of commodities, is a most beneficial social activity ; traffic, trade, which, as Herbert Spencer says, is " essentially corrupt," which partakes of the nature either of gambling or overreaching, is not.
These Vampires are the offspring of the " let-alone " policy. " Laissez-faire," " let alone " — leave the honest at the mercy of the cunning ; leave the innocent to suffer for "their innocence ; leave everyone who profits by a corrupt system to make the most for himself ; let Labour remain something wholesale out of which fortunes are made and which during that process yields such a percentage of misery and sin — what a grand " principle !" By adopting it for its guiding star our Society has achieved— Anarchy.
Our comfortable classes talk much of " Social Order." In ancient Greece and Rome there was Social " Order," such as was ; during the Middle Age there was Social " Order," such as it was. But in our age there is, as we have seen, throughout our whole economic sphere, no social order at all. There is absolute Social Anarchy. It is against this Social Anarchy that Socialism, chiefly, is a protest.
All instruments of production are monopolised. The evil of this monopoly does not so much consists in the plutocrat having a right of property in that which he has acquired. Though formed out of fleecings, and in no other manner whatsoever, he can perhaps, claim these acquisitions as his property, because he has got hold of them by the express consent of Society. The evil lies in this, that he is able and permitted to use this property of his to further fleece his fellow-men out of the proceeds of their toil.
This unrestricted private enterprise is responsible for our crises, the inevitable consequences of defying the natural law of interdependence between all the members Society.
It has produced our parasites and vampires.
It has given us Competition with all its baneful consequences.
Not emulation, which no Society can afford to do without, the loss of which would check all advance and deaden all energy.
But cannibalism, that poisonous tooth the extraction of which would immensely relieve society.
It has put into the hands of our Plutocrats a deadlier club than competition for them to use whenever it serves their purpose : Combination among themselves.
It has destroyed all the patriarchal, idylic relations which formerly existed among men and left only the one relation : Cash-payment. It has drowned the chivalrous enthusiasm, the pious idealism which existed in previous ages in a chilly shower of realistic egotism. It has put exchange-value in place of human dignity, and licence in place of freedom. It has made the physician, the jurist, the poet, the scientist, retainers of the Plutocracy. It has made marriage a commercial relation and prostitution one of the established institutions of Society.
But let us be fair.
So far we have discussed only the evil workings of unrestricted "private enterprise." We heartily admit that, on the other hand, it has performed wonders. It has built monuments greater than the pyramids. Its Universal Expositions have moved greater masses of men than the Crusades ever did. It has done mankind an immense service in proving, by hard facts, that wholesale manufacture is the most sensible form of Labour.
But we contend that it now has done nearly all the good that it can, that the evils which now flow from individualism far outweigh the benefits it confers.
That is why we condemn it. We condemn it just as we condemn an old, decaying building, however useful it may have been in its time ; or as nature condemns the cocoon of a chrysalis when a butterfly is ready to be born.
But we know full well that "individualism " will for some time yet go on working mischief. We know it must become a good deal worse than it is, before it can become better.
But we also know that in the fullness of time the Logic of Events will imperatively demand a change from this Social Anarchy to true Social Order.

*Embodied in a book called Land and Labour, published by Scribner and Sons. Mr. Moody, of Boston, is the author.

Australian Workman (Sydney, NSW : 1890 - 1897), Saturday 29 August 1891, page 1