SOCIALISM AND PRACTICAL WORK.

 At the Pan-Anglican Congress, when the subject of "Socialism and Christianity" was under discussion, there came on the platform one Mr. J. M. Ludlow, who was described as "the last survivor of the Socialism of 1848." This he by no means is, but he belongs to a class of enthusiasts, who freely spent their money and gave their time to the propagation of what they believed would produce a New Moral World. Mr. Ludlow was one among the Christian Socialists, and he said that his venerated master was Professor Maurice, whose Socialism meant "the bringing of men together into one community and force." We do not pretend to understand the definition, which is about as vague and useless as it well could be, but we may admire the earnestness of the men of those days, who had such a touching faith in human nature, and who made so many sacrifices for their creed. Mr. Holyoake, in his "History of Co-operation, says that "50 years ago men had profound faith in the near advent of a new condition of society"— that is, certain men — and as these words were written more than 30 years ago, we see that a century has nearly elapsed since there was a social movement far stronger and far more influential than anything that we see at the present day. On the other hand, there have been great advances made by the workers in the way of organisation, at least in Great Britain, but not much in the direction which the Socialists advocated or desired, nor even in the direction of the kind of co-operation which was so enthusiastically fought for by the author of the history from which we have quoted, and from which we can gather so much minute information as to the men and women who so heartily fought in a cause which they believed was to regenerate the world. A Socialistic poet has told us that "great thoughts go down like stars sublime," for he, too, was conscious of failure, but we may conclude that they do not go down unless there is some inherent defect in them which prevents them growing with the years into a great structure which can withstand the shocks of time and chance. What is the defect in these Socialistic ideas which has prevented the hopes of those who fought for them being realised, being, in fact, as far as we can see, as far from becoming an industrial principle as they were a hundred, or even thousands of years ago, for they are about as old as society itself? This seems to be really the one useful inquiry in connection with this industrial problem. We have already seen that the assumption of an all-wise State, as in Plato's Republic," More's "Utopia," "The City of the Sun," and the dozen of imaginary Societies, is unwarranted, for no such community has ever existed, so long as the State reflects public opinion and current intelligence. The consequent assumption, common to all ideal Societies, that the people will do only what the State ordains, and will do it without coercion, is demonstrably equally fallacious, so that the actual foundation of all these beautiful ideals vanishes as soon as it is examined by the clear light of the actual facts, as disclosed by the experience of all the ages since the world began. Thus, we see at once why the high hopes of the 30's and 40's were never realised, why Robert Owen, and others with him, spent their fortunes in vain, even though they had the help of the Church and the countenance of Royalty. No doubt, much has been done in one way, but it is not in the way which those enthusiasts desired or expected.

It is of importance that we should get at the facts, because there is a revival of the former beliefs, and the same fallacies and delusions are current which misled our fathers and their fathers before them. We are, indeed, going over the old ground, and in the belief that we are making a new path of our own. If one can see where the error is, we may prevent another era of fruitless endeavour, to end, perhaps, in another period of Imperial tyranny, which seems to be the usual way in which a crumbling society is reconstituted. If we take Holyoake's definition of Co-operation, and no one will doubt his entire sympathy with, and devotion to, the workers, we shall see at once how many fallacies are even now current, and how hopeless are many of the things now sought. He defines Co-operation to be :—" The right of the worker to a share of the common gain, in the proportion to which he contributes to it in capital, labour, or trade —by hand or head and this is the only equality that is meant." This is, of course, not Socialism in many of its aspects, but it may be regarded as what is the aim of many who are dissatisfied with the existing labour conditions. It is the best endeavour to unite Capital and Labour for the general welfare. But, it presents an initial difficulty of a formidable, practically insurmountable, character. How are we to determine what each contributes by his hand or his head ? Holyoake was not so foolish as to tell us that all wealth is the product of labour, for he has said that ignorance is the one great cause of poverty and failure, so that here at once we find ourselves face to face with the fundamental question whether the man who finds the capital, the brains to conceive, and the capacity to carry out, is to receive no more than the man who mechanically feeds a machine which a genius has invented and a capitalist has had the means and the intellect to provide, and the courage to take all the risks of a new industry, and the chance of finding a market. The definition is, no doubt, a strictly correct one of the only possibly practicable form of Co-operation, but, being so, it carries with it conclusions altogether opposed to many that are now current, and which may be said to be at the base of most of the Labour agitations. What is more, this so-called "typical agitator" has to tell his disciples that they are mistaken in their belief that they would be better off if they did not work for the Capitalist. He tells them that if they acted for themselves alone, and worked for themselves alone, "they would be mere savages, without food, except what they could catch or fight for." From all this we can only reach the conclusion that Capital and Labour must work together, so that the sole question is, what should be their respective shares in the products of industry. The assertion that all is due to Labour is false on the face of it, as we have seen many times already, for without Capital and Brains there can be no great industry, and least of all under modern conditions. There is nothing to prevent Labour finding both the Capital and the Brains, if it is educated enough to do so, but it will not get the Brains for nothing, nor will it get the necessary ability unless it is prepared to pay for it. And, thus we see, after a survey of all that has been done and hoped during the last hundred years, that we come back to where we started. The workers must work out their problems for themselves, by learning to closely apply the means which they possess, and by cultivation of those qualities which are absolutely necessary to the success of all industrial enterprises. The State can only remove obstacles in the way.

Mercury (Hobart, Tas. ), 1908, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article12682302

CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM.

 [By Rev. A.C. SUTHERLAND, M.M., B.D.]

The dullest eye among us cannot but discern the existence everywhere of a social disunion of the same kind as that which alarmed St. Paul at Corinth, and against which he so powerfully expostulated and argued, The schism in the Corinthian Church was something quite distinct from party spirit, in which men range themselves under special leaders to give effect to special views, without in any way endangering organic unity. In such a conflict the " base and the honorable," to quote Isaiah, the noble and the peasant, the rich man and the poor, may serve under the same banner. But matters assume a very different complexion when the cause of disunion is found to be, not differences between man and man in the exercise of their reason, but differences between orders, ranks, classes as such. Obviously the struggle in this case will be more terrible, more war to the death, than in the other. St. Paul felt this, and put forth his full strength to avert the calamity.

 At Corinth this disunion, this war of classes arose, because on the one hand the great in gifts, in money, in authority, were contemptuous to those who had no genius, no place or office ; and on the other these last felt that as matters stood they did not belong to the body, had none of its privileges ; that, in short, for them there was no body.

 Now what is the position of our civilisation at this moment ? The democracy has secured after a hard struggle its political emancipation —its right to govern itself. But as usual the visions of regeneration, of peace and plenty, have not been realised. Reform Bills have not filled all our larders, have not rid the land of misery, of want, oppression, and injustice. From the hovel of the farm laborer, and from the foul lanes of our great cities is heard a cry like the cry from the clay pits of Egypt. Of old the remedy was supposed to lie in the abolition of privilege; now the remedy is sought for in making the Government do the work now done by our merchants, manufacturers, farmers, butchers, and costermongers. Not long since men thought they were serving humanity by pulling the strong teeth of the central power, but now they are to be sharpened. Now this tremendous change of feeling is not without reason. No one is quite satisfied with the existing state of society—not the wage-receiver, not the capitalist, for he is not without his anxieties in presence of the mutterings of discontent heard on every side. Listen to the indictment which the great founder of modern socialism, Karl Marx, brings against society as now constituted. " Within the capitalist system all methods for raising the social productiveness of labor are brought about at the cost of the individual laborer; all means for the development of production transform themselves into means of domination over and exploitation of the producers; they mutilate the laborer into fragments of a man, degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine, destroy every remnant of charm in his work and turn it into a hated toil; they estrange from him the intellectual potentialities of the labor process in the same proportion as science is incorporated in it as an independent power; they distort the conditions under which he works, subject him during the labor process to a despotism the more hateful for its meanness ; they transform his lifetime into working-time, and drag his wife and child under the wheels of the Juggernaut of Capital. . . . . The law, finally, that always equilibrates the relative surplus population, or industrial reserve army, to the extent and energy of accumulation; this law rivets the laborer to capital more firmly than did the wedges of Vulcan Prometheus to the rocks. It establishes an accumulation of misery corresponding with an accumulation of capital. Accumulation of wealth at one pole is therefore at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation at the opposite pole."

 Now in this powerful and lurid description of the laboring classes there is enough of truth to sting and to make us uneasy; but it is a manifest exaggeration, and as applied to labor as a whole even false. Still when one calls to mind the fact that in a city like Glasgow some 40 per cent. of the population live in dwellings of one room, and tries to imagine what is implied in that fact, we shall not be surprised that the system under which it is possible should be denounced by earnest men, who seek to raise the fallen and let the sunshine in to their dark haunts. Socialism there draws its strength from thwarted aspirations, and from the seething mass of human misery, bodily and mental, whose presence chills our enjoyments at the feast of civilisation.

