Chapter X: Part 10

coors = course and coarse. _oo_ az in _door_ iz the best simbol
for long _o_, az _ee_ iz the best simbol for long _e_. The _ou_
simbol we reserv for such wurdz az _coud_, _shoud_, _woud_. The
temptashon tu maik coors riim with Boors, iz ov the devvil: for
Boors iz abominably spelt. It shoud be Buurz; and furze shoud be
spelt withowt the _e_. Thair iz no serius objecshon tu making
_coors_ serv for both _course_ and _coarse_: thair ar allreddy
menny cases whaar wun wurd meenz several thingz.

determind = determined. _Mined_ can propperly be pronownst oonly
with a long _i_, and the silabl or wurd _mind_, with a short _i_.
Allso see _confiuuzd_.

devvil = devil, which with dubl propriety riimz with _evil_.

duz = does, which propperly riimz with _goes_.

grait = great, which propperly riimz with _beat_.

havving = having, which propperly riimz with _saving_.

impruuvd = improved. Tu reprezent a _u_ sownd with _o_ iz absurd.
Allso see _confiuuzd_.

litl = little. Thair iz so litl vowel sownd in the last silabl ov
this and menny uthther wurdz as tu be hardly wurth expressing,
and thair ar menny difficultyz in duing it.

maid = made. Thair iz no objecshun to this from owr allreddy
havving a wurd _maid_. See _allwaiz_, also _coors_.

menny = many, which propperly and suggestivly riimz with _zany_.

no = know: the S. S. B. touk off the _w_, but after chainging
_knock_ into _noc_, bawkt at this _k_. We ar a litl moor
venchursum. _The o iz long by pozishon at the end ov an oopen
silabl._

nu = knew. See _no_.

oonly = only, which woud propperly riim with _sonly_ if thair wer
such a wurd for filial. The S. S. S. recommendz _oe_ for the long
_o_ sownd, but _oo_ iz betr, and we rigl it in az an inishal
after the manner of _eels_.

owr = our, which propperly riimz with iither _pour_ or _tour_.
The vowel sownd in _our_ iz that in _owl_.

practis = practice. In _practiced_ we pronowns the _ed_ az _t_,
and thairfor shoud spel it so. But if we maid it _practict_, the
_c_ woud be hard. Chainging the _c_ to _s_ in the parent wurd
givs us _practist_, which iz wel simboliizd.

prezzent = present, which propperly riimz with _decent_.

pronowns = pronounce. See _practis_.

pronownst = pronounced. See _practis_.

propper = proper, which propperly riimz with _toper_. See
_allreddy_, allso _litl_.

purpus = purpose. _Pose_ propperly riimz with _nose_.

reecht = reached. See _practis_.

riit = right. The _gh_ wurdz hav that simbol cognait with the
German guttural _ch_ az in _recht_, tho we du not pronowns it.
But _rit_ woud riim with _bit_.

scollar = scholar. Booth Societyz omit the _h_ in _ch_ hard. But
that woud leev _scolar_, riiming with _molar_. See _allreddy_,
allso _litl_.

scuul = school. Dubl _o_ iz abiuuzd in being maid tu reprezent a
_u_ sownd. See _oonly_.

silabl = syllable. We du not keep the dubl l, becawz this iz a
polisilabl: see p. 221 neer bottom. In spelling, children and
forrenerz, and not thay aloon, ar puzzld between _i_ and _y_. The
S. S. B. haz wiizly reservd _y_ for terminals, and we beleev in
it for inishals allso whair thay ar combiind with uthther vowelz.
See yuse and yuzed. Also see _litl_.

simbol = symbol. See _silabl_.

simboliizd = symbolized. See _silabl_. Moorover, if we wer tu
drop the _e_ from _simbolized_ tu prevent forrenerz pronownsing
the apparent last silabl, thay woud be in dainger of maiking the
ending riim with whot we hav spelt az _fizzed_ and woud now spel
az _fizd_. For this rezon we need the _iizd_ simbols. See
_simplifiid_.

