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Show MM GRAHAM- BROOKS m SOCIAL UNREST (Catholic World Magazine For August.) !M. Brooke has collected in a volume of four hundred hun-dred pages a mass of facts; and opinions on .the subject of social unrest, which condensed into a few words is a brief in the cose of labor against capital. Most of the matter is in the form of a running commentary on the conditions of the present day, without the customary cus-tomary set phrases of argument; in fact, the reader, is left in doubt as to any possibility of a euro for tb trouble, as the author himself is by no means sure -j that he has discovered any solution. Mr. Brooks thinks the social unrest is due to thr' widespread extension of education. Modern political liberty has magnified the .wants of tlio ' human race,, I and he sees only a partial cure as possible, for he says, page 96: "Popular education and the spread of democratic demo-cratic ideas evidently introduced influences cal-i cal-i culated in their very nature to 'stimulate tin? feelings out of which unrest grows. It would , puzzle ono . to conceive a more fertile breed- : ing place of unsatisfied desires than, that which present facilities offer ""' Though in tlu coming sixty years the affluence of wealth, multiply our material prosperity an hundredfold, is it to be expected ex-pected that the margin of unquanched desires will bo. narrower i We seem likely to the end of time to be whipped on by a multitude of wants that will overtop every means to gratify them." This is a hopeless outlook; and when he shows how the primitive primi-tive races still abide in contentment while the educated edu-cated races rush on madly to unrest and suicide, caused by the check on their unsatisfied longings, ono cannot help thinking that the old adage, '"where ignorance ignor-ance is bliss 'tis folly to be wise." contains a wholesome whole-some truth for the modern world to learn. Mr. Brooke thinks industrial equality in ' the form, of socialism will some day be realized, just as rquality has been realized in the domains of religion and politics. Here . the intelligent Catholic can scarcely follow him. "It ' has grown clear," he says (p. lO.'J). "that when, a certain cer-tain state -of civilization lias been reached,! religious and political inequalities are felt to be socially mischievous.". mis-chievous.". To a Catholic the rebellion against author- I lty in religion is rather to be regarded as a calamity, one of the worsij that has ever befallen the human race, rather than a' true light to guide the modern world into industrial freedom. "One cannot omit," he continues, "from .the causes of unrest the slow-decay of authority in religion." And he shows in a tierce light the atheism of the original socialist leaders, ; Liebknacht amongst others, who said in 1375: "It is our duty as socialists to root out the faith in God with all our zeal, nor is any one worthy the name who does . not consecrate himself to the spread of atheism.". Schall. the Stuttgart leader, also: "We open war upon God. because He is the greatest evil in the world." True, indeed the leaders do not talk so now. Is it because be-cause they have changed Xot at all .But these "jaunty critics," Mr. Brooks says, saw how deep a hold religion had on the masses, and when they could not : i disillusionize them, thev changed their policy so that' they could the more readily manipulate them. Fine leaders of a new and great principle! But,' in spite of this duplicity, social unrest has grown by their agitation, agita-tion, and Mr. Brooks enumerates the causes : Educa- . tion, machinery, employers rich and laborers poor; state charters for privileges given to the favored few; light taxes on the rich, heavy taxes on the common people; growth of trusts and corporations ;-in fact all the causes which make for industrial inequality,- j and the conviction that labor is not getting its just share of its energies, while capital 'is getting too much; loss of faith in the -regulation of these, evils by the state, and worst of all, a distrust of the courts, of justice as being the hirelings of wealth. The chap- " ter on machinery is worth reading, as it seems the. story of a magician. What, a laborer took ten hours to perform by hand in the removing cotton seeds from one and one-half pounds of cotton, he now bv I machines removes in the same time from six thousand pounds. A steam shovel does in eight minutes what '' a hand shovel did in ten hours. One stone-crusher - : does the work of six hundred men. Cpon an old hand-loom hand-loom one man could weave fortv vards in a week today by machine sixten hundred yards. Small wonder that an unrest has entered the ranks of labor when machines are daily throwing thousands out of the labor it took them a lifetime to learn. Mr. Brooks thinks socialism the only answer to the present industrial inequalities; but, like most socialists, he has only meagre plans. lie thinks partial remedies will-be will-be applied as the strucsrle jroes on, but they will be satisfactory sat-isfactory only for a time. Thev are, briefly, legislation, legisla-tion, co-operation, division of stock and profits, com- puls,ory arbitration of strikes, workingmen's pensions; I last