OCR Text |
Show Labor and Socialism. SOCIALISM as a factor in politics need create no alarm in this country, coun-try, however strong its influence may serve to vex Europe. Ours is essentially es-sentially a land of opportunity, restrained re-strained at present by trusts and combinations; com-binations; yet these elements of restraint re-straint to individual competition can be made to yield to law honestly and vigorously administered. The basic principles of socialism are analogous to the motives going to make combinations combina-tions to control production, such as we complain of today. The socialist aims at the absolute ownership of all means of production and the annihilation of individual capital, and does not stop at the ownership of public utilities by the city or state. Socialism warns its followers fol-lowers against such a plan to obscure its real designs, and in its platform denounces de-nounces "the so-called public ownership owner-ship movements as an attempt of the capitalist class to secure government control of public utilities for the purpose pur-pose of obtaining greater security in the exploitation of other industries and not for the amelioration of the conditions condi-tions of the working class." Even should a majority of this cult control the administration of the American Amer-ican Federation of Labor, it is altogether alto-gether improbable that it could bring destruction upon the trades union, which has so excellently performed the work of amelioration for the wage-earner. wage-earner. Workingmen would be reluctant reluc-tant to yield result for mere experiment, experi-ment, however alluring the arguments and hopes held out by socialism. After all, what there is of good in socialism has been already tested with indifferent or disastrous results by the more en-aisiastic en-aisiastic of the brethren. Not on a large scale, it is true, but enough to explode the delusion that all men can be satisfied in a community where equality in everything must be . observed. ob-served. Human character, natural impulse, im-pulse, are against such plans to level industry and ability to a common plane and subject individual ambition. Noth ing can, nothing ever did spring from the chrysallis of socialism to give it substance but the influence of religion not necessarily true or false religion, but a creed that subjected the individual individ-ual to docile obedience and brought content with humility. These qualities are not discovered, in the socialist. Seldom Sel-dom either is religion, good or bad, though a person is not obliged to re nounce Christianity when he espouses socialism. The Catholic church alone confronts the questions of labor and socialism in the proper spirit. It recognizes the growing tendency of the laboring classes to Invade the philosophy of socialism, so-cialism, but its warnings and admonitions admoni-tions are not intended to arouse resentment. re-sentment. Rather does it seek to separate sep-arate the good from the evil, recognizing recog-nizing good in all things not condemned as dangerous to man's happiness. Therefore are we pleased to present Archbishop Spalding's views on Socialism Social-ism and Labor in this issue, although what we take to be only the introductory introduc-tory chapter to his forthcoming book appears just now. |