simplifiid = simplified. The _ie_ freequently in English and
allwaiz in German haz the long _e_ sownd, and in English iz
alwaiz confiuuzd with the long _e_ sownd in _receiv_, etc.
Rezerving _ii_ for the long _i_ duz away with that confiuzhon. Tu
du away with the confiuzhon between such wurdz az _believe_ and
_receive_, the S. S. B. allreddy reservz _ie_, and the S. S. S.,
_ee_, which we follo.

sownd = sound. See _coors_ and _owr_.

thair = their, see _allwaiz_.

thay = they. Not _thai_ becawz _y_ iz betr than _i_ booth az
inishal and terminal.

tu = too, to and two. The absurdity of reprezenting a _u_ sownd
by _o_ is obvius. _We don't need tu dubl the u, becauz the silabl
iz oopen._

uthther = other. This iz a stumper. The inishal sownd iz the _u_
in _but_. The _th_ propperly reprezents a singl consonant sownd.
Owr Saxon ancestorz had a singl letr for it which we did badly in
throing away. That letr the Anglo-Saxons freqently yuuzd tu clooz
a silabl (see p. 221) az in siððan, _since_, and after thay began
tu yuuz _th_ insted ov the ð, thay freqently yuuzd _th_ for the
saam purpus, until its cumbrusnes thru it owt. We stil yuuz the ð
in filological publicashonz, tho often allso the Greek [Greek:
th]. If we must yuuz _th_, for consistency's saak it shoud be
repeeted in _uthther_, _bruthther_, _muthther_, etc.

Fortunaitly thair ar oonly a scoor ov such wurdz. We riit of
thair spelling partly az a curiosity that may be interesting, and
partly tu sho the dezirability ov getting bac owr oold letrz.
Macaulay's scuulboy nu, if owrz duzn't, that the Greeks wer ahed
ov us over tu thowzand yeerz ago, in havving not oonly a singl
simbol for _th_, but a long _e_ and a short _e_, and a long _o_
and a short _o_.

whot = what, which propperly riimz with _bat_.

woz or wuz = was, which propperly riimz with _gas_.

wun = one, which propperly riimz with _tone_.

wurd = word, which propperly riimz with _cord_. Its vowel is
pronownst with a _u_ sownd, which it iz absurd tu reprezent by
_o_.

wurs = worse, which propperly riimz with _horse_. We woud hardly
pronowns _horse_ az we pronowns _hearse_, tho the latter iz allso
abominabl: for _ea_ propperly reprezents the sownd in _dear_. The
riit way tu spel _hearse_ iz _hurs_, and the riit way tu spel
_her's_ iz _hur'z_.

wuz or woz = was, which propperly riimz with _gas_.

yuus or yuuz = use. See _confiuuzd_. _Use_ iz pronownst both
_uze_ and _use_. _Uze_ iz a betr way to spel the wurd which we
rongly spel _ooze_. Tu yuuz an _o_ for a _u_ sownd iz bad enuf,
and tu yuuz tu ov them iz wurs--dubly fit for _fools_.

We may venture upon another (annuthther?) spelling lesson in the next number, especially if owr reederz giv enny siin ov wawnting it; and it may anser sum qeschonz raazd in this lesson. And we may even go so far az tu prezent a fiu miild innovashonz in owr text, az haz bin heroically don by the _Educational Review_, _The Independent_ and sum uthther periodicalz ov standing.

We woud liik to hieer from owr reedrz on the subject.

* * * * *

Press of T. MOREY & SON, Greenfield, Mass.

The Unpopular Review

VOL. 1 APRIL-JUNE, 1914 NO. 2

THE SOUL OF CAPITALISM

I

There is no such thing as capitalism, say the conservatives. It is an empty sound, a curse in the name of a false god, directed by the revolutionaries against the world of things as they are, as they always have been and always shall be. Capitalism is a reality, say the radicals. It is the appropriate designation of the current system--a vulgar, hideous system, a brute mechanism set in motion by the energy of blind greed, a mechanism through which human values and human lives are thrust, to emerge smudged and flat and dead. The soul of capitalism? Pernicious paradox!

