stocks and bonds, how much in savings. banks and in other lines of investment, can only be estimated, but it runs into many millions. There are eight thousand farmers owning stock in the Illinois Central Railroad, and not less than 5,000 who own stock in the Boston & Maine system. In many localities half of the savings bank depositors are farmers.

Socialism's Fallacious Logic.

By reason of false statistics and equally false logic, the Socialist leaders are. able to promise a fabulous income to the workers under Socialism. Statistics show that our total net national wealthproduction for the census year 1900, amounted to not over $750.00 per capita for each actual wealth producer, and this was accomplished by the use of the best labor-saving machinery, the most careful supervision and the very finest organization. Could a co-operative commonwealth do as well? History teaches us that nearly every governmental enterprise is conducted with loss. Bureaucratic management of business is always wasteful, inefficient, unprogressive and extravagant. Under Socialism would be compelled to employ, in every line, a vast horde of non-productive workers, experts and book-keepers, in order to give to all some approximation of the value of their labor. Socialism must either do this or pay all alike; to do the former would necessitate the employment of millions of non-producers; to do the latter would demoralize all labor, thus decreasing wealth-production enormously. The Socialist promise is a dream in so far as it relates to increased prosperity for the workers. Under Socialism there would be far less wealth for distribution than at present.

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According to Socialist predictions the farms of the nation were to be concentrated into a few great bonanza ranches. The facts prove exactly the opposite. The great bonanza farms are disappearing. The Socialists make much of the fact that the farm tenants increased slightly, and that the number of farms with a mortgage also increased. And, here again, they are looking backward. From 1890 to 1900 the farm owners increased by 44,000 annually, or 440,000 in the decade. How do farm tenants increase? In many parts of the southwest the once great ranches are being cut up into small farms and rented and sold. This creates an opportunity for a large increase in tenants. Thousands of the 8,000,000 immigrants that have come to this country in the past ten years have rented small farms.

The writer has some practical knowledge of farming, having worked for a tenant farmer in Iowa, and for farm owners in New England. All through the Mississippi Valley there is a variety of farm tenants, but not 2 per cent. of

them can be classed as proletarians. There are thousands of farm owners who rent thousands of farms in this section because they wish to employ greater capital, and hardly one of these farms is for sale. All through the "Egypt" of Illinois, there can be seen in every village rows of neat cottages, costing two or three thousand dollars apiece, owned by retired farmers who rent their farms at from four to six dollars per acre per year. Often the tenant farmer is a member of the owner's family, sometimes he is also a farm owner; many are immigrants who first worked as farm hands, then launched out for themselves.

Development of Land Ownership.

Later they will buy farms, making a part payment, and, in a few years, become land owners. They thus become, in the process of evolution, part of the class that our Socialist agitator so greatly pities. The cash tenant is invariably a man of some property, the owner of stock, horses, farm machinery, etc., which may be valued at two or three thousand dollars. The census for 1900 shows, for white farmers, the following percentage of ownership:

During the past decade, in spite of mergers and combinations, the manufacturing establishments numbered 533,769, but the owners of these plants increased in a far greater proportion. Statistics show that there are 590,828 stockholders in 143 manufacturing establishments, an increase of more than 100 per cent. in the past ten years. The number of owners of the railroads of the nation has enormously increased during the past twenty-five years, and at no time has this increase been more rapid than during the past two or three years. In ten years the number of owners has more than doubled. The Pennsylvania Railroad which, twenty years ago, had only 10,000 stockholders, now has 72,819. Twenty years ago the Great Northern Railway had 122 stockholders; to-day that road has 18,013 share-owners.

According to Socialist philosophy and prediction, the commercial travelers

alone there are 9,000,000 accounts, representing approximately $4,000,000,000 -nearly all owned by the wage-workers and farmers. The building and loan banks of this nation have 2,029,927 members with assets, in 1910, of $860,782,611.

Engels, the co-worker with Marx, admitted in the preface of the second edition of his book (1892) that the condition of the working class "has remarkably improved since 1848."

Schonlank, a great German Socialist, admits in "Abgelatem," (October, 1899), that the "theory of Marx is wrong and unscientific" (See page 137).

Working-Class Conditions.

The late Edward Atkinson, our foremost publicist-statistician, in his painstaking investigation, has shown that the condition of the working class wonderfully improved from 1860 to 1885, and that, during this twenty-five year period, the purchasing power of the workers increased from 23 to 57 per cent. The wages of highly skilled mechanics rose from $2.45 per day in 1860 to $4.14 per day in 1880, and to $5 and $6 per day at present; the wages of average mechanics. increased from $1.50 per day in 1860 to $2.30 a day in 1880, and to between three. and four dollars per day at present.