 I am not going to trouble you with a definition of Socialism. That would not help us much. Our working classes have secured their political rights, political equality, and power to vote, none making them afraid. They have also won at a great price the right to combine for their own protection against the power of capital, and so have razed to the ground much of its former tyranny and even cruelty. Then education, cheap literature, public discussion in the press and on the platform, have awakened in the minds of our toilers new desires, new tastes, a higher sense of comfort and refinement. But, toil as they may, they feel that the vast majority are doomed to be shut out from the sweetness, culture, and fullness of life, which the more fortunate few have within their reach. So they are in revolt, as is too manifest, against the existing social relations, political and spiritual; and the remedy is Socialism. The laborer feels that much of his labor goes to feed and clothe those who don't labor in his sense, or indeed in any sense. Thus he is not only hungry, badly clothed, badly housed, but what is more intolerable he knows or believes that his misery is due not to the nature of things, but to downright injustice. He has been taught that it is all a question of supply and demand, of the strong and energetic against the weak and listless. So the laborer looks to the strong hand of the State to help him in his need. He calls upon the State to redress social inequalities, as it has already redressed political inequalities. This is to be effected by making land and capital the property of the community, thus sweeping away profit, interest, rent, leaving to the individual only what he actually earns by hand or head. A man under this regime might possess a razor to shave, but not a plough or a spinning-wheel— these two being instruments of production.

 This view of social life is now an actual force in our modern world, and a very potent force. Even where it is not accepted it is influential and operative. It has passed beyond the stage of neglect and ridicule, and has reached the field of serious conflict. In its ranks are to be found men of profound speculative grasp, of creative genius, and of warm piety. Statesmen are advocating its claims in the Senate, poets are insinuating its doctrines in melodious verse, and it is no longer a stranger even in great universities. It has produced a literature great in quantity and brilliant in quality. It has its newspapers and periodicals in abundance. Whatever we may think of its soundness or practicability it cannot be ignored, either by the Church or the State. Many good men hold it is true that the Church as a spiritual agency should stand aloof from politics. But Presbyterianism has from the first striven to influence and mould the whole national life, and not without success. We shall be unworthy of our history if we retire to our spiritual homes and let the issue be decided without us.

  With regard to the relation of Christianity and Socialism, they have much in common. To disown Adam Smith is not of necessity to disown Christ, though by the way Adam Smith does not teach absolute competition, but competition conditioned by justice between man and man, which justice the State is to enforce Christianity then in my opinion has nothing but blessings to bestow on socialism, in so far as it is in the first place an expression of intense sympathy with the hard and cheerless lot of vast numbers of those who do the drudgery work of the world, and in no far as it is a protest against those who lie upon beds of ivory, drink wine in bowls, but are not grieved for the afflictions of Joseph. The whole Bible is one long demand for justice to the poor and the needy, especially when they are the victims of social arrangements. The young lion is roaring for his prey, and much of that roar the gospel does not condemn but welcomes, and gives due warning to those who would in their strength and self-indulgence or ambition put him off with pleasant words. Socialism does well in thundering in the ears of Dives that there is a Lazarus outside his palace gates to whom the law of supply and demand does not apply and ought not to be applied, but who has a claim of a quite different kind. The gospel is distinctly, and indeed in an awful way, upon the side of Lazarus. It tacitly enforces that a man may fall into a condition so terrible as to make the ministration of the brute creation a grateful service, through not fault of his own, neither through idleness, nor intemperance, nor want of foresight, nor thrift, but simply through the visitation of God, or through circumstances which hold him in their strong meshes. Many comfortable people imagine that all misery is in some form sin. Socialism points out with power that the sin often lies at the door, not of the famishing wretch, but at a door much more respectable and higher up the street. The gospel seeks to abolish hunger and nakedness and misery, stuntedness of soul and of body, and so far as Socialism has this end we can only wish it God speed, and take our share in the work of leading men from the arid deserts into a land flowing with milk and honey.

 But, secondly, Socialism is in the same ranks with Christianity when it loudly protests against a pessimistic and fatalistic acquiescence in wretchedness from whatever cause "Whatever is is best," is a maxim hateful to Isaiah and Karl Marx alike. In so far as Socialism preaches hope for humanity it forsakes paganism and appropriates the spirit of Christ. Every Christian should welcome the energy with which it insists on the possibility of cleansing our human styes, of clothing naked backs, and of filling empty stomachs and still more empty souls.

 Thirdly, Socialism is Christian in so far as it asserts that the weal of the individual is contingent on the weal of the society. Especially valuable is the teaching of the Old Testament in this connection, and should be carefully studied by us all. Under the ancient dispensation the salvation of the individual was scarcely possible even in thought, apart from the salvation of the nation. Christianity has of course modified and purified that doctrine, but has not destroyed it; and Carlyle taught us long ago that if we don't recognise our brother by sharing our wine and milk and oil with him he will prove his brotherhood with us by compelling us to share with him his cholera and typhus.

 Fourthly, Socialism is Christian in its attacks on the principles underlying the maxim —" May I not do what I will with my own ?" I quote tho words not in the sense in which they were used by Christ as a defence of generosity in giving another more than he had earned. Socialism demands that this "my own" give an account—how did it come? what share have others in it? have their claims been recognised? is its enjoyment the misery of others? its glory their shame? People dare not now speak on this point as they did even a quarter of a century ago. I can myself remember a respected county gentleman saying on the hustings, in response to some heckling land reformer, that when the leases of his tenants should expire he had a perfect moral as well as legal right to turn them all out and plant his fields with furze. Law has already invaded his legal right, and public opinion, in the formation of which Socialism has had no mean influence, has made the moral right a very shadowy one. The Socialist in this case wears a portion of the mantle of Moses and St. James. Both put very practical limits on this "my own" principle. Both sought to check its tendency to excessive accumulation and to irresponsible use. The law of inheritance, the law of interest, the Sabbatic year of the jubilee, the law of pledges, take great liberties with private property. There laws are not binding on us, and 'twere folly to imitate them. I may say here that the land question is a moral question, and not merely an economic or political one. Scotch crofters and the slums of Edinburgh, where I labored for some time, and where I have seen 143 people living under the same roof, some at them down in the bowels of the earth, and others familiar with the whistlings of the east wind at an elevation which would make a rook giddy, lead me to hold that speculation in land in immoral, and is the cause of immorality. The recent revelations in Melbourne has confirmed the faith of my youth. Let us have a jubilee of some kind to check this disastrous trafficking with a view to a gain which has not really been earned, and which has corrupted many not ignoble men. The Socialist has drawn attention to St James, and though Luther called his letter one of straw, the madness of the prophet has been rebuked by the Socialistic ass, in this case more familiar with the angel of God than the leader of the Reformation. The teaching of the New Testament on health has not been so thoroughly assimilated by the Christian Church as much of the rest of its teaching. Compare the feeling of men in general with respect to covetousness and intemperance. Does that feeling reflect the teaching of Christ and His apostles. I much doubt. We shall have good cause to thank Socialists if they lead us to give the same prominence as the New Testament to the horror and mischievousness of the sin which has possession of its sphere.

 It is with feelings of regret that after having marched so far under the banner of Socialism one finds himself constrained to fall out of the ranks and become a critic with doubts in his mind rather than an unquestioning follower. I am afraid that taken as a whole, though not without earnest exceptions, popular Socialism is not in sympathy with Christianity, either in its methods or its motives. True! what goes under the name of Christian Socialism, so far from denying Christianity, affirms that it is the ripe fruit of Christianity; that only as Socialism becomes established can the redemption of Christ have free course and be glorified among men. Much of what may be said will not apply to the Christian Socialist. Significantly enough the hardest blows the Christian Socialist gets in the way of argument and ridicule come from Socialists and not from so-called individualists. It is too manifest that the great majority of Socialists are not only opposed to Christianity, but are inspired with a fanatical zeal in seeking to erase it from among men. One says "I will relate how I left the Church and became a Socialist. I discovered that my belief gave me never anything to eat. With five hungry children about me this argument was conclusive." Hear what another says;—" To suppress religion which promises an illusory happiness is to establish the claims of real happiness, for to demonstrate the non-existence of these illusions tends toward suppressing a state of things which requires illusions for maintaining its own existence."—(Benoit Malon.) The name doctrine is graphically put by George Eliot in the mouth of Felix Holt:—" They'll supply us with a religion, like everything else, and get a profit on it; they'll give us plenty of heaven —we may have land there. That is the sort of religion they like —a religion that gives a working man heaven and nothing else. But we'll offer to change with them. Well give them back some of their heaven, and take it out in something for us and our children in this world"—a social organisation of labor, resting on materialism, with no room for God or worship, and whose promised land is temporal prosperity at as little personal toil as possible, and with no care. But further, if Christianity is offensive to the intellectual conclusions of the prevailing Socialism, if it furnishes no bread for hungry stomach, it is also a stumbling-block to the moral sense of its leading advocates. They tell us that the worship of Ceres or Bacchus could not be more repugnant to the feelings of the early Christians than Christianity is in our time to those who look for salvation to the transfer of capital from the individual to the State Parodying one of our Lord's fundamental utterances they say ye cannot serve "God" and humanity. The only hopeful thing about this coarse materialism is that its acceptance by men, at least not for long, is impossible. No Socialism can rid our life of accident, of pain, of sin, of remorse, and fatalism does not speak to the heart in its captivity. Human nature, we may be sure, though it may be thrown into revolt and confusion for the moment, will ever find its hope in the cross.

