150 PERILS. — SOCIALISM. 



lord. They close the factory or the mine, and thousands 

 of workmen are forced mto unwilling idleness. The cap- 

 italist can arbitrarily raise the price of necessaries, can 

 prevent men's working, but has no responsibility, mean- 

 while, as to their starving. Here is " taxation without 

 representation " with a vengeance. We have develoj^ed 

 a despotism vastly more oppressive and more exasper- 

 ating than that against which the thirteen colonies 

 rebelled. 



Working men are apt to be improvident. It is often 

 their own fault that enforced idleness so soon brings 

 want. Though, at times, they know enough of want, as 

 a class they know little of self-denial. They generally 

 live up to the limit of their means. If wages are good, 

 they have the best the market affords ; when work and 

 credit fail, they go hungry. Neither the capitalist nor 

 the laborer has a monopoly of the fault for the difficul- 

 ties existing between them. But our inquiry is after 

 facts, not faults; and the fact of improvidence on the 

 part of many working men only makes their discontent 

 the deeper and more certain. 



A communistic leader, who visited America thirty-five 

 years ago, was asked what he thought of the condition 

 of the working classes here. "It is very bad," he 

 replied, "they are so discouragingly prosperous." But 

 the growth of dissatisfaction and of socialism among our 

 wage-workers, in recent years, has taken place notwith- 

 standing generally good harvests and a great increase of 

 aggregate wealth. Poor harvests were potent causes in 

 bringing Louis XVI. to the guillotine, and precipitating 

 the Reign of Terror. We must, of course, expect them 

 to occur as heretofore, perhaps recur in successive years. 

 The condition of the working man will then probably be 

 bad enough to satisfy the most pessimistic agitator. 

 Every such "winter of discontent " among laborers is 

 made "glorious summer "for the growth of socialistic 

 ideas. 



We have glanced at the causes which are ministering 

 to the growth of socialism among us : a wide-spread dis- 