Capitalism is no less a reality than was feudalism. The capitalist employer is the most prominent figure in the modern state, just as the knight was the most prominent figure in the mediæval. But the order of knights did not of itself constitute feudalism: equally characteristic was the class of serfs. In a fundamental sense the system consisted in the mutual relation between knight and serf. Capitalism, in like manner, implies a class of employers and a reciprocal and conditioning class of workers, but as a system it consists in the mutual relation of these classes. The conscious existence of the members of both classes is shaped, or at least colored, by the capitalistic relation. Not in the same way, however; for capitalism induces one set of reactions in the minds of the employing class, and another set of reactions in the minds of the employed. But these diverse reactions are equally the product of capitalism, its inevitable concomitants, its psychical essence.

Capitalism is, to be sure, not the whole of modern life; nor was feudalism the whole of the life of the Middle Ages. In the feudal state there were classes that were not, strictly speaking, under feudal law. Such were the clergy, the merchants and artisans of the towns, the freemen of the villages. Moreover, there were individuals who rose superior to the system, such as the great feudatories, who often assumed a regal freedom from the narrow feudal rules. There were also elements that proved incapable of assimilation, aliens, outlaws, mendicants. But the popular mind, with its inveterate bent towards order and uniformity, generalized the relation beyond the range of its proper application. To the worldly bishop, even the Pope was a great feudatory; to the beggar's apprentice, his master was a species of knight. So at the present time there are numerous elements that are incongruous with capitalism. The independent worker and the small merchant, the professional classes, the artists and the politicians, are not properly governed by capitalistic rules. The great magnates of the industrial world have won for themselves a measure of immunity from the laws that govern the conduct of the typical capitalist-employer. But the predominance of the capitalistic system is evidenced by the fact that all these non-assimilable forms are being translated into capitalistic terms. A farm is no longer a "holding," it is an "investment" or a "job." A political magnate is a "boss" and his supporters are "workers"; the political machine itself is "invested capital." The buildings of church or school are, with increasing frequency, described as "plant." We are beginning to hear of "efficiency control" of college curricula; of the "unit costs" of saving souls. Our most exalted dignitary is "the people's hired man"; and the late King Humbert of Italy was wont to speak of assassination as a "trade risk."

With due allowance for the whimsical quality of some of the instances cited above, we must yet admit that they indicate a general tendency to translate all current experience into capitalistic terms. Such instances are but indications of the collective conviction that capitalism is the most significant fact in modern life. Why then do our conservatives insist upon rejecting the term, upon denying the very content of the concept? Chiefly because those who have depicted capitalism have sketched it in black crayon, instead of painting it in the rosy hues of romance.

To speak of capitalism as endowed with a soul, is indeed a paradox. But the conception of soul is itself paradoxical. The man of science dispenses with it in so far as he can. All that compels us rationally to posit the existence of soul, is its works, good and evil. The hypothesis of a human soul has been forced upon us by the fact that there is in the action of man an element that transcends the needs and purposes of the body, an element that we often see growing into such commanding importance that it reduces the body to the rank of mere instrument. Capitalism, too, appears to subserve purposes that transcend its proper ends. To what end, in profit-making, is the destruction of personality, the corruption of the sentiment of humanity, that the Socialists attribute to capitalism? To the Socialists themselves capitalism appears endowed with a soul, to whose purposes capital's immediate processes are merely instrumental. Only, the soul is one of unmixed evil.

II

Capitalism, like every other social system, implies a class that rules and a class that is controlled. The ruling class--_pace_ those political theorists who refuse to know that a ruling class exists--is composed of the capitalist employers. And how do the capitalist employers differ from any others of the masters that the world has known? Not merely in that they possess accumulations and pay wages in money. These are incidental facts. What is essential is that the capitalist employers, in so far as they are truly such, are controlled in all their active dealings by the principle of commercialization.

