144 PERILS. — SOCIALISM. 



In 1871 124,655 



" 1874 351,952 



" 1877 493,288 



"1881 311,961 



" 1884 549,990 



"1887 763,128 



" 1890 1,341,587 



At the last election (1890) in Berlin the sociahsts cast 

 126,522 votes, over 20,000 more than all the other parties. 

 ' ' Professor Fawcett, in opening his present course of 

 lectures at Oxford (1880), said that, if the growth of the 

 socialistic political vote progressed in Germany and the 

 United States for the next fifty years as it has for the 

 last fifty, capital can do nothing effectual against social- 

 ism." 1 



2. There are other influences, which, though obscure, 

 are no less potent than immigration in fostering the 

 growth of socialism in America. Among the deep cur- 

 rents of the centuries, flowing down through the last 

 eighteen hundred j^ears and rising to the surface in the 

 great German Keformation of the sixteenth century, 

 there has been an irresistible drift toward individualism. 

 Guizot says that the ''prime element in modern Euro- 

 pean civilization is the energy of individual life, the force 

 of personal existence. '' The masses once existed for the 

 state ; the individual was notliing. When Christ said, 

 " What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world 

 and lose his own soul?" thus teaching the priceless 

 worth of every human being, he introduced a new idea 

 into the world, which is leavening society. It has manu- 

 mitted slaves, it has elevated woman, it has overthrown 

 despotisms and written constitutions, it has swept away 

 privileges and abolished caste. It is bearing Europe 

 onward to popular government. Is it strange that the 

 liberated pendulum should swing beyond the position of 

 stable equilibrium? Already are there signs of an 



1 Joseph Cook's Socialism, p. 17, 1880. 



