T

HE family is defined as a household, living together and under one head. Thus, the family includes parents and children. Monogamic marriage is the legal union of a man and woman as husband and wife. Every sensible man, whether Christian, Jew, or agnostic, knows, or ought to know, that the family is the unit of society and the basis of our civilization. Marriage and the family form the cornerstone of the State. Whoever attacks them is attacking society and organized government all the institutions under which we live.

Does Socialism aim to abolish the present form of marriage and destroy the family? That is the question which I propose to answer in this article. I want to be absolutely honest and fair in the treatment of this subject. I am well aware that Socialists will deny any such intention. They will point to their political platform as the interpretation of their principles, which of course is utterly absurd. Political platforms are framed to get votes. If we want to obtain true knowledge of real Socialism, we must consult the writings of the founders and leaders of the movement.

From a close study of the philosophy, principles and literature of modern Socialism, as embodied in the writings of Marx, Engels, Bebel, Bax, Herron,

Kerr, Debs and others, it is clearly apparent that one of the chief objects of Socialism is the destruction of the family and the abolition of marriage.

Robert Owen, a famous English Socialist wrote these words fifty years ago: "In the new moral world, the irrational names of husband and wife, parent and child will be heard no more. All connection will be the result of affection; the child would undoubtedly be the property of the State."

Socialists teach the same doctrine today all over this broad land. It is true that soap-box "orators" do not preach that doctrine, but these "Spouters" prate about everything except real Socialism.

Read the "Manifesto."

The Communist Manifesto, the joint production of Marx and Engels says:

"The family will vanish as a matter of course, when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishment of Capital."

Here is another extract from that precious publication:

"The bourgeois sees in his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the instruments of production have to be exploited in common, and naturally can come to no other conclusion than

Frederick Engels' famous, or rather infamous, work called "The Origin of the Family," is published by C. H. Kerr Co., of Chicago, and translated by Ernest Untermann, an American Socialist,

Untermann in the preface says:—

"The monogamic family so far from being a divinely instituted ‘union of souls' is seen to be the product of a series of material, and in the last analysis of the most sordid motives." (Ernest Untermann, Translator, p. 7).

Engels says that marriage of one man and one woman will disappear and Free Love will reign. Listen to this highpriest of Socialism:

"We are now approaching a social revolution in which the old economic

foundation of monogamy will disappear just as surely as those of its complement, prostitution." (p. 9).

And again he says:

"Monogamy was the first form of the family not founded on natural but economic conditions, viz: the victory of private property over primitive and natural collectivism.

"Monogamy thus does by no means enter history as a reconciliation of man and wife and still less as the highest form of marriage. On the contrary, it enters as the subjugation of one sex by the other, as the proclamation of an antagonism between the sexes unknown in all preceding history." (p. 79).

"By the side of slavery and private property it (marriage) marks at the same time that epoch which, reaching down to our days, takes with all progress also a step backward, relatively

that the lot of being common to all will advancement of one by the woe and submission of the other." (pp. 79-80).

Free Love would Reign.
And further he says:

"Probably the Catholic Church has abolished divorce for the single reason that it had come to the conclusion there was as little help for adultery as for death." (p. 85).

"With the transformation of the means of production into collective property the monogamous family ceases to be the economic unit of society. The private household changes to a social industry. The care and education of the children become a public matter; society cares equally for all children, legal or illegal. This removes the care about the 'consequence' which now forms the essential social factor-moral and eco

nomic-hindering a girl to surrender unconditionally to the beloved man.

Will not this be sufficient cause for a gradual rise of a more unconventional intercourse of the sexes and a more lenient public opinion regarding Virgin Honor and female shame." (p. 22).

The foregoing quotations from Engels show conclusively that under Socialism free-love-marriage, if I may use the term, would take the place of the present form of marriage.

"The Origin of the Family" is a popular classic among American Socialists. The book advocates free love from cover to cover. It is evident that, in place of the present form of marriage and the family, Socialists would substitute marriage founded on sex fondness and terminated at the will of either party. Under Socialism, children would. be the offspring, not of true marriage,

Bebel, in his "Woman," says:

"We must ascertain which form of marriage is the more moral-a marriage founded on the bourgeois idea of property, or a marriage founded on the free untrammeled choice of love, such as is only possible in a Socialistic Society."

Now, let us hear from Paul La Fargue, another French Socialist and the son-in-law of Karl Marx. La Fargue says:

"The Family! Here is another sacred pillar of society. Don't they praise it. Everybody, captains of finance and industry, preachers and political leaders, they have nothing else in view, as they often repeat, than to conserve it-develop it and make it more beautiful.

"Freed from the marital yoke and from the oppression of male morality, woman will be able to develop freely her physical and intellectual faculties; she will regain her great role as initiator, which she performed in the primitive. life of humanity, and which is conserved in the myths and legends of the primitive religion."-(New York Call, July 10, 1910).

Modern American Opinions.