And commercialization is a psychical phenomenon. It is the substitution, in economic conduct, of a process of calculation for a process of feeling and will. The antithesis between the two processes has long been recognized by practical men, under the form of the contrast between "business" and "sentiment." That much maligned abstraction of the economists, "the economic man," is nothing but the capitalistic entrepreneur, reacting as he must to a competitive situation. What the orthodox economists failed to observe is that so-called "economic conduct" is class conduct. It is confined to the merchants and manufacturers of a competitive régime, whose daily life consists in the manipulation of exchange values. Employers who enjoy a monopoly, independent laborers, and even the typical wage earners of capitalism, may--indeed, must--permit their actions to be governed by other motives, as well as by that of profit. But the capitalist employer in a competitive trade is quickly taught by bitter experience that it is not his function to judge and choose. His business is to calculate; and the less non-economic principles of action interfere with his decisions, the more certain he is of success. All elements essential to his business present themselves in the guise of exchange values. All magnitudes, thus, are commensurate: you compare one with the other and choose the greater. Intelligence is required for the ascertaining of relative magnitudes. But the calculation once made, action is determined. Whether you are a man of strong will or weak will, of active feelings or passive, you do not hesitate when, in effect, a dollar is offered you in exchange for fifty cents.

It is cool intelligence, not dominant personality, that, under a purely capitalistic system, determines the distribution of the seats of power. The capitalist employers are our ruling class, but of all classes that have ever held power, they least resemble personal rulers. They calculate, but conditions beyond their control determine. And, to be most successful, they must divest their calculations of all elements that are irrelevant to profit making. If I am a capitalist employer, operating under conditions of keen competition, I buy no more readily from an honest man than from a rogue, provided the rogue can give good title to the things he sells. I hire men, Teutons or Slavs or Latins, white, black or yellow, with a sole view to their effectiveness for purposes of profit. I may have private opinions on religion or politics or morals; on the use of alcohol or opium or tobacco. But unless I can relate such manifestations of virtues or vices to the point of profit, I must suppress these opinions, in my active dealings with men. It follows, then, that in all that concerns the capitalist employer, in all that concerns his essential rulership, he is a respecter of the liberties of men.

No one, it is true, is a capitalist employer, pure and simple. In his social life, every one is likely to retain some of his age-old prejudices, and to seek to enforce age-old oppressions. As a business man, no one would be so foolish as to refuse to sit in the same board of directors with any other capable business man, Hellene or [Greek: barbaros]. In his club life, on the other hand, many a business man affects a patrician exclusiveness. The most Christian business man does not refuse to deal freely with atheists, but very likely he refuses to admit them to his house. As a mine operator I should employ negroes as skilled or unskilled laborers, as foremen or bosses, if such employment were favorable to financial results. I might none the less, as a citizen, attempt to exclude them from public office. In business hours, the exercise of personal, political or religious oppression is penalized by technical inefficiency and pecuniary loss. Out of business hours, however, every man tends still to revert to the aboriginal state of manhood, narrow, illiberal, obstinate, oppressive.

Capitalism, furthermore, is far from having attained complete dominance, even in business affairs. Personal whim, as a co-determinant of action, is not obsolete, but merely obsolescent. The president of a great manufacturing corporation of the Middle West detests cigarettes, and has promulgated the rule that no men whose fingers are cigarette stained shall be added to his staff. Mr. Henry Ford intends to confine the benefits of employment in his mills to men who are "worthy," that is, to men who conform to certain standards of conduct that are good in their employer's eyes. There are employers who will not tolerate in their shops the presence of Socialists; others who have engaged in a crusade to exterminate "knockers." In all such cases of essentially personal discrimination an attempt is made, however, to justify it on abstract grounds of efficiency. Cigarette smokers, loose livers, Socialists and "knockers" are poor workmen, assert these employers. The assertion, we all know, is far from being universally true. In so far as it is false, however, it is a gracious falsehood in the light of the spirit of capitalism. It is a concession to the principle that pecuniary considerations alone justify an invasion of personal liberty.