Socialists shout about the army of the unemployed, the misery and poverty of the poor, the concentration of wealth, and all the evils to which we are heir, and set up the claim that our present system, and that alone, is the cause.

A man may spend his small fortune in the rum shop, but that is not his fault; he may starve his family to buy beer,

but John D. Rockefeller is to blame for the system which Mr. Rockefeller supports. Every evil under the sun is laid. at the door of the capitalist system.

It is not a question of the extent of the political and economic evils, nor whether the present system is good or bad. The real question is whether Socialism would be any better, whether it would cure any evils, or whether it would not be a case of jumping from the frying pan into the fire. We have no assurance whatever that Socialism would, from a political or economic point of view, cure, or even help humanity.

The Example of State Socialism. On the contrary, we have the example of State Socialism in the telegraph and the railways of Europe and Australia, and more or less of municipal Socialism the world over, and these Socialistic enter

prises have, as a rule, proved a gigantic failure, compared with private ownership. The government-owned railways of Europe charge nearly double the rate paid in this country for transportation, and yet pay less than half the wage-rate which prevails on the American railroads. Municipal Socialism in Great Britain has saddled a huge debt upon the cities amounting to THREE BILLION DOLLARS-her 18 largest cities showing a debt 300 per cent. greater than that of our 18 largest cities. Municipal taxes have increased tremendously, and Sir Robert Giffen is our authority for the statement that the annual loss due to Municipal Socialism is $27,434,725. In one generation the municipal debt has increased from $1,945 to $4.585 per 100 of population.

This, then, is what Socialism has done, as a rule, all over the world; wherever it has made the attempt to substitute municipal or State ownership for private industry, it has failed. Socialism would destroy the present system, root and branch; it asks us to take a leap in the dark for a dream. When pressed for details as to their pet scheme, they are silent.

Preaching Class Hatred.

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Socialists preach the doctrine. class consciousness, the class struggle, in other words, class hatred. They ask us to join them in the demand for the unconditional surrender of capitalists and capitalism. Socialism stands squarely for the gigantic scheme of confiscation, for land piracy. Socialists admit that State Socialism would be nothing short of State Slavery. A pure Social Democracy is what they want, but but a pure democracy, in that sense, is no more than a fantasy. We know the history of the human race, and have learned that, under every form of organized society, a few superior men have always done the most work; have always guided the rest in a word, the few have ruled, just as a few bosses now rule both the Socialist parties in this country and all Socialist parties everywhere.

Jefferson said: "That government which governs least is best," and he was everlastingly right. The program of Socialism means the destruction of individualism, absolutely; it means the destruction of political liberty; it strives to gain its ends by a gigantic system of robbery; its program is neither scientific nor just.

"Shall we be law abiding citizens?"

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Rather a surprising question, is not? Yet this is the problem that Socialists have been trying to solve for many weeks. When the HaywoodBohn pamphlet, "Industrial Socialism, appeared, some months ago, the question of Socialism's respect for the law was put up to the party with a degree. of frankness that was greeted with anything but hearty approval from some quarters. Morris Hillquit, for example, voiced a most energetic protest, which was echoed by the conservative contingent, but, high above this comparatively faint plea for "respect for the law," resounded the stentorian tones of Hay wood and the many inciters to "lawbreaking and violence."

Socialism and the Law.

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The idea that law and order nothing in common with Socialism is not a new one. Haywood crystalized the thought in his recent Cooper Union address, when he admitted so frankly that he despised the law and was not a law-abiding citizen. "More than this," he asserted, "no Socialist can be a lawabiding citizen."

From the excitement that was caused by these words-both in the party and among non-Socialists-one might imagine that the Merciless Miner had struck an entirely new vein. To the student of

"Violence is the obstetrician that waits on every ancient society that is to give birth to a new one; violence is in itself a social factor.'"

Mr. Hillquit, Mr. Spargo, and many another ultra-conservative, would have us believe that they have changed the plan of Socialism so thoroughly that it is now nothing more than a perfectly straight and smooth road to a social paradise where all the ills of our existing system are to be completely and permanently cured. While they are compelled to admit that the path to this state of perfection must lead through a period that may justly be called "The Revolution," the only weapons to be used