of all, and the most radical, what he calls the abolishing abol-ishing of capital, namely: "There is today no clearly conceived socialism that does not' aim first of all at the socializing of the 'three rents.' If socialism were . to triumph and be carried to logical completeness, no individual could draw a penny's income from interest, rent or profits. These would pass to the communitv. ; So to organize industry that the coupon-monger in. ' f every form shall be suppressed is the raison d'etre of ' socialism" (page 270). These political experiments ' , ) more or less dangerous, are all in the present pro- I ' gramme of the socialist leaders. Mr. Brooks ac- ' ; J knowledges that all the schemes for making a Utopia. ; j for humanity in the past have failed, and the social- f ists can point to no fact in history which justifies any j hope that their promises now can he fulfilled. In fact f he admits that therq is in human nature au innata " j , ' ivhf llion against uniformiiy in sorial UU: Man cries nut lor variety with a vrhomencw ilwt never will be smoth-ore-1: find -Mr. HrookF says (p. 230): "If . tlier i a Kindle lesion to he read T-oin j the km.? list of insolvent Utopias it is that the thins: we eall human nature I will not .submit to have thrust upon it , 11, o externals of u literal equnlity. . . . J Certainly the chief sources of our o- I ial troubles are . old-fashioned Ignor- I a nee and selfishness. If one choose to !. conceive a race that is without ignor- t anee and without selfishness, the new society is at hand." . True enough; but ! that race never did and never will exist, I, and the socialists arc planning a eoun- i try for angels while half the inhabit- !ants do not belong in that company. The most important chapter in the book is the one on socialism at work. , i Here we have the real thing: what they ft have done, what they are doing. Polit- i hally, Mr. Brooks does not see much V iu-olit'in the socialist experiments, es- V pociallv in France (p. 2!Jl): "In inost f. towns I asked the mayor, or his seere-i seere-i ! a ry. what had been done to realize tho t K-ia'list ideal. Many communities have had from eight to-ten years" exierience with eollectivist administrators. The first, and often the paramount occupation,' occupa-tion,' has been to vote larger budgets in ; favor of the poor. Also voting higher pensions to Socialist soldiers, and free ! medical attendance to the poor. "It is for the most part." he says, "an ex- itremely loose and promiscuous form of out-door relief," He is impressed that ; such work is a raw atetmpt to catch ! the working class vote by giving away V public money. Rut in the work of co- ! operation. Mr. Brooks finds much to j. raise in the Belgian experiments; and here and no one can object to Social-f Social-f iKt ideas if they remain in these chan- 1 nels. Hundreds of co-operative societ- ' jog have been formed for the manufac- J' ture and sale of every kind of article, j The result has been satisfactory in re- ; ; ducing the cost of the necessaries of life : J- to the poor, although it has destroyed !' many small tradesmen. The saddest , outcome of these co-operative societies, from the standpoint of the workingman, j has been the adoption of methods in j their management which labor has al- ways railed at as the tyranny of pri- ; vstr ranital. 1 I" Socialists, as their own managers, worked sone of their men ten hours, and argued the justice of it. Piecework, Piece-work, the bane of the operative, had to he adopted, because even the Socialist would loaf and shirk on his co-operative employer. Day's wages were abandoned aban-doned for some reason. And they even : . found that the day's wage man, who did not earn his pay, brisked up and rarned twice as much on piece work. "When they needed money they borrowed bor-rowed from their employes, who charged them interest. Think of it! i The Socialist who looks on the coupon- I monger as a child of Satan, beepmes ' r coupon-monger against his own brother Socialist. It reminds one of the I famous remark of an Irishman when the cry of "The Chinese must go" was I fo prevalent among the laboring men. ; "The Chinese must go all but one ChU i nee who lives in Mulberry street; he'll not go till I get my shirt." Socialism Is nil right for the man who has nothing, j ! but for him who has and wants more, II Jt is a dream of the idler or the raid of I the pirate. Mr. Brooks' final word is t: give the Socialist a chance: he predicts ; that lw will soon be in evidence in the administration of cities as mayors and I councilmen, and he says: "Once in of fice he should have safe tether for prac-i prac-i tical experiment." Conjectures about , the future of Socialism in the United States are futile. There will, no doubt, be experiments made more or less revolutionary, revo-lutionary, but we may be sure of one thing: while human nature lasts there will always be private property, private pri-vate capital, which all in their various spheres will demonstrate the love which human nature has for individual effort and personal ambition for the glory to be gained; and all Socialist efforts to I squeeze the human race into one mould will only result in the bursting of the mould and destruction to the moulder. |