I have now quoted from the greatest There European Socialist authorities. are many others almost as eminent but it is unnecessary to refer to them. I have quoted from Marxian Socialists exclusively and American Socialists are Marxian to the core. The Socialists of Germany, France, Italy, England and the United States are all of the same breed.

I shall now turn to the files of the New York Call for real up-to-date opinions regarding the family. The Call is one of the official organs of Socialists

in this country. The issue of May 9, 1910, contains a pernicious article advocating divorce:

"Without doubt divorce always has a long trail of sadness in its train, but it is one of the greatest boons thus far vouchsafed to woman. The man could always throw off his matrimonial yoke if it galled him, and the thousands of deserted wives are evidence that he frequently did so, but only in comparatively recent times has the wife been accorded the privilege of escaping from a brutal, tyrannical or drunken beast, and still retain a semblance of respectability.

"A strange quality of love which could blossom from so bitter a plant as fear and dread. Use your intelligence. Do not be afraid.

The Heavens will not fall

if you tell your masters that you are no longer children to be scared by ghosts and that you no longer accept the cruel, vindictive God they have set up for you to worship."

Here is an article that caps the climax, The Call, January 28, 1910, contained an article by a "Reverend" Roland D. Sawyer. Mr. Sawyer is a leading Socialist and an advocate of legalized abortion. This doctrine of Socialism is as vile as that of free love, and it emphasizes, stronger than any other fact, what sort of a nation the Socialist Commonwealth would be.

"UNFORTUNATE WOMAN."

By Rev. Roland D. Sawyer.

"And so the Capitalists' Church continues to teach its working-class communicants to have large families, and the capitalist state continues to make laws. forbidding the workingman's wife having means at hand to escape conception. Satisfactory and safe means to escape conception can easily be provided, and

there is no release for those unfortunate women, until the state and the doctors shall change their inhuman conduct, so they have no more babies than they want or can properly take care of."

Neither Virtue nor Decency.

Comment on the above quotation is I have several other vile unnecessary. clippings from this Socialist organ, but I will not disgust my readers by reproducing them.

Race suicide, which is nothing more. or less than the murder of the innocents, is given a prominent place in Socialist philosophy and teaching; yet its leaders have the audacity to tell us that Socialism is only a political and economic

movement.

Most of the women Socialist writers

in America are ardent advocates of Free-Love-Marriage. They seem to have lost all sense of womanliness.

Edward Carpenter's "Loves Coming of Age" is another Socialist classic which has been highly praised by leading Socialist writers. It is a fit companion of Engels' "Origin of the Family," for both are a menace to morals and good citizenship. followApparently the ers of the red flag do not care about morals or good citizenship.

It is practically impossible, strange as it may appear, to establish the "Cooperative Commonwealth" in this country or in any other country, without the destruction of the family. Every educated Socialist recognizes that fact.

Charles H. Kerr of Chicago, publisher of Socialistic literature, speaks of the present form of marriage in these words:

"A legal marriage in this country today is a contract by which the man agrees to support the woman, and the woman in return gives the control of her body to the man. The prostitute and the woman who married without love for the sake of a home are precisely on the same moral level. Each has made a fatal mistake, and each is living in the worst kind of a hell that I know how to imagine."

The Socialists have Spoken.

I think that I have proved beyond a shadow of doubt that Socialism would destroy the family. Any man or woman can verify my citations. I have let Socialist authorities speak for themselves, and my readers can draw their own conclusions.

The most noted free-love marriage which we have witnessed in the United States was that of Geo. D. Herron and Miss Carrie Rand. Herron was at one time a minister of the Congregational Church in Burlington, Iowa. He left his virtuous wife and four little children in 1901, and took for his "soul mate" Miss Rand, who has since founded the "Rand School of Social Science," in New York, the rendezvous for all kinds of radicals.

Socialist writers tell us that under Socialism, children do not belong to their parents, but to society, and are to be reared by the community. The great Socialist authority on this subject is Frederick Engels, and here is his exact language: "The care and education of children become a public matter. Society cares equally for all children, legal

would be no prostitutes; but simply because free love would reign supreme every woman would be a prostitute, and the sacred words, "father and mother" would be heard no more.

The ancient church still stands for the family and the home. She stands for the union of one man with one woman. When Christ commanded monogamy, He struck a deadly blow at polygamy, which was then practised almost everywhere in the Pagan world.

Free Love Taught in Class Rooms. Divorce and race suicide are eating like a cancer into the vitals of the American people. Our system of education is turning out a generation of agnostics, Socialists and materialists, that, unless all signs fail, will eventually destroy this republic. It is being taught in the class-rooms of several American universities that the family as an institution is doomed, and that there can be, and are, holier alliances outside the marriage bond than within it. So we find that Socialist doctrines are preached in some of our great institutions of learning.

It is about time that American manhood and patriotism should be alive to the dangers that threaten the very life. of this nation. Destroy the family and all our existing institutions will come tumbling to the ground like a house of cards. The times seem to be out of joint. What is the remedy? Religion which is the basis of sound morality and civic virtue.

Under Socialism civil or ecclesiastical marriage could not exist? What would become of the family? It would die