412 



The Review of Heviews. 



October 1, 1906. 



own illustrated magazines and review^s, high in 

 qualit)-, dignity, and restraint ; they possess count- 

 less daily and weekly pa{>ers, which circulate 

 throughout the land, and single papers which have 

 subscribers by the hundreds of thousands ; and thev 

 literally swamp the working classes in a vast sea of 

 tracts and pamphlets. " No political party in the 

 United States," observes the author, " no church 

 organisation nor missionar\ bodv, has as indefatig- 

 able workers as the Socialist party. They know of 

 no effort or sacrifice too great to make for the 

 Cause, and Cause with them is spelt with a capital 

 C." We need not enquire very precisely what is 

 their ultimate aim. It is practically the same as 

 that of their confreres all over the world — to take 

 over all the means of production and exchange, and 

 work them by the State in the interests, not of a 

 few, but of the community as a whole. They re- 

 gard the Trusts with favour, as preparing the way 

 for the advent of Socialism. When everything has 

 been swallowed up by the gigantic Octopuses of steel 

 and oil it will be easy, they think, for the Prole- 

 tariat to step in, appropriate the whole in the name 

 of the People, and administer it on their behalf. 



The bitterness of the war between the classes in 

 America has been intensified of late years, according 

 to the author, by the fact that it is no longer pos- 

 sible for the ambitious working-man to become a 

 capitalist, as it once was. The gateway of oppor- 

 tunity after opportunity has been closed to him, and 

 the worker is now pent up in his own class, unable 

 to get beyond the presidency of his Union or 

 federation of Unions, as the case mav be. " Rocke- 

 feller has shut down on oil, the American Tobacco 

 Company on tobacco, and Carnegie on steel. After 

 Carnegie came Morgan, who triple-locked the door. 

 These doors will not open again, and before them 

 pass thousands of ambitious voung men to read 

 the placard, NO THOROUGHF.ARE." Under 

 these circumstances the worker joins in the great 

 war which is being waged between Capital and 

 Labour for the distribution of their united produce. 

 So bitterly hostile are the workers to the capitalist 

 class that some of the leading Unions prevent them, 

 under pain of dismissal, from belonging to the mi- 

 litia, which they regard as " the weapon wielded by 

 the employers to crush the workers in the struggle 

 between the warring groups." Ver\- interesting are 

 the chapters in which the author treats of the tramp 

 and the " scab." The former he describes as either 

 a discouraged worker or a discouraged criminal, 

 the result of the fact that there is not enough work 

 to go round, and the latter as one who gives more 

 value for the same price than another. Still, the 

 two together — who. by the way, are frequentlv one 

 and the same — form units in that vast armv which 

 springs up at a moment's notice, as if out of the 

 clouds, whenever there is the least demand for 

 work, and is the prime cause whv strikes so con- 

 tinually fail. And this, too, in spite of the fact 



that the workers are splendidly organised and some- 

 times splendidly led. In one line alone, that of the 

 anthracite and bituminous mines, there are no less 

 than 400,000 men — 150,000 in the former and 

 250,000 in the latter — under the control and direc- 

 tion of one supreme Labour Council, officered, we 

 are told, by " captains of labour of splendid abili- 

 ties, who, in the understanding of economic and in- 

 dustrial conditions, are undeniably the equals of 

 their opponents, the captains of industry.'' One 

 great organisation alone, we are told, that of the 

 American Federation of Labour, has a memberstiip 

 of 1,700,000, and outside of it are many other large 

 organisations, all '" banded together for the frank 

 purpose of bettering their condition, regardless of 

 the harm worked thereby upon all other classes." 



Altogether the book is well worth reading by 

 those who wish to form a clear idea of the condi- 

 tion, thoughts and aspirations of large numbers of 

 the working classes in the United States. Much of 

 it is, doubtless, exaggerated, although even in the 

 grossest exaggeration there is generally a substra- 

 tum of truth ; and the financial statistics are 

 handled with an innocence which is characteristic 

 of so many of the class to which the writer belongs. 

 For instance, if the value of the exports is greater 

 than that of the imports, he hails it as a balance in 

 favour of the exporting country, and vice versa ; 

 whereas, of course, the reverse is the case. The 

 balance is in favour when the imports are greater 

 than the exports, or, in other words, when the value 

 received is greater than the value sent away. The 

 mistake is evidently due to the impression that ex- 

 ports are paid for with gold, whereas they are paid 

 for with goods. But the greatest fault in the book 

 is the belief, shared by the author in common with 

 all Socialists, that the arch-enemy of labour is capi- 

 tal, which is simply stored-up labour, and therefore 

 under natural condirions would be the friend of 

 labour, while he almost completely ignores the fact 

 that the real enemy of labour is landlordism — the 

 monopoly of natural opportunities, such as land, 

 mines, and kerosene wells. What is before all 

 things wanted in anv discussion of that Great Social 

 Problem which is forcing itself on all men's minds 

 to-day is a clear discriminarion between the value 

 directk- created solely by the presence and needs of 

 the conununity and the value created by labour and 

 capital. The very essence and central doctrine of 

 modern political economy, in which it differs funda- 

 liientallv from the systems which preceded it, is that 

 the value which has been directly created bv the 

 community as a whole belongs exclusively to the 

 community, whereas the value created by labour 

 and capital belongs just as exclusivelv to the labour- 

 er and the capitalist. Till this essential difference 

 between the two values is clearly understood, and 

 its far-reaching significance in some tneasure appre- 

 ciated, no real abiding progress can possibly be 

 made. 