 But even where Socialism is not a denial of Christianity and its spiritual postulates, but the reverse, it seems to me that in its very nature it is opposed to the spirit of Christ. Let me present a brief discussion and defence of this somewhat strong statement. 1. Socialism would seem to revive the conditions of the ancient world which were swept away, in measure at least, by His gospel. In paganism the individual had to a great extent no rights as against the State, especially no rights so far as the free expression of his inner life was concerned. Like nature it was careful of the type, but allowed the individual to wither. But it is of more importance to call to mind that Judaism, with its minute and elaborate regulation of the whole, or at any rate a great part of a man's life, became an intolerable burden to the noblest minds among its children. At every point they were met with rule this and rule that, so that spontaneity of service was impossible, making life grievous to the conscientious, and leading those who were otherwise to a perfunctory and casuistical formalism. It is of course not denied but asserted that this severe and minute discipline imposed upon men from a central source had its uses, and issued in characters of the highest order, in all spheres of human life, public and private, civil and religious, industrial and military. But it was not and could not be final. It was for the schoolboy and not for the mature man. Nor is it forgotten that it dealt largely with matters which Socialism ignores ; that it does not give the same prominence to food and clothing, shelter and amusement, that Socialism does. It sought its end by regulation from without—so does Socialism. It failed, and could not but fail, when the fulness of time came and men ceased to be children, or soldiers merely accustomed to take orders from their superiors. It is significant that Socialists see in the army a model of what life should be generally. Our soldiers are relieved from all care regarding their daily bread, their tailor's bill, and their rents. This discipline gives us men ready to dare anything or go anywhere. Heroism, in short, is the child of the drill-sergeant and a national commissariat. A similar regime applied to life generally would secure similar desirable results. But would it? I don't wait to point out that no army can, like a democracy, be a government for the army and by the army. If it were I venture to say that the first ballot would dissolve every army in Europe, and its members would prefer the risk of starvation and of a patched coat with a free life to the comfort which necessitates the subjection of the will and intellect to regulations from without. Desertion even is not uncommon, not only on the part of the forced conscript, and in the Socialistic army we should be all forced conscripts, but even on the part of the volunteer. Now, I admit that drill and the negation of spontaniety which it involves develops strength of character along certain lines, but does not do so along all the lines of our humanity. But as Christ came to make us perfect this regimentalism cannot be his method, as indeed it is not. To reach his end, personal freedom, personal responsibility, contact with risk of loss, of danger, of poverty, are essential. Not that he makes liberty an end in itself, but rather a means toward attaining the perfection of our being, and of subduing our circumstances to aid us and not to hinder us in this supreme object. Socialism is a beggarly element in what pertains to the higher things of the spirit.

 But Socialism sins in another way against the Gospel of Christ. It practically denies a difference of faculty in men, and so explains our social inequalities to be the result of arbitrary injustice. All men are brethren in Christ. True, but as in nature one star differs from another in glory, and that by the decree of the Almighty, so there is a brother of low degree and a brother of higher degree—one member of the body to honor and another comparatively speaking to dishonor. Now the Gospel teaches that this inferior member is to have more abundant honor, but never that it is to be put absolutely on the same level with the superior, nor that it is of the same value with the superior. This may seem harsh to those who have not the higher gifts, but facts are facts, whatever may be our feelings. This arrangement of high and low is God's arrangement, and it is absurd as well as sinful to resent it. Indeed, Socialism itself could not live without respecting it In theory the shoemaker may be as valuable to the State as the Prime Minister, the simple member of the church as an apostle, the hodman as the skilled physician, the clerk as the poet, but in practice the thing would be impossible. Does Socialism really think that there would be no scramble under its regime to drop the pick and shovel and secure a place among its vast array of governing officers, and that there would be no sulking among the dis appointed or among those ordered by authority to serve at the forge or the mine. On this rock Socialism would go to pieces. The Gospel, truer to nature, recognises destinations springing from higher gifts, but takes care to teach that they are to be used for the help of the lesser gifted. It knows nothing of a levelling equality, which only breeds envy, rebellion, and a sinful discontent, though there is a discontent that is not sinful, but praiseworthy, because it is the starting point towards higher things.

 Once more Socialism, not merely on the part of its wilder and more reckless advocates, but through some of its most scientific exponents, teach doctrines regarding the family which subvert the deliverances of Christianity on this grave matter. It permits the dissolution of family ties for reasons which the Christ does not recognise as valid. Further, Socialism denies not only the competency of parents to educate their children as good citizens ought to be educated, but also their right and responsibility in the matter. Their nurture as to its methods and end must be determined by the State. If religion is regarded as a necessary factor in education the form of that religion would rest with the secular power. One need not add that the New Testament contemplates a very different relation between parent and child.

 Further Socialism is at variance with Christianity in its doctrine as to the inherent degradation of laboring for wages. We have every reason to believe that our Lord gave the labor of his hands for wages, and that not to the State, but to the individual who might require it He speaks much about the right use of money, directly and in parable, but never drops a hint that there is anything sinister in the idea of hired labor, whether regarded from the point of view of the hirer or the hired. Of course this does not imply that the actual relation between the two is in practice what it ought to be.

 There is another aspect of Socialism which the followers of Jesus Christ cannot but regards with aversion—its relation to liberty of conscience. The Fabian Essays foretell that one of the changes to be effected by Socialism will be the inevitable reconstitution of the State Church on a democratic basis, so that the possibility opens up of the election of an avowed Freethinker like Mr. Bradlaugh and John Morley to the Deanery of Westminster. They are kind enough to tell us that this will not take place until the settlement of the bread-and-butter question leaves men free to use and develop our higher faculties. Now, there is nothing here of that foaming hatred to Christianity which is cherished by the great body of Socialists. Nevertheless it anticipates State control of other things than the instruments of production. The Church is not to be co-ordinate with the State, but a creation and so a creature of the State. This is pure and undiluted paganism. Christianity is not Democracy—Jesus Christ is King, absolute King of His Church, and not a President voted to His exalted position. It is very significant that Socialists see much to admire, not in the faith of the medieval Church, but in its all embracing organisation, surrounding men everywhere as closely as the atmosphere. It is equally significant that they refer to Protestantism in terms which might be borrowed from an Anglo-Catholic priest, or even Pio Nono of pious memory. Will there be room for Socrates, for St Peter, for Knox, for Cranmar, for non juring bishops under this new democratic Catholicism of politicians? My soul, come not thou into their secret. It is significant, too, that many great intellects who felt that men could not be managed without the drill-sergeant, inclined to intolerance. Plato, in his old age, forgot his " defence of Socrates." and insisted on putting to death those who should introduce new doctrines in politics or religion. T. Carlyle had, I fear, more faith in the police than in the preacher as an agent in human progress.

 Lastly, experience and the teaching of Christ are at one in condemning the excessive hopes which Socialism builds in State regulation for the amelioration of man's outward and inward life. The settlement of the bread and butter question on Socialistic lines will not issue in a Paradise of peace and plenty, of culture and energy. What do we see at this moment among ourselves? Trades unions among our working men failing to attract a majority of themselves, while their indirect result is to band employers together as one man. Trades unions are feeling that they can't attain their end on materialistic grounds; that the moral element must come into play. Promises of more bread and more butter fail to influence many laborers as the trades unions desire, because a present sacrifice of purse and will is demanded.

 The Gospel is clear—that given all possible external advantages these are not enough to make either a man or a nation what they ought to be. There is the awful fact of sin to be reckoned with. Life is developed, not by bread and butter settlements, but from within. Till the kingdom of God is in men's hearts it will never hold sway over their circumstances.

Advertiser (Adelaide, SA ), Tuesday 18 October 1892,

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/25339682

JOHN BALL AND WAT TYLER.

 —— ——

Two Early English Agitators.

It is a surprising and a discreditable fact that in the education of our children in the public schools of the colony—an education which we are taxed to support — events which went far towards promoting the political and social welfare of the community at large, and the records of men who lost their lives in a whole-hearted and enthusiastic crusade against oppression, have been described in the historical text-books in a distorted and prejudiced fashion. Of such events and such men was the peasant rebellion in the year 1381, under the leadership of Wat. Tyler, a disciple of John Ball, and to-night I purpose placing their history before you in a different light to that usually accepted as gospel. To fully understand the degraded and insufferable conditions under which the great mass of the people labored at this period, it will be necessary to briefly review the social state of the English people from the time of the Saxons up to the revolt. In the days of the Saxons, popular rule was in vogue. Certainly a limited number of slaves existed, but the great majority were free men, and had a full voice in the making of laws in folk-moot, and hundred-moot assembled, and on the united " Yea " or " Nay " of the whole people, the final selection of their kings depended. But in King Alfred's bitter defence against the Danish invasion a great number of these Saxon freemen bound themselves to labor for a certain period on their more powerful neighbors' demesne in return for protection from the ravages of the Danes. Thus a system of serfage arose, and these serfs gradually drifted into a lower state in the community than even the old Saxon slaves. The Norman Conquest did not alter affairs to any great extent, except to introduce the feudal system, concentrate the holdings into large manors, and make the lords of the manor contribute to the support of the King in money or armed men. The serfs or villeins were compelled to devote so much time to the tillage of the large home farm of the lord of the manor, and their life and liberty, and that of their children, were subject to his pleasure. In process of time the necessities of the barons in their wars and riotous styles of living brought about a system of leasing, by which the landowner would forego his claim on the serf in return for money rental, thus giving rise to a class of tenant farmers. But another class was gradually being evolved. Some of the lower order of serfs were also taking advantage of the necessities of the baronage, and purchasing their redemption from serfdom.

