Til New Kork. 



THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 

 MONTHLY. 



MARCH, 1891 



SUPPOSED TENDENCIES TO SOCIALISM.* 



By WILLIAM GKAHAM, M. A., 



PROFESSOR OF' POLITICAL ECONOMY AND JURISPRUDENCE, QUEEN'S COLLEGE, BELFAST. 



THERE are others besides Herbert Spencer who discern social- 

 ism as the end or logical outcome of certain tendencies which 

 now prevail or which are thought to prevail ; and, as all prophe- 

 cies in modern times must be based on what we know of existing 

 tendencies, supplemented by what history tells us of the course 

 of similar tendencies in the past, it is a matter of importance 

 to know how far such tendencies do really exist, and, if they do, 

 to gauge, if possible, their probable momentum, and to judge 

 whether they are likely to be permanent or passing, because con- 

 fident prophecies have been hazarded on the strength of certain 

 tendencies, while at the very moment of the prophecy a counter- 

 tendency was setting in.f 



The alleged tendencies to socialism are chiefly two : the tend- 

 ency of the state to widen its functions, especially in the economic 

 sphere ; and the tendency to increased concentration of wealth. 

 As to the former, there is no doubt that the modern state has a 

 tendency to widen the range of its activity in the economic sphere, 

 as also in the interests of culture, and this tendency is to a certain 

 extent socialistic. The tendency exists ; it has increased in Eng- 

 land during the present century, especially since the passing of 

 the first Factory Acts in 1844. It has increased especially in the 

 legislative sphere, and as far as the regulation of industry is con- 



*From Socialism New and Old, by William Graham. International Scientific Serie?, 

 No. LXVIII. In press of D. Appleton & Co. 



f As in the case of De Tocqueville's celebrated prophecy that nothing could stop the 

 tide setting toward democracy and the equality of conditions, although a counter-tide 

 toward a new inequality had already set in, with, as a consequence of it, the rise of a new 

 aristocracy or plutocracy in all western Europe. 

 vol. rxxYin. 39 