Discrimination on personal grounds is, moreover, so exceptional as to count as amiable eccentricity. It is recognized as a handicap, which can be overcome only by striking superiority in other directions. Mr. Ford may watch over the private conduct of his employees, because he is able to pay much higher wages than anyone else. The manufacturing concern to which reference has been made may discriminate against able workmen with cigarette stained fingers, because it is efficiently organized, and enjoys a monopoly position. Such instances are necessarily rare, and are interesting only as a contrast to the businesses controlled strictly by the spirit of capitalism.

Personal oppression may still be exercised within business hours: but it represents an added cost, readily determined by scientific management. The machinery for its suppression is in motion; it cannot forever survive. There is no equally effective machinery for the elimination of the personal oppression that emerges out of business hours. In one's business calculations, one regards a social prejudice, even if it is directed against oneself, as irrelevant to practical action, so long as it finds expression only beyond the realm of business. A persistent slanderer of alien races finds no difficulty in raising a loan from a foreign banker, provided that the security he offers is good. No element of revenge in the relations between Parisian banks and German customers has appeared since the Zabern incident. Indirectly, however, the social influence of capitalistic toleration is very considerable. One who has an alien partner may continue to cherish the heroic myth of Anglo-Saxon superiority, but it will be through desire for consistency, not out of conviction. International financial forays upon weak nations, like the late Six Power loan, have the effect of weakening many a national prejudice. National, racial and religious prejudices retain their pristine vitality only where capitalism has not yet reached a high state of development. It is in Russia and Rumania, economically backward states, not in England and America, the most capitalistic of all, that the policy of expelling heterogeneous elements flourishes. It is in the Old South, still in a precapitalistic stage, that the social gulf between the races is widest. It is on the Pacific Coast, whose whole volume of capitalistic industry could be overmatched by that of a city like Newark, that detestation of an alien race rises to the rank of a political issue.

III

Toleration and its counterpart, personal liberty, these are the first constituents of the soul of capitalism. Capitalistic toleration, it is true, originates in interest, and is limited by interest. If capitalism admonishes me to tolerate atheism in my foreman, so long as it does not interfere with his efficiency, it equally admonishes me to extirpate excessive piety in his person, if, for example, intervals of ecstatic contemplation divert his attention from my interests. Morally such toleration is vastly inferior to that which is founded upon a broad sentiment of humanity and a recognition of the presumption involved in the prescribing of rules to one's fellow man. But ethical toleration can find lodgment only in the breasts of the chosen few. "Neither do I condemn thee." Of all the miracles, is not this expression of toleration the greatest? Millions upon millions have repeated the sentiment devoutly; but to how few has it become a rule of life!

Capitalistic toleration, on the other hand, is a sentiment not too refined for the most vulgar souls. Indeed, its appeal is probably strongest to the very most vulgar; certainly, to the most selfish. A high-minded employer may seek to bring up his working-folk in the way they should go--that is, his own conception of the Way. It is the greedy materialist who says: "What do I care how my workmen eat and drink and play, what they read, how they vote, worship and marry? It's all one to me, so they deliver the goods." Ethical toleration selects for its votaries the few and the unselfish; capitalistic toleration selects the many and the selfish. And it is for this reason that the liberty based upon capitalistic toleration is the broadest and most substantial of all. "City air makes free," says the proverb. Not because the city is the abode of choice souls, but because the city is capitalistic.