A class of free laborers sprung up who were not bound to one landlord like the villeins, but were at liberty to wander throughout the country in search of employment. Thus the old system of villeinage was being replaced by the leasing of manor lands to tenant farmers, and the employment of free laborers in the tillage thereof. This system worked successfully for a considerable time, as long as there was an abundant and cheap supply of hired labour, but the terrible plague known as the Black Death, which devastated Britain in 1349, changed the whole current of events. The mortality occasioned by this plague was appalling ; in fact, in some cities there were not enough living to bury the dead. Farms were left uncultivated, cattle and sheep roamed at will throughout the land, ownerless and uncared for, and the scarcity of labor and dearness of food forced the rate of wages up by leaps and bounds. It is here that we witness the first galling conflict between capital and labor, for the Parliament of the country, elected and constituted as it was of the landed gentry of England, exerted itself to the utmost to repress the growing demand of the masses for bare justice. A royal edict was issued that every man or woman of whatsoever condition, free or bond, able in body and within the age of three more years, was bound to serve the employer who re quired him to do so, and take only the wages which were accustomed to be taken in the neighborhood before the plague began. Even the Ordinance failed in its desired object, and in 1351 the Parliament passed its infamous Statute of Laborers. The laborer's wages were fixed at a low rate, and he was forbidden to leave his parish for another in search of employment, the redemption of serfs was arbitrarily stopped, and the ingenuity of the lawyers exerted to the utmost to find plausible excuses for revoking the grants of liberty made in the past to villeins and tenants. The penalty set down for running away from service was to be branded with hot irons, or like an outlaw, to be killed on sight. The resentment aroused by this unjust law was terrible in the extreme, and it met with a stubborn resistance everywhere, so much so that Parliament was compelled to re-enact the Statute of Laborers over and over again. But in the time of their tribulation, lo and behold a prophet arose! John Ball, a priest, stands forth pre-eminently at this period of English history, England's first socialist. "The Mad Priest of Kent," the courtly chroniclers of the period term him, but his was the madness of loving humanity and of bitterly protesting against the oppression and injustice of the age. The Church at this period was powerful, but corrupt in the extreme, the members revelled in high-living and the corrupt practices of the period. As a supposed work of Christian love they had assisted in the emancipation of the serfs, belonging to the Caronage, but the Church resolutely refused to emancipate the serfs on their own ecclesiastical lands, and thus aroused a storm of opposition from the great mass of the people. No wonder then that the chroniclers of the time, influenced by the autocracy of the nobility of Church and State, contemptuously refer to John Ball as ''The Mad Priest." In place of the fat living bestowed by the church he chose rather the lowly fare of his followers, and on numerous occasions dined on prison-fare. In place or the sensuous luxuriousness of sculptured and lofty churches, he chose rather to follow the example of the Great Master and preach in the high ways and by-ways of the country. From under the spreading branches of the sturdy old English oak, with the open canopy of Heaven for their roof and the music of Heaven's choristers, the birds, he chose the text —

 When Adam delved and Eve span,

 Who was then the gentleman ?

and preached stirring discourses, which appealed to the very hearts of the people. It was from this text that John Ball, socialist agitator, first declared the natural equality and rights of man." " Good people, " he said, " things will never go well in England so long as goods be not in common, and so long as there be villeins and gentlemen. By what right are they whom we call lords greater than we ? On what grounds have they deserved it ? Why do they hold us in serfage. If we all came of the same father and mother, how can they say or prove that they are better than we, if it be that they make us gain for them by our toil, what they spend in their pride. They are clothed in their velvet, and warm in their furs and their ermines, while we are covered with rags. They have wine and spices and fair bread, and we, oatcake and straw, and water to drink. They have leisure and fine houses, we have pain and labour, the rain and wind in the fields. And yet it is of us and of our toil that these men hold their state." It was the first bitter protest by the crushed out masses against the tyranny of the land monopolists. There is a quaintness, and withal genuine humanitarian feeling pervading the rhyming message with which John Ball stirred and enthused his followers, which makes us love and honor this grand old English democrat : —

 John Ball greeteth you all and doth for to understand he hath rung your bell.

 Now right and might, will and skill, God speed every dele.

 Help truth, and truth shall help you.

 Jack Carter prays you all that ye make a good end of that ye have begun.

 And do well, and, aye, better and better, for at the evening men heareth the day. 

" Falseness and guile," sang Jack Trewman, ''have reigned too long. Truth has been set under a lock, and falseness and guile reigneth in every stock. True love, is away that was so good, and clerks for wealth work them woe."

 In words such as these we see the bitter contempt of the peasantry for the immorality and sensuality of the baronage and clergy, and their intense desire for right and justice. The very fact that John Ball was so entirely different from the prevailing type of priest commanded him to their simple hearts, and when we recollect that printing was unknown at the period, that education was confined to the few, we see that John Ball, in preaching the pure doctrines of Jesus Christ, was instilling in their minds the great desire for political and religious freedom, which so leavened the future history of England. In the meantime while the propaganda work of John Ball was in progress, the excesses of Edward the Third's last days and the disastrous results of the wars with France and Spain had emptied the exchequer, and a poll tax was ordered to be levied on every person in the kingdom. The collection of the poll-tax was farmed out to Jews from Lombardy and the outrages committed by these gentry, added to the injustice of the tax, roused the whole country into rebellion. It was at this stage that Wat Tyler first emerged into prominence. Some historians assert that Wat Tyler first came into active conflict with the law through killing a taxcollector, who had ravished his daughter. History tells us that there were several Tylers, who took an active part in the revolt ; in fact, the trade craft of Tylers seem to have been an intelligent and democratic body of men, and the most prominent amongst the various crafts in their desire for a better and more just government. The consensus of opinion seems to point to John Tyler of Dartford as the father who so terribly avenged the outrage on his daughter. Our Wat Tyler was an earnest disciple of John Ball, and imbibed his democratic views during the score of years in which " The Mad Priest " was preaching his Socialistic doctrines throughout England. One hundred thousand men gathered round Wat Tyler and John Hales to march on London. Their platform was : (1) The abolition of the service of tenure ; (2) the abolition of tolls and imposts on buying and selling, and also the hated poll tax : (3) emancipation of the native or born bondsmen ; (4) the commutation of villein service for a rent of 4d per acre.

 In their march on London they released John Ball from prison in Canterbury Castle, where he was undergoing one of his many terms of imprisonment.

 The manner is significant in which they dealt with the lawyers who fell into their hands. At the time the Statute of Laborer was passed the lawyers and stewards of manors had exerted all their fiendish ingenuity in devising means by which redeemed serfs might be forced into bondage again. The peasants well remembered this, for every lawyer that fell into their hands was immediately put to death, for said they with dreadful truthfulness : "Not till all these were killed, would the land enjoy its old freedom again." The combined forces of the Essex and Kentish men took charge of London, and their proud, boast that justice and not robbery was their object was emphatically demonstrated in the execution of a plunderer found stealing a silver vessel. Wat Tyler even forced his way into the Tower itself, and boldly informed the Knights of the Household that they would soon be their equals and good comrades in the time to come.

 Young King Richard the Second by a master stroke of policy struck a death blow to the revolt. Riding out to meet the main body of the Essex men, he exclaimed, " I am your king and lord, good people, what will ye ?"

 They answered : " We will that ye free us for ever, us and our lands, and that we never more be named or held for serfs." 

" I grant it," said Richard. Under promises of charters of pardon and emancipation, they dispersed. That day thirty clerks were busily engaged writing charters of freedom and emancipation, and it was with one of these that William Grinde Cobbe returned to St. Albans and summoned the abbot to deliver up the charter which bound the town in bondage to his house. In connection with this abbey, a law existed which compelled the townsmen to pay tithing for the right to grind corn within the town limits. In the flush of victory the burghers tore the millstones from the floor and broke them in a thousand pieces to retain as souvenirs of the day on which they regained their freedom. Meanwhile 30,000 faithful followers still rallied round Wat Tyler, and on June 15, 1381, the young King with his train encountered Wat Tyler and his army at Smithfield. The democratic leader, strong in the justice of their cause, boldly rode forward alone to con fer with the king, and to demand a redress of the grievances under which they suffered. Heated words passed between them, and, in a treacherous manner, Sir William Walworth struck Wat Tyler to the ground, when he was instantly killed by the King's bodyguard. The crowd were about to fall on the Royal party, in revenge for the loss of their captain, when Richard with ready wit, seizing the opportunity, exclaimed, "I am your captain and king, follow me." Thus died Wat Tyler, a lion-hearted champion of the oppressed, who, whatever historians may say to the contrary, displayed a nobility of character in violent contrast to the treacherous conduct exhibited throughout by the King, nobility, and Parliament, for mark how the sacred promises of the King were kept. The rank and file of the rebels as soon as their leader was killed seemed like a ship without a rudder, and relying on the promises of emancipation the Kentish men dispersed to their homes. And now followed one of the most despicable deeds that have disgraced the history of England. As soon as all danger was over, the King revoked the charter of freedom and emancipation, and fully 7000 men suffered death on the gallows and in the field. Among the number was John Ball, to whose teachings we must attribute the first awakening of the masses to a sense of the part they must play in the politics of the country to ensure a just form of government. When William Grinde Cobbe, of St. Albans, was offered a pardon if he would persuade his fellow townsmen to restore the charter wrested from the abbot he answered like a king amongst men. Turning to his followers he bade them take no note of the degrading death in store for him. "If I die'' he said, " I shall die for the cause of freedom we have won, counting myself happy to end my life by such a martyrdom." These were noble words, spoken in a noble cause, and well does the memory of William Grinde Cobbe deserve to be cherished by all lovers of the cause of freedom. But the breach of trust which disgraced the king's name was rigidly upheld by the Parliament, composed as it was solely of landowners. " Release the serfs," they cried. " No, they are our property ; villeins they always were, and villeins they shall remain."

