No Socialist who has passed the primer stage of education believes that government ownership under any existing type of government is socialistic. Government ownership may be a terrific tyranny over the employees, and it may be wretchedly inefficient. But it seems wise to the party at the present time, or as soon as may be, first to extend the function of government and then capture the government. This is one way of centralizing ownership, the more easily to seize it. Moreover, the period of government ownership is one to which other forces than the Socialist force are urging us and through which we must pass to emerge to something better. Some Socialists and all non-Socialist advocates of government ownership believe in the direct purchase of public utilities by bond issues, like the purchase of the German railroads by the government. Other Socialists believe in partial confiscation, in the issue of bonds of a limited duration, so that stock and bond owners may have a few years to prepare themselves and their children for the extinction of their securities. Other Socialists believe in dispossession without compensation, in confiscation as complete and immediate as the destruction of black-slave property. It is likely that long before the

Socialists are strong enough to cast the deciding vote on these questions the Government will have extended vastly its ownership of existing industries and will have entered upon hitherto unattempted enterprises, of which the Panama Canal may serve as an example. This will mean a relatively smaller income, but greater security for the plutocracy; the substitution of solid government bonds for uncertain stocks. The identity between the Government and the industrial master will be more nearly complete, and perhaps the two-headed beast will be easier to aim at if more difficult to slay. It will be a more compact, highly organized phase of capitalism, the last phase. But it will be wide as the poles from Socialism. Ignorant men, business persons, and journalists speak of government ownership as "socialistic." A proof that it is not is the fact that the present administration is considering a bill to take over the whole Bell telephone system.

The Socialist party platform next demands the "immediate government relief of the unemployed by the extension of all useful public works. All persons employed on such works to be engaged directly by the Government under a workday of not more than eight hours and not

less than the prevailing union wages. The Government also to establish employment bureaus; to lend money to states and municipalities without interest for the purpose of carrying on public works, and to take such other measures within its power as will lessen the widespread misery of the workers caused by the misrule of the capitalist class." This is an emergency measure of doubtful value. Is it a good thing to habituate the workers to look to theGovernment for employment? When a shoe factory shuts down will the unemployed stitchers and lasters lay bricks on a new post office building or shovel dirt on a new canal?

There follow in the platform what are called Industrial Demands: "the conservation of human resources, particularly of the lives and wellbeing of the workers and their families, (1) by shortening the workday in keeping with the increased productiveness of machinery, (2) by securing to every worker a rest period of not less than a day and a half in each week, (3) by securing a more effective inspection of workshops, factories, and mines, (4) by forbidding the employment of children under 16 years of age, (5) by the coöperative organization of industries in federal penitentiaries and workshops for the

benefit of convicts and their dependents, (6) by forbidding the interstate transportation of the products of child labor, of convict labor, and of all uninspected factories and mines, (7) by abolishing the profit system in government work and substituting either the direct hire of labor or the awarding of contracts to coöperative groups of workers, (8) by establishing minimum wage scales, (9) by abolishing official charity and substituting a non-contributory system of old age pensions, a general system of insurance by the state of all its members against unemployment and invalidism, and a system of compulsory insurance by employers of their workers, without cost to the latter, against industrial disease, accidents, and death."

Most of these proposals are in accordance with the advanced labor legislation programs of nonSocialist organizations, the American Federation of Labor, the Progressive Party, and all reformistic groups whose aim is to conserve and improve the wage system, not to destroy it. There is nothing essential in these demands which enlightened capitalism will not reluctantly yield or even advocate from motives of self-interest. Business is learning that it pays to take care of the working class as it pays to take care of

machinery and horses. Improved labor conditions may have two conflicting effects on the revolutionary impulse of the workers. Easier conditions and better living may dull the edge of rebellion, and that is one reason why progressive capitalism has begun to show such tender concern for the welfare of the workers. On the other hand, the more vigorous and healthy the working class becomes, the more leisure and strength it has for intelligent organization. Good fighters are not to be looked for among harassed, depressed, underfed people. There is a point, hard to define, at which oppression conquers the spirit and no longer arouses effective opposition. On the whole it seems that the risk of drawing the teeth of discontent is inconsiderable as compared with the desirability of improving the conditions of the workers in every possible way, through every possible agency.

The program passes to what are called Political Demands: I. "The absolute freedom of press, speech, and assemblage." We had fondly believed that our wonderful constitution guaranteed us this liberty, but the number of free speech fights in which revolutionists have engaged seems to indicate that a constitutional guarantee is worthless in itself. The bosses,