The struggle for religious liberty, it may be said, antedates capitalism. This is not wholly true; the hot beds of religious liberalism in early modern times were the cities, already becoming capitalistic. The Independents and Quakers of England, the Huguenots of France, the Calvinists of Holland, the Lutherans of Germany, represented a germinating capitalism. If the spirit of capitalism was not yet highly evolved, neither were the liberties sought broadly conceived. The Charter and their own valiant spirits won for the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay freedom to worship God. But there was no freedom, in Massachusetts Bay, to go forth from the Puritan settlement and dance around a maypole. Precapitalistic freedom meant only the removal of specific oppressions, sometimes grave, sometimes trivial, imposed by the constituted authorities. From the natural human disposition to interfere in one another's affairs, to standardize humanity, to excise variations above and below the normal, there never was any freedom, except upon the lawless frontier, until capitalism appeared upon the earth.

A class freedom! say the Socialists, and a hollow one! That the Socialists are permitted to go up and down upon the earth, teaching doctrines that they themselves proclaim to be subversive of the interests of those whom they designate as the ruling class, is sufficient evidence that the freedom is not properly described as hollow. If Karl Marx had appeared in the days of Charles the Great to teach doctrines equally subversive of the existing order, he would have found short shrift indeed. That it is a class freedom is, however, true, in a sense. The capitalist employer, who deals with many men in the course of his business, must learn to tolerate many personal idiosyncracies, and must in turn be met with toleration by many. The forced repetition of acts of toleration tends to mold the temperament of the capitalist employers as a class, and to establish among them a large measure of personal freedom. This repetition is lacking in the experience of the worker. Dealing with one employer alone, or with only a few employers in infrequent succession, the laborer is less likely to appreciate the significance of the toleration he enjoys, or to learn from the business process itself the need of toleration towards others.

Nevertheless, under capitalism the laborer does undoubtedly make gains in personal liberty which he could not have made under earlier systems. We know what the Spartans did with the Helots who varied above the type of servile manhood. They assassinated them. We know what the Romans did with slaves who thought too manfully. They crucified them. In the long ages of serfdom in Western Europe, what was the natural fate of the serf who held his head too high? The commonplace facts of his torturings were seldom regarded worthy of mention in the Chronicles. Within the last century, however, men have been beaten to death in Europe for daring to maintain their preferences in mating against the wishes of their lords.

Class liberty? Does it mean nothing to the Republican mechanic in Birmingham, Alabama, that a Democratic employer would be universally regarded as a fool for concerning himself with the politics of his men? Does it mean nothing to the Roman Catholic workman that he may live for years in a Protestant community without once encountering discrimination against him on account of religion? Those who affirm that the liberty of capitalism, even in its overflow to the working class, is hollow and meaningless, can never have permitted their study or their imagination to sound very thoroughly the depths of human injury and wretchedness.

So much, however, must be granted: that the liberty afforded the worker by capitalism has its offsets. If the employer no longer regards himself as justified in ordering the private life of his workman, neither does he feel responsible for protecting the workman against the distress accompanying sickness or superannuation, or even commercial disorder. The worker has paid for his freedom with increased insecurity of his lot. But that the freedom has been bought too dear, would be hard to maintain. Let us suppose that a landowner organizes his possessions upon a feudal plan, and invites working families to come and serve him, yielding implicit obedience to him in all personal matters as well as in matters pertaining to the technique of production. In return for their ungrudging services, let him guarantee them a sufficiency of food, rough clothing, and rude housing, together with rights to maintenance in disability and old age. How many workers will make haste to attach themselves to him? Where workers have tasted of capitalistic freedom, it is safe to say that none would accept the offered privileges.

IV

If capitalism had offered the working class nothing but the crumbs of middle class liberty, the diatribes of the revolutionaries would be not without justification. For admittedly, liberty has been gained in far greater measure by the capitalist employer than by the workman. But capitalism has done vastly more for labor than this. It has given rise to that most interesting and important of all modern social phenomena, the solidarity of labor. As an active, working concept, the fraternity of labor is just as certainly a product of capitalism as is social toleration. The latter is the soul of capitalism, as it manifests itself in the class of employers, the former, as it manifests itself in the class of employees.