 Although the revolt seemed barren of good results at the time, yet in the immediate future it was destined to bear fruit. In spite of statutes bearing against the villein, debarring him from educating his children, or improving his position, he profited by the teachings of John Ball, and by quiet and persistent agitation worked out his own salvation. One hundred years after the peasant revolt, serfage was a rare and antiquated thing in England. It would be useless to discuss the deeds of these men were it not that a powerful moral is contained, applicable to the serfs of to-day. First and foremost, we must candidly admit that the movement, as far as the immediate redress of wrongs is concerned, was foredoomed to failure. Even had Wat Tyler triumphed, dethroned the king, killed off the lords and knights of the manor, not forgetting the lawyers, the fact remains that if we except the prime leaders, who seemed to have imbibed from John Ball genuine and far-seeing views as to what was essential to constitute an ideal state, we find that the ignorance of the great mass of the people would have prevented the consummation of their ideal. It was an ignorance from which there seemed no escape. It was before the days of William Caxton and the printing press ; books were written in manuscript, and were very costly, so much so that education was confined to the ranks of the clergy and wealthier classes. Even the Bible was a sealed book to the multitude. The question arises : What are we doing to emulate the example set us by our sturdy ancestors with all their disadvantages ? They risked the most cruel punishment, outlawry, death on the gallows, in the cause of freedom ; and in the present enlightened age of free education, cheap literature, and all the advantages of the 19th century, are we doing our duty? Most sorrowfully must I admit that we are not. Where these people risked all, we begrudge the few weekly shillings necessary to make our unions powerful and effective for good. Where they suffered death we are too apathetic to suffer a few minuter inconveniences in ensuring that the government of our country is administered on the lines of truth and justice. It has been well and truly said that " the price of liberty is eternal vigilance," and well may the path of political and social progress be likened to the climbing of a steep and slippery hill ; to pause is to retrograde, and the motto of all true reformers must be "Ever onward and upward." In West Australia, like in Egypt of old, we have had our fat years, but signs of the times point indisputably to the approach of the lean years, but have we, like Pharaoh, out of the abundance of the fat years provided for the famine of the lean ? I trow not, and we must look to it in the future that we do our duty to ourselves and posterity by leaving the world in a better condition than we found it. There are periods in our life when we must make sacrifices, when we must try and lift the old chariot, Unity, out of the rut, Selfishness, and I appeal to everyone here to-night, while we are on the threshold of a new year, and, I may add, a new century, to make an earnest resolve to do something in the realisation of those beliefs which so many sturdy heroes in the past have thought worth fighting for and worth dying for.

Kalgoorlie Miner (WA ),  1898,  http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article88321870

Darkness and dawn

 In the current number of The Christian Socialist Mr.Lawrence Gronlund, the author of that most comprehensive book on Socialism in the English language, "The co-operative commonwealth," refers to that splendid little book "Darkness and dawn," to the author of which John Ruskin wrote — “ I am very greatly helped and comforted by the force and hope of your work." These recommendations fortunately induced a friend to buy this book on his first visit to town, and bring it home with him. I have just finished reading it, and wish to recommend my Australian friends to invest sixpence in its purchase. " Darkness and dawn: the peaceful birth of a new age" has some resemblance to " The republic " of Plato, the " Utopia " of Sir Thomas More, the "New Atlantis" of Lord Bacon, and works of that order; but it is an attempt to forecast the changes that would be made in the social condition of Britain at the present day, by the substitution of a fraternal for the existing competitive or covetous system. " That highest law of Christ which is fulfilled in the bearing of one another's burdens," the writer says, " affords the only security against the corruption and downfall of nations—the only foundation for kingdoms essaying to be permanent, and of civilizations which shall be interpenetrated with progress." The contrary principle was of purely barbarian origin, but "Christendom has continued the legend of injustice, for, though freeing the serf, she absolved herself from all responsibility for his maintenance, and in adjusting his burden measures it by the weakness of his back—that is, the less the resistance the heavier was the load ; she tempered her demands only towards the strong." Long and black is the indictment brought against the British bourgeoisie. " That double-diddling, called ' buying in the cheapest and selling in the dearest markets,' otherwise paying the producer less than you might and charging the consumer more than you ought, became England's choicest pastime. England's productions became her glory, England's producers became her shame." The reports of the Royal Commissioners upon factories, he declares, " should certainly enter, along with Jewish antiquities, into the studies of every preacher to modern trading Christians." This, "together with an actual personal inspection of laboring life, would do more to revolutionize current conceptions of Christian doctrine and of Christian duty," he thinks, " than tons of disquisition outside the knowledge of such facts." Under the present system "the worthiest are driven to the wall —there is a survival of the unfittest and unworthiest. The men worthiest to achieve success — to give the tone to society, and direction to law—are thrown into the background, to share the impotence and insignificance to which the want of means reduces individuals in a society like ours ; but with the survival of the unfittest the wealth of England rises higher." The muscle, brain, thrift, industry, and enterprise of the nation, disheartened, seek a home beyond the seas. Will the emigrant find this new world free from the old shackles laid upon labour, and  God's earth, freed from needless and injurious tax, offered to his willing hands to till for his own sole benefit, and not for another ? Alas! No. “A man who has simply taken out a claim for land, and lived the requisite period upon it to make it his possession—not, however, driving a ploughshare once across it, but only waiting for industrious labor to come with its painfully saved-up earnings—this man in advance of the emigrant has needlessly, unrighteously, come into a position to say, ' You can have the land, but give me so much fruit of your past hard labor first.' In short, land monopolists in these virgin countries are beforehand with toiling Europe, and virtually cry out — 'Come on, come over, most useful race of men, come over and help us to an unearned fortune.' The long arms of capital have reached across to New Zealand even, and there made sure that the newest colony shall in due time breed the pauperism of the oldest State; so that even now, with thousands of leagues of uncultivated acres, and thousands of willing hands ready, if they might, to till, New Zealand is troubled with a pauper question. And the lands, thus owned in the States, Australia, and New Zealand belong, many of them, to English proprietors, the profits of their resale coming home to enrich the capitalists in the land from which the emigrants went out. And the wealth of England rises higher.”

As a matter of course, the writer prefaces his dream of the new age, by a few references to the earliest society of Christians and the communism they practised. "It has been strangely argued," he remarks," by Christian commentators, that the early Church went astray in this fundamental matter, as a consequence of the degree in which the Holy Spirit rested upon them." But he thinks the Pentecostal Spirit is doing its old work in these latter days, and is still pointing " back to the time when men ate their bread in gladness and singleness of heart—when they uplifted a standard, not destined for universal empire until the set time had come, but which fluttered long enough to impregnate the air with its commotions, and to waft hope to every succeeding generation." He goes on to observe that modern legislation is undesignedly preparing society for the triumph of the idea. " The landlord, except in Ireland, has kept his freedom unfettered, but his hour for compulsory deference to the general welfare has already struck." Moreover, he contends, in precise contradiction of what is usually alleged, that " What is done by the State is always better than what is done by the profit mongering individual." How a completely bloodless revolution is to be effected, the reader will learn from " Darkness and Dawn.” I must also refer him to the book itself for the picture he draws of the dawning era. But I must notice two or three of the prominent features. It will probably surprise not a few of those who entertain merely conventional notions of the Social State, to learn that " the preservation and development of the individuality of men" is one of its characteristics. " Under the former state of things, an artificial variety was created, so that men appeared ruled into the pattern of their classes ; and as classes were many, so were patterns. It was necessary to abide in class conventionalities, to conform to class institutions, to avow class prejudices, in order to 'succeed.' All that had passed away; men returned into the possession of themselves. " The political economy of the new era will be an economy of men and not an economy of wealth. It seems that the men of that time, having an abundance of leisure, capacity and goodwill, will build cathedrals. These edifices will be "laid down upon the lines of the cross and circle—the cross, sacred memorial, now regarded as significant also of the cursed death to which competitive society is justly exposed ; the circle embracing the cross and superseding it, tyye of the bond of perfect unity." Of the service I can say little. "The one subject of every homily was the Great Founder before the first, the labouring Man of Nazareth—He who wrought obscurity for thirty years before He preached His gospel to the poor, a gospel which it took two thousand years to apply to man as denizen of earth as well as pilgrim to the skies." Here is another sentence, or part of a sentence : — " While together, with resistless force and swell, the march, the triumphant march of emancipated multitudes pulsed throughout the marble pile ; and while the storied windows shook and every heart beat louder, faster, up rose the mighty chorus with which the anthem ended—

Jesus Hominum Salvator,

 Civitatis Dei Creator."

