EDITOR'S TABLE. 



697 



EDITOR'S TABLE. 



THE PROSPECTS OF SOCIALISM. 



THE result of the recent elections 

 in Great Britain has given no 

 little discouragement to the hopes 

 of those who were looking to see a 

 great increase in the socialistic ele- 

 ment in the British House of Com- 

 mons. It is clear that up to this 

 date the British public is more in- 

 terested in the definite and limited 

 questions of so-called u practical poli- 

 tics" than in the vague and general 

 schemes put forward for the improve- 

 ment of the world on the lines of so- 

 cialism. What the British public 

 feels in regard to this matter is felt, 

 we believe, by the great mass of every 

 advanced community in the present 

 day. When socialistic writers or 

 orators descant on the evils of the 

 existing condition of things, striking 

 as they frequently do a true and gen- 

 erous note, the sympathy of many 

 goes out to them ; but it is a differ- 

 ent thing when society is asked to 

 commit its legislation to the hands 

 of these eloquent declaimers. Even 

 those who acknowledge that such 

 men feel right, entertain very often 

 grave doubts as to whether they see 

 right whether their views are prac- 

 tical, whether they have truly fore- 

 casted the results of the changes they 

 would introduce, and whether their 

 benevolent efforts, if power were in- 

 trusted to them, might not prove the 

 ruin rather than the salvation of the 

 state. 



It would be a great mistake to 

 suppose that all who can not see 

 their way to support socialistic 

 schemes, and who can not even 

 share to the full socialistic senti- 

 ments, are either insensible to the 

 evils, such as they are, of our social 

 state, or unwilling to do all in their 



power to have those evils remedied. 

 There is abroad in the world to-day 

 a very general desire to see things 

 made right and fair for the average 

 of mankind and for all men, to have 

 the general conditions of life im- 

 proved, to have an abatement, on 

 the one hand, of the senseless luxury 

 of the wealthy class, and, on the 

 other hand, a dignifying of the lot 

 of the ordinary citizen. Things are 

 to-day perceptibly moving in the di- 

 rection of giving better conditions to 

 the average man; but they might 

 move more quickly if the average 

 man would only stand more firmly 

 on his rights, and prosecute them in 

 a more intelligent manner. When- 

 ever the state grants a public fran- 

 chise, then is the time to make the 

 best bargain possible for the citizens 

 at large. But on what does the pos- 

 sibility of protecting the rights of 

 the citizen in such matters depend ? 

 Manifestly, on there being in our 

 legislative bodies men who will not 

 traffic with rich corporations in the 

 citizens 1 rights. Then on what does 

 the presence of such men in the 

 legislature depend ? Now we come 

 to it: the citizen has the composi- 

 tion of the legislature in his own 

 hands, and it depends on him whether 

 the making of the laws shall be in- 

 trusted to honorable or to dishon- 

 orable, to trustworthy or untrust- 

 worthy, men. One of two things: 

 either representative institutions are 

 a mockery and a fraud, or the mass 

 of the citizens have it now in their 

 power to protect their own interests 

 so far as the whole public life of the 

 state is concerned. How they have 

 betrayed their own rights and privi- 

 leges into the hands of tricksters, 

 gulled by some party cry or swayed 