To this statement a Socialist will at once take exception. The sentiment of brotherhood, the Socialists claim, originates in the common experiences of poverty and hard labor. But the men at the passages of the Jordan who slew one another over the pronunciation of Shibboleth were doubtless manual workers, and were certainly poor. The merciless strife between Saxon and Celt in England was primarily between men who were all poor and workers. The participants in the Sicilian vendettas, in the Scottish clan struggles, in the Kentucky feuds, might well be honored with the title proletariat, by virtue of poverty and laboriousness of life. Fraternity is too luxurious a plant to bloom upon a barren soil of universal labor and poverty. Every one who reads the documents of middle nineteenth century America is aware of the uncompromising hostility of the American workingman toward the distressed Irish seeking an escape from famine. Later, there is abundant evidence of working class contempt and hostility directed toward the immigrating workmen from Germany and Scandinavia. Twenty years ago it was the Dago that experienced the inhospitality of the workingmen toward their alien brothers; today it is the Wapp--the collectivity of unfortunates of uncouth ways and unimaginable speech that seek refuge here from the poverty and oppression of southeastern Europe. No middle class worshipper of a family tree rooted in the old colonies can hold the Wapp in more profound detestation than do many of our recent arrivals. "Zese tam fools [the Wapps], zey ruins zis tam counthry."

It is the attitude of the unions, we are told, that in the North represents the chief obstacle to the progress of the negro away from the menial services and the unskilled employments. It was the working class that forced, first Chinese, and later Japanese exclusion. It is working class politics that demands a white Australia, and vexes the British Empire over the question of emigration from India. "Workingmen are brothers," say the Socialists. Not by birth and native instincts. Not by virtue of community in labor and poverty. If there is such a thing as a fraternity of labor, it is begotten of capitalism.

An active sentiment of brotherhood, does, unquestionably, spring up under capitalism. Differences of race and religion dwindled to insignificance among the coal miners in the great strike of 1904. The Lawrence and Paterson strikes, and the strike in the copper country, have offered abundant evidence of the growing strength of the feeling of working class solidarity. It would be difficult to cite a single recent strike in which men and women of traditionally hostile races and creeds have not coöperated with the utmost harmony and good will.

No one will deny that the more conscious the workers are of the pressure of capitalism, the more rapidly does the feeling of solidarity develop. This is the moral gain that is afforded by labor disputes. It is a gain which is not to be had without its cost, in the disorganization of industry, the impoverishment of multitudes of working families, the destruction of life and property, and the loosing upon society of evil passions. Is the gain worth its cost? In the opinion of many observers of our social movement, the cost is tremendous, but few of these observers attempt to strike a balance between cost and gain. This is because they have failed to recognize working class solidarity as a significant step in moral progress.

The development of solidarity among American workingmen is proceeding rapidly; in other countries its progress is not less manifest. This is true despite the fact that the problem of creating harmony between hostile races and religions is more serious where uninterrupted continuity on the same soil renders easy the survival of ancient prejudices. The hostility between Czech and German, between Magyar and Slav, is mitigated when the representatives of these warring races work side by side in the same factory, oppressed by the same factory regulations, impoverished by the same crises. Evidence is accumulating, to prove that the internationalism of labor is becoming a reality. It may not be true that French workingmen are already so utterly averse to the idea of shooting down their German brethren as the Socialistic literature and the spokesmen of Socialist and Labor parties would have us believe. But there is very much more than a fervent hope in working class anti-militarism. If French and German workmen might at present fail to refuse to kill one another in war, the time is perhaps not far distant when the outcome of an international war may be rendered problematical through the extension of working class solidarity.