" Darkness and Dawn " is published anonymously, but I learned yesterday from Mr. Laurence Gronlund that he is a commission agent at Bristol named Mr. Henry Deacon. Mr. Gronlund is a handsome, light built gentleman, little more than forty years of age He is wholly absorbed in the movement for the regeneration of society, and will spend the rest of his life in its promotion. When he told me he had practised as a lawyer for some ten years before he was converted to socialism, I could not help thinking that that fact might explain the denial of the natural rights of man which is a serious flaw in his very valuable "Co-operative Commonwealth." Bentham repudiated natural rights, and ever since his time the vast majority of the English jurists have followed suit. But as John Morrison Davidson remarks in one of his works, the denial of the natural rights of man is the most dangerous doctrine that the propertied and privileged classes could preach in a democratic age, for if men have no natural rights they must assert their natural mights. Mr. Gronlund is just about to publish another work entitled "Ca Ira ! or Danton in the French Revolution," and expects to reach New York by the 1st of May to resume his work on platform and press.

One of the signs of the changing times we live in is that many, not only of the best, behaved in civilized communities, but of the legislators or law-makers themselves, are beginning to abjure the doctrine, lately almost universally prevalent, that law, whether good or bad, ought to be observed and even respected. The phrase " law and order" was a short time ago unquestioned. Law—man-made law—was a fetish before which decent men bowed their necks, their intellects, and their hearts. This is so no longer. The Chief Secretary for Ireland in the debate on the vote of urgency for the Coercion Bill, laid it down that it was the first duty of civilized society to enforce the law. The law might be enforced, whether it was just or unjust. To this doctrine, not yet quite obsolete, Sir Wm. Harcourt, who is now the apparent successor to Mr. Gladstone in the leadership of the Liberal Party, gave an absolute denial. Amid Conservative cries of "Oh! oh!" and considerable Liberal cheering, Sir William declared that " if the law is a good and just one, it is the first duty of a civilized community to enforce it; but if, on the other hand, the law is a bad law which works injustice, it is not the first duty of society to enforce that law. The first duty of society is to abrogate or to amend that law. When crime is the outcome of an unjust law the best way to get rid of the crime is not to continue the unjust law, and to suppress disorder with coercion, but to get rid of crime by amending the law." At this point murmurs of dissent rose from the speaker's side of the House, probably from some Liberal Unionists, who intend to vote for the Coercion Bill, and thereby act in glaring contradiction to the obviously rational doctrine laid down  by Sir Wm. Harcourt. Who can doubt the truth of the statement Sir William made before sitting down. " Whatever crime or disturbance or resistance to the law is taking place in Ireland arises out of unjust rents. If that grievance were removed, no coercion would be needed at all ; for if this were done the work which the 'combinations' had been established to fulfil would be accomplished."

WILLIAM WEBSTER.

Kapunda Herald (SA ) 1887,

http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article107365713

EFFECT OF SOCIALISM ON PERSONAL CHARACTER.

 

By Dr. JOHN CLIFFORD, M.A.

An Address to the British Social Democratic Federation on Wednesday, February 22.

  The strongest objection I hear brought against the advance of Socialism over the whole field of our industrial life is based on apprehended damage to personal character, real injury to the qualities, forces, and functions of manhood.

It is held that were we to adopt the collective ownership of the means of production and distribution so as to secure, first, a fixed quantity of work day by day from each citizen for the common good, and, secondly, provide a maintenance for that working citizen sufficient to preclude anxiety and foster reasonable content, we should delete life of its keenest interests, blot out its brightness, eliminate its fascinating variety, and render human existence anæmic, tame, jejune, "flat, stale, and unprofitable" beyond all endurance. Get rid of competitive struggle, and as you succeed you dwarf your men. Carry your democratic principles into industry and "life" will be less " worth living," and its finest ethical inspirations will be dried up. "Collective industrialism would be the foe of spiritual energy, the death of genius, the extinction of poetry and painting and music. Existence would be fashioned after the characterless stagnation of Thibet, and a man would be nothing more than a labelled or unlabelled cog in the great wheel of society.

It is admitted by these objectors that Socialism is coming. Its advance is inevitable. The ownership and control of the common necessities of life by all and for all increases from year to year. But these signs of change are observed with sincere alarm, and admitted with regret. J S. Mill, Herbert Spencer, Amiel, Schoeffle, Frederic Harrison fear that individuality of character will disappear. The majority will play the tyrant. Public opinion will fix its Proscrustes' bed and compel every citizen, long and short alike, to get into it. Mill says, "The absolute dependence of each on all and surveillance of each by all will grind all down into a tame uniformity of thought, feelings, and actions." The rule of the "general average" will be supreme. Monotony will triumph. The wild and keen interest of the struggle for gold will cease. The fierce fights of competitive nations for markets will end. Aimlessly we shall roam over the dull dead level of utilitarian comfort, and as we find the smug and hollow life of Socialism we shall drop all the nobler ideals of manhood, and luxuriate in the dull comforts of the Collectivists' millennium, whose crowning joy is to lie on a couch and get all we want by touching a button.

THE UPBUILDING OF MEN.

II.—To me this is the most vital phase of the Socialist controversy. The final details of the Collectivist arrangement—the exact amount of work for each citizen and similar points in the Socialist programme—do not fascinate me like its influence in the making of the coming man. I have been in the habit of looking at all questions in their relation to personal character. Manhood outweighs all other forces amongst the factors of human wellbeing, social order, and progress. Emerson says, "The main enterprise of the world for splendour and for extent is the upbuilding of a man," therefore systems and theories, policies and schemes, books and Churches, newspapers and sciences, clubs and States must be tested by this Lydian stone—their actual contribution to the upbuilding of men. If they fail here they have to go. Their doom is certain, if delayed. This is a moral world, and the best manhood and womanhood are destined to leadership and supremacy in the life of men. Rome cannot successfully resist the shock of the invaders. Yet the Goth is not keenly intellectual. He is no master of systems, he is dull at technicalities, his art is rude, he is a barbarian, but he has a fine moral grip, he is master of himself, his life is simple, his partial virtues are sturdy, and his superior manhood wins in the conflict and prepares the way for a new Europe. Economically slavery is productive up to a point—most productive, but it is ruinous to the character of the slave, and therefore its productive values diminish and it is inevitably displaced. The military system and the wage system are doomed for the same reason, and Socialism has not come to stay unless it can satisfactorily face this supreme tribunal and win a favourable verdict.

Agreed; but what do you mean by manhood? All turns on that. Collectivism we know. We are not so sure of the typical man, "the heir of all the ages," the goal of the painful toil and prolonged struggles of the centuries. Personal character is a variable, a most variable, quantity. Still, it is not so fluid that it cannot be fixed sufficiently for the practical purposes of this paper.

Clearly no narrow or poor type will suffice. Our manhood must be full, rounded, comprehensive, manifold, strong, capable, effective. Courage, intellect, aspiration have a physical basis; "the life is more than meat;" but life without meat, or with a scant supply, and that seasoned with injustice, is a very poor thing indeed. The meat is not the man; but a wisely and well-nourished organism, with muscles of iron strength, nerves like whipcord, and energy mounting to every occasion cannot be left out of our account of personal character. The man is a unit and his body is a vital part of his make. Nor should he be dull in thought, vulgar in taste, or narrow in interest; but broad in sympathy and strong in his humanness; rich in gifts and wide in his love of knowledge, science, and art; cautious and yet capable of ardour; "a Christian without asceticism, a Greek without sensuality;" catholic in his interests and intense in his consecration to the truest and best; exulting in freedom, but not degenerating into indifference; with convictions of his own and able to battle for them at all risks; possessed of the health and wealth, the life and strength of personal culture, and yet supremely altruistic.

THE MANHOOD OF COLLECTIVISM.

III.— An advance towards that type of manhood history teaches us to expect as the result of any change; and certainly of the change from our individualistic and competitive industrialism to collectivism. For the next stage in human experience must carry us further from all brutal conditions of life, from the tyranny of the outward and mechanical to the freedom and joy of the inward and spiritual. If "throughout the ages one increasing purpose runs, and the thoughts of men are widened" and heightened "with the process of the suns," the democratising of industry must aid in realising that purpose. If commercialism was an advance on serfdom, bringing a larger life and better opportunities to a larger number, widening their horizon and adding to their freedom from the tyranny of toil, then we are warranted in looking for substantial gains to character in the coming collectivism. Whatever truth there is in the doctrine of the evolution of human society entitles us to expect that the manhood of the twentieth century will have a breadth, a nobility, a greatness, and a happiness exceeding that of all preceding years.The giants may or may not be fewer, but certainly the lofty prayer of Browning will be answered in "the elevation of the race."

BUILT UPON JUSTICE.

IV.—Now we are confronted at the outset with the allegation that collectivism is intrinsically unjust. It fails it is alleged, "to put a legitimate premium on the social worth of individual productive ability, and involves a distinct social wrong of fixing by some arbitrary and collective wisdom the incentives and the rewards of effort, which should be left to the free play and competitions of individual wills."

