158 PERILS. — SOCIALISM. 



rial means. ''The explosion of a little nitro-glycerine 

 under a few water-mains would make a great city unin- 

 habitable ; the blowing-up of a few raih^oad bridges and 

 tunnels would bring famine quicker than the wall of cir- 

 cumvallation that Titus drew around Jerusalem; the 

 pumping of atmospheric air into the gas-mains, and the 

 application of a match would tear up every street and 

 level every house. " ^ We are preparing conditions which 

 make possible a Reign of Terror that would beggar the 

 scenes of the French Eevolution. I do not regard such a 

 revolution as j^rohahle, but we have abundant reason to 

 fear that such outbreaks as that w^hich occurred in 1877 

 will recur with increased violence and greatly increased 

 destruction of life and property. 



Conditions at the West are peculiarly favorable to 

 the growth of socialism. The much larger proportion of 

 foreigners there, and the strong tendency of immigration 

 thither, will have great influence. There is a stronger 

 individuality in the West. The people are less conserva- 

 tive ; there is less regard for established usage and opin- 

 ion. The greater relative strength of Romanism there is 

 significant ; for apostate Catholics furnish the very soil 

 to which socialism is indigenous. Mormonism also is 

 doing a like preparatory work. It is gathering together 

 great numbers of ill-balanced men, who are duped for a 

 time by Mormon mummery ; but many of them, becoming 

 disgusted, leave the church and with it all faith in relig- 

 ion of any sort. Skeptical, soured, cranky, they are 

 excellent socialistic material. Irreligion abounds much 

 more than at the East ; the proportion of Christian men 

 is much smaller. " Into these Western communities the 

 international societies and secret labor leagues and 

 Jacobin clubs, and atheistic, infidel, rationalistic organ- 

 izations of every name in the Old World, are continually 

 emptying themselves. They are the natural reservoirs 

 of whatever is uneasy, turbulent, antagonistic to either 

 God or man among the populations across the sea. They 



* Social Problems, p. 14. 



