732 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



results in an extensive reading of publications which foster pleasant 

 illusions, rather than of those which insist on hard realities, is beyond 

 question. Says "A Mechanic," writing in the "Pall Mall Gazette" 

 of December 3, 1883 : 



Improved education instills the desire for culture culture instills the desire 

 for many things as yet quite beyond workingmen's reach ; ... in the furious 

 competition to which the present age is given up they are utterly impossible to 

 the poorer classes ; hence they are discontented with things as they are, and the 

 more educated the more discontented. Hence, too, Mr. Kuskin and Mr. Morris 

 are regarded as true prophets by many of us. 



And, that the connection of cause and effect here alleged is a real one, 

 we may see clearly enough in the present state of Germany. 



Being possessed of electoral power, as are now the mass of those 

 who are thus led to nurture sanguine anticipations of benefits to be 

 obtained by social reorganization, it results that whoever seeks their 

 votes must at least refrain from exposing their mistaken beliefs, even 

 if he does not yield to the temptation to express agreement with them. 

 Every candidate for Parliament is prompted to propose or support 

 some new piece of ad captandum legislation. Nay, even the chiefs of 

 parties, these anxious to retain office and those to wrest it from them, 

 severally aim to get adherents by outbidding one another. Each en- 

 deavors to score a trick by trumping his antagonist's good card, as we 

 have lately seen. And then, as divisions in Parliament show us, the 

 traditional loyalty to leaders overrides questions concerning the intrin- 

 sic propriety of proposed measures. Representatives are unconscien- 

 tious enough to vote for bills which they regard as essentially wrong 

 in principle, because party-needs and regard for the next election de- 

 mand it. And thus a vicious policy is strengthened even by those 

 who see its viciousness. 



Meanwhile there goes on out-of-doors an active propaganda to 

 which all these influences are ancillary. Communistic theories, par- 

 tially indorsed by one act of Parliament after another, and tacitly if 

 not avowedly favored by numerous public men seeking supj>orters, are 

 being advocated more and more vociferously under one or other form 

 by popular leaders, and urged on by organized societies. There is the 

 movement for land-nationalization which, aiming at a system of land- 

 tenure equitable in the abstract, is, as all the world knows, pressed by 

 Mr. George and his friends with avowed disregard for the just claims 

 of existing owners, and as the basis of a scheme going more than half- 

 way to state-communism. And then there is the thorough-going 

 Democratic Federation of Mr. Hyndman and his adherents. We are 

 told by them that " the handful of marauders who now hold posses- 

 sion [of the land] have and can have no right save brute force against 

 the tens of millions whom they wrong." They exclaim against " the 

 shareholders who have been allowed to lay hands upon (!) our great 