Thus Dr Newman Smyth, in a book of signal ability, states his "chief objection to the productive programme of social collectivism." Now, as health and vigour are to the physical basis of life, so is justice to the basis of moral life. The edifice of man cannot be enduringly built an any other rock. As the American Senator, Sumner, said after a defeat—'"Nothing is settled till it is settled right." "Justice is the crying want of the world." It is the thing we need first of all and obtain last of all. Dr. Johnson said—"'I have found men more kind than I expected and less just." Ruskin writes—"The mistake of the best men through generation after generation has been that great one of thinking to help the poor by almsgiving . . . and other means emollient or consolatory, except the one thing God orders for them—Justice."

It is easier to be charitable than to be just; to bestow a donation on a hospital than to pay a fair wage to a toiler; to build a cathedral with the profits of a gin distillery than to give up a trade disastrous to society, but filling the coffers of the tradesman; to win fame as a patriot by throwing vitriolic contempt on a scheme than to dispassionately examine it. So that if collectivism is not an advance in justice on the present competitive arrangement it is another delusive scheme added to the pathetic host that raised, only to destroy, the hopes of men.

But what is the legitimate premium on the social worth of individual productive ability? Put Jay Gould in the place of Robinson Crusoe, with his man Friday, and what is the precise value of his "individual productive ability ?" Leave the individual to himself, remove all contributory and co-operative workers, get the "solidarity" out of industrialism, and then tell us what is the exact share —the precise value of each individual's "productive ability." That ability is in the final analysis chiefly the capacity to push the individual cog into the great social wheel, and and get his corn ground in the social mill at society's cost. A man inherits acres of land which subsequently becomes a city. His individual productive ability shows itself in arranging for somebody to gather rents from those who have themselves built their own houses upon the land and in making a will that after a short space of time houses and ground rent both shall come to his successors. So with any material wealth we have. When is it merely individual creation? At what point does it cease to be the common product of society? But if society is always a necessary factor in the production of the results of labour how can it be intrinsically unjust that society should ask to be heard as to the ownership and control of the instruments and results of labour at least so far as the necessaries of life are involved?

Certainly, it must be admitted, collectivism approximates more closely to universal justice than the wage system. That system is or may be legal; it may be it is customary to a large extent, though we rejoice to think the custom is broken by the practice of "co-operation" and frank "profit-sharing " yet it is not equitable. It involves the insecurity of the situation. To the toiler of twenty years in one factory it may be said, "If you do not like it you can go." It fixes no limit as to time. "Others," says the master, "will work fourteen or sixteen hours if you will not." It denies any share in the issues of improved work, or in the perpetuity of the industrial machinery and institutions he has helped to create. The individual capitalist takes the risks of his capital, and has till within recent times gained enormously out of all proportion to his "individual productive ability;" but the toiling victim of the wage system have large deficits standing against their names in the books of eternal justice.

Difficult as is the calculation of individual claims on the basis of strict justice—and I admit the difficulty frankly—yet I contend that collectivism contains the promise of a finer manhood, because it also holds the promise of a wider and surer justice to all parties concerned in industry than the present individualistic system.

IDLENESS THROWN OUT.

V.— Another objection to collectivism is that men will not work if they can help it, and that since collectivism would take away the ordinary incentives to toil it would feed indolence and hasten moral decay.

"The labour of life is life," says Sir Andrew Clark. " Action is education," said Emerson. Work, regular, insistent, is a man building factor. There is no Eden for idleness. Inactivity is the death of progress. Personal character owes much to toil, and even to enforced toil, barring the entrance to many temptations, occupying the vagrant thoughts, curbing the imagination, yoking the restive will, and so developing faculties and forming habits of carefulness, foresight, address, and industry. The vices of men who have a surfeit of riches are more due to want of occupation than to irrepressible evil desire.

No doubt if you take man as you may see him to-day, weakened by the sad heritage of centuries of insanitary conditions, thrust into the fœtid slums of a crowded city, poor in physical fibre, bloodless, nerveless, diseased, associating with men and women wearied and worn out like himself, you will not lack material for proving that man is innately idle, and that the only magnet that will attract him to work is gold, or that will goad him to it is hunger.

But this is not our normal man. To a healthy organism toil is welcome, is as necessary as bread, and as pleasant as the sunshine. Men who are alive to the fingertips seek work and will have it. They are active, over active. We call it mischief. You see it in boys at school, and it is not absent from the bigger boys in the House of Commons. With improved social conditions we may expect to displace the exhausted, sapless, half-dead citizens work is unwelcome, by those who will gladly respond to the call for service and exult in the beneficent exercise of their fresh and vigorous energies.

Certain it is that the need for bread is not the only or chief force that has produced fruitful personalities and noble lives. It was not grinding poverty or kingly tyranny that made Milton sing. Shelley did not write to a loaf. Robert Burns knew something about poverty, but he sang his lovely songs in spite of it, and not because of it. Indeed, where body-hunger has been most acutely and oppressively felt the movements of the inward and higher nature have been the slowest and least fruitful, unless an exception be made for those at the other end of the social scale, who, having great riches, find it a very hard thing indeed to carry themselves and their burden out of the sway of the senses in to the serener kingdoms of truth and right and goodness.

The fact is we have not discovered man yet. Most of us think too little of him. I do not mean that each one thinks too little of himself—that is a rare occurrence; but too little of the race of man, of its possibilities, its hopes, its future. We have discovered a few men. Elect souls have arisen and illumined life by their comprehensive training, skilled judgment, sound taste, real genius, and civic service; but who are these amongst so many? Of the mass, we have imagined that they are dinner eating animals, and little more. But man has many hungers, and as soon as he is free from the clamour of the lower, the higher and worthier may make themselves felt. Deliver him from the incessant and exhausting fight for his hut, and he will toil to make secure his board and his bed. Guarantee the satisfaction of the needs of his body, and his mind is free for the expression of its marvellous energies, and to achievements that will minister to his love of exact thought, of exalted art and spiritual victory, of books and pictures, buildings, and self-sacrificing deeds. The myriads of our race have yet to rise into these truly human regions, and to enjoy this sublimer life, and under the redemptive leadership of the Eternal Father they are ascending to them; therefore, instead of being afraid to humanize the conditions of life and emancipate men from the relentless grip of the taskmaster, we ought to hail to opportunity with delight, assured by the voices of History and Evolution that freedom will not end in universal torpor and final death, but in a quickened and enlarged life for the world.

FREEDOM FOR ALL.

VI.— That leads me to say that collectivism is necessary to crown the edifice of economic freedom which has been riding higher and higher during the last fifty years—thanks to the Factory Acts —the expulsion of cruel methods of work, the action of Trades Unions, and the inculcation of socialistic principles. Freedom is a condition of human development. Man needs to be free to find and use himself. His story is the long struggle for the ownership of himself, of his thought and speech, of his conscience and will, of his economic forces. In a luminous article on "The Limits of Collectivism" William Clarke says :—"Here then is the real limit of collectivism; it is coextensive with the machinery and the lower part of life; it furnishes in a right way the physical basis on which the spiritual structure is to be reared. For the first time in the history of the human race there would be freedom for all. The ancient Eastern monarchies, says Hegel, knew that only one was free ; the states of classical antiquity that some were free; the modern world knows that all are free. The modern world knows this as an idea, the abolition of chattel slavery and of serfdom being a recognition of formal liberty. But only when the people own or control the necessary instruments of production in the large industry will the formal be translated into substantial freedom. The necessity of work in order to live is a decree of Nature, and is no real abridgment of freedom so long as work is certain and not burdensome. And when the necessary mechanical toil is over all will be free to pursue the higher ends of their being. The limit of collectivism will have been overstepped, and the sphere of free individual energy and initiative will have opened itself."

2. Man finding himself would attain a nobler manhood by obtaining an altruistic in exchange for an egoistic ideal. That change is going on now. In our midst and under our eyes there is in process the enthronement of a new motive in human action. It fills the atmosphere. Some few are conscious of its presence and know whence the impulse comes. Thousands are braced by it but are unaware of the source of the moral ozone that lifts them out of the deep grooves of selfish thinking to the sunnier heights of social endeavour. The young are responding to it with the rapidity and energy of youth. "They see visions" and are eager to convert them into realities. Nor are nor elders unmoved at its appearing. "They dream dreams" and are labouring that they may become experiences. The new ideal is in sight. The energies evoked by the selfish goal are diminishing. The conviction is surely taking hold of men, women, and children that each soul is not to live for self, but for all, for the whole of society, for humanity. You and I might differ as to whence it proceeds; but what I insist on is that it is here, producing a higher strain of virtue and constituting a form of moral training analogous to that secured by resistance to a common foe, and preparing us for facing danger and accepting difficulty in the spirit of unselfish devotion to the good of men. Already we say with Lowell—

Our country hath a gospel of her own
To preach and practise before all the world—
The freedom and divinity of man,
The glorious claims of human brotherhood.

Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Jay Gould, and men of that class render a disservice to man of which they are hardly conscious. They poison the atmosphere and they try to invent a "gospel" for distributing the wealth they ought not to have. They infect men with a passion for accumulation, for heaping up riches, filling their pockets with coins, and so quicken the pace with which men hurry to get rich. Greed grows. Speculation is fostered. Men toil from morning to night, consumed by no other ambition than that of amassing wealth. In my youth these "merchant princes," " successful merchants," "commercial Crœsuses," were offered as human nature's daily food. The individualistic outstanding Napoleons, the masters of thousands, were described as they fought at Austerlitz or Jena ; but we never or rarely heard of the peril at Moscow or of the final defeat at Waterloo. All that, I rejoice to think, is changed or changing, and a growing number of men welcome the saying of Plato in the third book of his "Polity"—"Tell them they have Divine gold and silver in their souls for ever ; that they need no money stamped of men, neither may they otherwise than impiously mingle the gathering of the Divine with the mortal treasure, for through that which the law of the multitude has coined endless crimes have been done and suffered; but in theirs is neither pollution nor sorrow."

An Englishman who had spent some time in Australia said to me— What the colonies want, what Australia wants, is a true and human ideal. They are vulgarized by their passion for wealth. Nothing will save them but a pure and unselfish ideal. Collectivism has the promise of this gain by quenching the modern passion for inordinate accumulation, freeing men from the tyranny of things seen and temporal, and opening the gates for the higher culture of the individual and for the fuller service of men.

TYRANNY OF MATTER OVER MIND.

3. Essentially then collectivism is a war against the tyranny of matter over mind. It is a movement on the outward for the sake of the inward. It would end the battle for bread and make the toil for it automatic and natural as breathing, and so set the man free for the fight with ignorance, with inexact thought, with vulgar tastes, with low aims, and with base deals.

I need not say collectivism itself cannot reach the interior life, the æsthetic, the spiritual, the really personal activities of mankind. In his "News from Nowhere" William Morris points one way of escape from the dreaded monotonies of a world freed from the din and struggle of competitive trade as the gate of Art. "The spirit," he says, "of the new days, of our days, was to be delight in the life of this world; intense and almost overweening love of the very skin and surface of the earth on which man dwells." Add to Art the newly acquired domain of science, and measure the vast fields that await the investigation and enjoyment of emancipated man. Ancient as is philosophy, yet large spaces for specialists in clear thinking remain to be filled; whilst science, much sobered and restrained as compared with the vanity and self-assertiveness of twenty years ago, when flushed and excited by the splendour and magnificence of her victories, has the whole world soliciting the physiologist and botanist, the astronomer and chemist, the mineralogist and electrician ; and yet these regions of art and science are only as some small enclosures in a solitary planet compared with the illimitable regions that have yet to be tracked by the religious yearnings and aspirations of mankind.

Do not mistake me. I am not saying that collectivism is a process for the manufacture of saints, I do not expect to extirpate evil by machinery. Moral disease cannot be exorcised by a fiat of the State. Suffering, pain, wrong, and wrongdoing will not disappear as by a magician's wand when the Collectivist has rearranged the business of producing and distributing calico and cloth, food and light.

Man is a mystery. Life is temptation, and will be, then as now, until habits of righteousness and justice are formed and fixed by the free initiative, and worked into character by the persistent obedience—such habits and character as will be a guarantee of permanent goodness. But collectivism would at least give every man a fair chance of leading a cultured life, and set him free from the fetters of poverty and the choking of the mind by excessive mechanical toil. It would give the greatest possible equality at the start for natural talent and industrial virtue; lift men out of the mire of hopelessness, as to mental drill, artistic education, and moral triumph, into which so many of our fellows are thrust now. I know some may, as of old, use their liberty as a cloak for licentiousness ; and others as now, having all that the body craves, may sink into the slough of animalism; but, in my judgement, God is working in humanity to will and to do, so that we may work out our salvation from the base and bestial up to the noble and divine. Symonds says: "The tendency of modern thought is towards a spiritual interpretation of the universe," and I add, of life too; for man is spirit and has a body, and the spirit in him may be trusted to assert itself. Socrates will talk to the young men in the Athenian market-place, and keep at his task till the poison stops his speech. Davy, Faraday, and Darwin will revolutionize thought by discoveries in the world of things, and Wordsworth will start a new school of poetry. Wesley will create a new religious movement, and Ruskin a new political economy. Innovation will come, and the stir and struggle of the world will go on as of old; but instead of the fight being conducted on the low levels of the body, and with the weapons of barbarism, it will be in the higher regions of intellect and fancy, the conscience and the will; that is, in the realm of personal character.

It is not, then, too much to say that collectivism has therefore the promise and potency of immeasurable aids to the best life of man.

WAYS OF LOOKING AT LIFE

VII.— Nor is this all. Besides setting men free from the crippling and blinding influences of competitive industry, and making the toil for bread and butter as automatic as possible, collectivism will open fountains of ethical energy in the various spheres in which men serve their fellows.

Two Europeans have travelled, says Henry James in "The Europeans," to the United States, and are conversing on the habits of the Americans. Felix Young says—"I don't think it's what one does or doesn't do that promotes enjoyment; its the general way of looking at life. "They," said Gertrude, speaking of the American Puritans, "look at it as a discipline; that is what they do here; I've often been told that."  "Well, that's very good; but there is another way," added Felix smiling, "to look at it as an opportunity." "An opportunity. Yes," said Gertrude; " one would get more pleasure that way."

Great issues hang on our way of looking at life. What we do, what we are, what we do not do, and what we do not attain, are decided by what we think life to be.

Four ways are in vogue. Some see life as a curse—a catastrophe, and like Job they denounce the day of their birth, and in spasms of agony sigh for the grave. To a second class it is a selfish pleasure, a round of unbroken enjoyments, with no advance in power, no enriching of character, no service to others. Some again see it as a school or a discipline, but the fourth conception is that of life as an opportunity. That is Christ's view. To Him life is a "plenteous harvest," waiting for the well-gripped sickle of the earnest-hearted and clear-sighted reaper.

Now, of these ways of regarding human experience the first is a mistake, the creed of a victim, the gasp of the suffering; the second is ignoble and low-roofed; the third is true, but a fragment; the last is a perfect whole.

Unchecked commercialism, grinding the faces of the poor, and adding fetter to fetter, goads the myriads who cry day and night, "What shall we eat and what shall we drink, and wherewithal shall we be clothed?" to treat existence as a curse, and the grave as a coveted heaven. It is only in rare cases that any other thought of life visits them. And is it not the same unchecked commercialism that makes it possible for so many to waste their lives by the rivers of pleasure and treat existence as though it were no more than a selfish luxury? But the collectivism that would satisfy the desires of Agur, bringing neither poverty nor riches, would open the spirit in the healing and inspiring conception that life is first a school for the training and development of manhood, but of definite purpose a sphere for useful ministry in the family, the city, the State, and the Church.

For the Collectivist state is for industrial purposes exclusively. Nobody intends that it should embrace the entire life of man and suppress the home, free association for art, learning, philosophy, and science, and religious Societies. Some men writes as though the State were to be "the one social organ selected to fulfil all the functions of a perfected social life." By no means. It is not intended, or expected, or possible. The family is a social organ of superlative value, and cannot be dispensed with in any rearrangement of the industrial elements and forces of social life. Schæffle says:—"Socialism is not necessarily destructive of private life and freedom," and from the point of view of character-making the family is of primary importance. Under collectivism the temptation to marry for gain, for personal support, would be gone, and men and woman could unite on the basis of supreme and exclusive affection for each other. Instead of the atrophy of the home, opportunity would be secured for the development of family life and the increase of its effectiveness as an organ of social happiness and service. In the same way many of the obstacles that now stand in the way of civic improvements, of national progress, and of spiritual victory, would be removed, and the ethical resources of city life, patriotism, and religion would be set free to achieve the highest and best.

I do not say that collectivism is the only thing needful. I recognise its limits. I see clearly the deeper spiritual needs of men ; but within the area of industrialism this is the advance we should seek. We must not be content to float in Utopian ether, and sit still dreaming of the good things of the year 2000. I believe in visions, but it is when they inspire service. We must teach. Ideas rule. We have many formulas that are not based on fact. They must go. Teach the young. Fire their souls with the Socialistic passion, and quicken their intelligence with Socialistic ideas. They are capable of heroism. They may be made to see something better than heaping up "a pile of money." Win them and train them for the future.

Then do not let slip an immediate and real good by grasping after a far-distant one. Don't quarrel. Don't cavil. Avail yourselves of all real help. It may not be what you want, nor all you want, but

The smallest effort is not lost,
Each wavelet on the ocean tossed
Aids in the ebb tide or the flow.

Unify London. Municipalize gas, water, and tramways. Nationalise the land. Welcome co-operation. Hail frank and straightforward profit-sharing. Foster Trade Unions. Get rid of the drink traffic. Remove the barrier to woman's work. Getting these will not postpone the millennium of collective ownership. They will form the organs for socialistic teaching, and supply training for the use of the larger machinery when it is to hand.

I have read that Lammenais, who was a seer, if not a statesman, in one of his parables suggests some ray of hope for the future. He tells us how at traveller found his path through a precipitous ravine blocked by an immense rock, which, with the greatest effort of his strength, he could not move. He sat down helpless in despair. Others came along the same road, and each in his turn strove in vain to find passage. At last, drawing together, they besought Heaven to aid them, but no voice replied, no angel appeared to roll away the stone, and then, as if inspired, one asked, "May we not succeed together where we failed alone?" Before their united strength the barrier yielded and left the way open. The journey is life, the rock is human misery.

Adelaide Observer (SA :) 1893,  http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article160809441