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Show AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN SOCIALISTS Where Line of Cleavage Is Drawn Leaders of Socialism Short History of Its Rise and Progress. (Chicago Tribune.) Socialism, in one form or another, is as old as human society. No monarchy was ever so despotic, no democracy was ever so free that at least a few of the people living under it did not think how they might improve the social conditions of themselves and their fellows. Plato wrote his "Republic" twenty-three centuries ago in democratic Athens. Sir Thomas More dreamed of "Ftopia" and Lord Bacon of his "New Atlantis" under the iron rule of the Tudors. Literature of this fanciful Utopian sort grrw especially prevalent and popular in the latter part of the eighteenth century, and the first half of the nineteenth. Rosseau by his "Social Contract" helped hurry on the French revolution. Cabot, Saint Simon, and Fourier in France. Robert Owen in Engl end, and other writers of high ability and broad human sympathies, criticised keenly the existing ex-isting social order and advocated schemes more or less fantastic for its amendment. Many attempts were also made to realize practically the ideals of socialists. Owen, who was the wealthiest manufacturer manufac-turer in Enprland. spent a fortune trying to establish estab-lish communistic villages in his own country and the United States. Hawthorne. Charles A. Dana, and other Americans of eminent ability, founded the famous Brook Farm settlement. Louis Blanc-carried Blanc-carried on a systematic agitation for- socialism in France. By IS CO this wave of Utopianism had spent itself. it-self. Louis Blanc and his followers were crushed in the revolution of 1848. The socialists of England Eng-land and the United States were disheartened by the universal breakdown of communistic experiments. experi-ments. A Frenchman, writing in an encyclopedia in lSbT, expressed the general opinion when he said that socialism was dead and gone and had now only a historical interest. And in a way he was right. The old. fanciful, and impracticable socialism social-ism was dead. But. at the time when its opponents were most confidently congratulatintr themselves upon its extinction, Ferdinand Lassalle was beginning begin-ning an agitation which set all Germany by the ears and precluded the spread of the doctrines of a new socialism over the civilized world. Of Jewish parentage, Lassalle was a beautiful and precocious youth, and had in manhood qualities quali-ties which dazzled all who came near him. Fair women fell victims to his winning manners, beautiful beauti-ful brown hair, and handsome face and shape. His witty and agreeable conversation and capacity for drink made him a favorite at every club. The range, depth, grasp, and splendor of his mind won him the friendship and admiration of the ablest men in Germany, including Prince Bismarck. His courageous and. disinterested devotion to and advocacy ad-vocacy of what he deemed the cause of the proletariat prole-tariat made him the idol of the working classes. His oratory was logical, brilliant, and passionate, his energy enormous, his will indomitable. He was a born agitator. As George Brandes says, the word "agitator" seems to have been made for him. Lassalle, then 3S years old. organized at Leipsic in May, I860, the Universal German Workingmen's association. This was the real beginning of his propaganda. The object of his agitation was to get the government of the German empire to make loans of money to co-operative associations . of workinsrmen. arid thus enable the workers to build up industrial plants which could successfully compete com-pete with the industrial concerns operated by-private by-private capitalists. He saw that the goverment could never be got to make the proposed loans as long as it was dominated by the higher classes. Therfore. as a necessary means to the desired end. he urged the workingmen to organize "for the purpose of a legal and peaceful but unwearying, unceasing agitation for the introduction of universal, univer-sal, direct suffrage in every German state." The workers were apathetic. The government prosecuted prosecut-ed him again and again for utterances which it deemed inceudiary. But Lassalle was irrepressible and indefatigable. .. He wrote, he sjiokc, he organized organiz-ed until the eyes of all Germany were on him and the country was in a ferment. But he was to be cut off in the midst of his labors. Going to Switzerland for rest, he met pretty Helen von Don-niges Don-niges and won her heart. Helen's father interfered inter-fered in behalf of a young Wallachian nobleman named Racowitz. Lassalle challenged ihe old gentleman. gen-tleman. Herr von Donniges passed the challenge along to Racowitz. Racowitz and Lassalle met the morning of Aug. 28. and Lassalle received a pistol wound from which three days later. he died. ITis death at the height of his fame and influence seemed an irreparable loss to socialism. But he had broken ground in which others were to sow-fruitful sow-fruitful seed. Twenty years earlier Karl Marx, also of Jewish parentage, had been driven from Germany Ger-many for socialistic utterances. In Paris in 1844 he had met Freidrich Engels, who became his life long friend and associate. Three years later Marx and Engels had issued their famous "Communist. Manifesto." The month after Lassalle's death the International Workingmen's associationVas organized organ-ized in London under Marx's influence. Two years later appeared his "Capital," a work which fast became be-came the bible of socialism, and the ability and power pow-er of which have never been questioned by the most uncompromising of socialism's opponents. The gospel according to Marx was in many respects new. The crux of' it was that socialism will come as a result of social evolution just as Darwin had shown that man had come as a result of biological evolution. The age of manufacturing succeeded the age of handicrafts, the age of capitalistic capital-istic production that of manufacturing, by a natural na-tural process. Socialism will come the same way. Capitalistic production has an irresistible tendency to concentrate all wealth and the control of all industries in-dustries in a few hands. This is taking place now. The workers the "proletariat." : they arc known in socialist literature being deprived of Mi" . products of 'their toil, become n -iles and "da-- conscious.'' "The knell of capitalist private property prop-erty sounds. The expropriators are expropriated." That the public, the "collectivity." -hail take over 1 possession and management of the instrument-. - ' which wealth i produced and distributed., iarv ! considered inevitable as fate. The work of the advocate advo-cate of socialism was merely to prepare the way so the great revolution might be f riot ionics-;. The International In-ternational was wrecked by Marx at Th" Hague in 172 t keep it front falling inlo the hands of th.-anarchists th.-anarchists under Bakunin. Int. not before ii had carried his and Fngels doctrine into every civilized country. Marx's economic teachinas aie rejected , by many socialists, e.pe.-ially in Finland: but his ' theory of collectivism as a natural, i m-vi t .. I b result re-sult of a social evolution whb-b i taking p! ".;.' in every country where a capitalism- industrial sys tem exists is almost universally accepted by ihnu and has contributed t: groat deal ( propagate socialist views. The arrowfh f socialism during the Inst quarter century has been steady nd rapid. Mr. A. M. ' Simon, of Chicago, a leader of the movement in the United States, in an article recently published, ;. shows that in seventeen leading countries the aggregate aggre-gate socialist vote was :;7-,." in 11 and ,2".-:!t!4 ,2".-:!t!4 in liMlo. The socialists of France p. .lied .-OOO .-OOO votes at the last election, as compared wildi 47.-nnO 47.-nnO in ls7. They have forty-eight member in the house of deputies, and until recently they bail a representative, M. Millerand. in the French cabinet. ' ; The socialist, strength of Germany was ol.tmO in '. IKS). It was H ,O0S .ISOO las year, and .socialists '- '. elected eighty-one members to the rei'-hsfag. There are only about l:0,0ii( avowed socialists in England, Eng-land, but both the great parties teem with men : holding socialistic views. The socialists of" the j United States polled 2.0".S- votes in H. In VMV they were 226,000 in number. At this year's national na-tional election they were more than 600.)!(!0 strong. Socialism has become quietly, almost imperceptibly. , a force with which the moralists and statesmen of America, as well as those of Europe, must seriously reckon. - O. D. : |