Review of Revieirs, 1/7/oe. 



Leading Articles in the Reviews. 



r iHOW SOCIALISM IS GROWING, AND WHY. 



Some Interesting Facts and Figures. 

 Mr. Upton Sinclair, the author of the remarkable 

 Socialist novel, " The Jungle," contributes to the 

 North American Review for April a suggestive paper 

 on " Markets and Misery." 



HOW SOCIALISM IS GROWING. 



Mr. Sinclair, who is a pronounced Socialist, glories 

 in the growth of Socialism. He says: — 



In every nation the movement i;oes ahead and forms a 

 political party; ;ind. when that is done, it begins to cast 

 a vote, and ever\' year that vote is larger than it was the 

 year before. In" Germany, it was 30,000 in 1867. 487,000 in 

 1877, 763.000 in 1837, 1,787.000 in 1893, 2,125,000 in 1898. and 

 3,008.000 in 1903. In Austria, it was 90.000 in 1895 and nearly 

 a million in 1900. In Beleium, it was 334.000 in 1894 and 

 534.000 in 1898. In Switzerland, it was 14,000 in 1890 and 

 100,000 in 1901. In France, it ha-s members in the cabinet, 

 and In Italy and Australia it holds tlie balance of power 

 and turns out ministries. In Japan, it has started its 

 first newspaper, and in Argentin.a. it has elected its first 

 deputy. In the United States, it now has 220O locals and 

 30.000 subscribing men. 



In 1888, the Socialist vote in America was 2000; in 1892, 

 it was 21.000; in 1898, it was 91,000; in 1900 it was 131,000; 

 in 1902, it was 285.000; and in 1904, it was 436,000. In 1906 

 it will be between 700,000 and 800.000. unless the writer is 

 very much mistaken; unless lie is still more mistaken. 

 Socialism will, from that time, be the only living political 

 issue in America. 



WHY SOCIALISM IS GROWING. 

 Mr. Sinclair attributes the growth of Socialism to 

 the increased capacity of machinery to produce com- 

 modities, and the failure of society, in the presence 

 of the impro\'ed pace of industrial output, to provide 

 a just system of distribution. He quotes from Pro- 

 fi'ssor Hertzka, the Austrian author of "The Laws 

 lit' Sociid Evolution," a statement that five million 

 able, strong men could produce everything imagin- 

 able of luxury and of necessity required by a nation 

 of 22,000,000, by working only two hours and 

 twelve minutes a day. The craze for conquering 

 foreign markets he regards as the necessary alter- 

 native to Socialism. Our present competitive sys- 

 tem, with its overwork and out-of-works, is, in his 

 (-.pinion, the cause of all the trouble. He says: — 



The reason is that all the woollen manufactories, the 

 hont and sline and bread manufactories, and all the 

 sources nf the raw materials of these, and all the means 

 of liandling and distributing them when they are manu- 

 factured, belong to a few private individuals instead of to 

 tiie conimuiiity as a whole. And so. instead of the cotton- 

 .spinner, tlie shoe-operative and ttie bread-maker having 

 free access to them, to work each as long as he plea.ses, 

 produce as niurh as he cares to, ;ind exchange his iirn- 

 thicts for as much of the i)roducts of other workers 



s he needs, each one of these workers can only get at the 

 icliines bj' the consent of another man, and then does 

 not cet what ho produces, but only a small fraction of it. 

 and does not get that except when the owner of the bal- 

 ance can fiiifi someone with money enough to buy that 

 balance at a profit to him! 



SOME MIRACLES OP FAST PRODUCTION. 



Incidentally Mr. Sinclair illustrates his point by 

 mentioning the following cases of swift produc- 

 tion : — 



In Pennsylvania some sheep were shorn and the wool 

 turned into clothing in six hours four minutes. A steer 

 was killed, its liide tanned, turned into leatlier, and matle 

 into shoes in twenty-four hours. The ten million bottles 

 used by the .Standard Oil Company every year are now 

 blown by machinery. An electric riveting macliine puts 

 rivets in steel-frame buildings at tlie rate of two per min- 

 ute. Two hundred and sixty needles per minute, ten mil- 

 lion match-sticks per day. five hundred garments cut per 

 day — each by a machine tended by one little boy. The 

 newest weaving looms run through the dinner-hour and an 

 hour and a-half after the factory closes making clotli. witii 

 no one to tend them at all. Tlie new basket machine, 

 invented by Mergenthaler, the inventor of the linotype, is 

 now in operation everywhere, " making fruit baskets, 

 berry baskets, and grape baskets of a. strength and quality 

 never approached by hand-labour. Fancy a single machine 

 that will turn out completed lierry baskets at the rate 

 of twelve thousand per day of nine liours' work! 

 This is at the rate of one thousand three hundred per 

 hour, or over twenty ba.skcts a minute! One girl, oiierating 

 ihia machine, does the work of twelve skilled hand opera- 

 tors!" 



JOHN BULL THROUGH COLONIAL SPECTACLES. 



In C. B. Fry's Magazine Mr. P. A. Vaile, the 

 well-known New Zealander and tennis champion, 

 talks to John Bull as an extremely candid friend. 

 In English national life to-day there is, he says, " a 

 wonderful atmosphere of falseness, of narrowness, 

 of selfishness." John Bull has changed of late, not 

 for the better. Many of his traditional virtues are 

 his in reality no longer: — 



Gone are the stately old courtesies, the genuine lavish 

 hospitality, the welcome of the home. In their place we 

 find the " good form " of the present day, the riglit to 

 buy our way into or about country homes by the grace of 

 the avaricious servants who wait with itching palms on 

 ever.^ step; and instead of the home welcome we have the 

 restaurant dinner and the bridge party. 



And Mr. Vaile has one more fling at John Bull for 

 making such a grey, chill, sombre thing of life which 

 is grey, chill, and sombre enough already. " So he 

 becomes self-centred, narrow, selfish, without public 

 spirit or sympathy." Whereas the average English- 

 man, if he cared to shake himself up a little, might, 

 "in time, become quite an interesting companion," 

 even although he is not much of a traveller compared 

 with the restless colonial. But the serious aspect of 

 Mr. Bull's dull self-centring (of which Mr. Vaile 

 gives an amusing picture) is that it is injuring his 

 national and even his individual health. He misses 

 much of the " toning up " which comes from associa- 

 tion with other men. In England's sons Mr. Vaile 

 finds a want of tone, of verve, both physically and 

 mentally : — 



The mentality of the average Englishman is not nearly 

 so alert as is tliat of liis brother across the sea. He has 

 not the intercourse with his fellow-men that the colonial 

 has. His mind follows in the dull routine of his body. 

 His nervous system sympathises. The result is. in many 

 cases, almost an atrophy of the nervous system. I have for 

 long past notii'ed with concern tlic lack of nervous force in 

 the youth of England, the want of that tone, that super- 

 abundance of vitality, that sliould be the characterist';' of 

 every he.althy boy. The colonial boy has. generally opeak- 

 ing. enough vitality to drive about three sets of nerves; 

 the English lad always seems short of the necessary 

 amount. 