For the working class, solidarity is producing results quite analogous to those produced in the class of capitalistic employers by the pursuit of profit. Solidarity is unthinkable without a measure of toleration. The American trade unionist learns to tolerate the alien origin, the broken speech and uncouth manner, the strange religion, and the unexpected outlook upon life, of the foreign workman who must either become a brother unionist and faithful ally, or a scab and an enemy. And out of this toleration is created a sphere of personal freedom from social encroachment such as no workman of an earlier epoch ever enjoyed. Fraternity and liberty, these are the positive acquisitions won by labor out of the very oppression of capitalism. Of the revolutionary trinity only equality remains beyond the visible horizon. And even equality may be brought nearer, if not realized, through the further perfecting of working class liberty and fraternity.

V

Capitalism is material, gross, ugly. Yes, but it has a soul--toleration, liberty, fraternity. And this, like most souls, is not so much in being as in becoming. It is only in the most highly capitalistic centers that even business has partly freed itself from elements of personal oppression. There is no state nor city in which the fraternity of labor is more than an emerging fact. Under capitalism, workingmen are brothers, but there is still a vast deal of the Cain and Abel in their feelings toward one another. Remove the pressure of capitalism at this instant, and the lessons of fraternity would quickly be forgotten. Relax the profit motive, and mankind would again stand forth in its pristine narrowness and bigotry and cruelty. Conceive for a moment that the United States were now under Socialistic management. With what spirit should we greet the oppressed of other lands, fleeing to us for refuge? We should probably judge of the problem in terms of dividend and divisor: so much food, so many mouths; let not the number of mouths be increased. To be sure, there is an economic fallacy lurking in this syllogism; but when has an economic fallacy ever been crushed except by weight of a brute class interest? Our workingmen are brothers of those of England and France and Germany, under the pressure of cosmopolitan capitalism. But the natural attitude of a group of Socialistic nations toward one another will be a coveting of one another's rich mines and fertile provinces. At least such will be the natural attitude until fraternity, imposed by capitalism, has descended from men's lips and entered into their blood.

There is a wise saying in Karl Marx's _Critique of Political Economy_ (Preface): "No social order ever disappears before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have been developed; and new higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society." What Marx said of the material embodiment of capitalism, we can apply to its soul. Capitalism is growing toward liberty and fraternity. But the immense distance we must traverse before this goal can be attained is evidence of the vitality that remains in the system. Were capitalism to be abolished today, the hard-won gains of the last two centuries would vanish. But by this very fact it is proved that capitalism cannot be abolished today.

VI

In its present stage of development capitalism, every one admits, is ugly. Haste and vandalism have characterized the work of constructing it. It is like the wall of Athens, rough stone upon hewn memorial tablets to the dead, upon the trunks and limbs of statues of gods and men and beasts. The feast of Our Lady of Carmel was beautiful in Palermo; transplanted to New York, it is grotesque. There was dignity in the demeanor of the Lithuanian on his native soil: in the anthracite towns, the Lithuanian is a mortar-disfigured torso, thrown heedlessly into the courses of a rubble wall. All the mixing up of peoples, of customs, of ideals, that an incipient capitalism implies, produces a conglomerate that is inevitably ugly.

And quite apart from the ugliness of discordant combinations, there is an ugliness originating in the very virtues of capitalism. As we have seen, it is the tendency of capitalism to leave human nature free in all that transcends the narrow limits of the process of profit making. And this would be well if, as the optimists assure us, human nature were uniformly beautiful. Those of us, however, who are not committed to dogmatic optimism know that if some part of human nature is most beautiful when unrestrained and unadorned, another part is most seemly when well laced with stays of custom, well draped in garments of convention. At any rate, in the initial phase of the capitalistic liberation of human nature, which we are now experiencing, it is an open question whether our eyes are not more frequently offended than regaled.

It is in the field of material objects, however, that the contrasts between present capitalism and the earlier order are most clearly visible. Time was when the man who built a house granted to the whole community a voice in determining its design. And the community permitted variation from type, but only a moderate, well regulated variation. Thus were the walled cities of the Middle Ages governed by a harmony of construction, which gave to each dwelling, at the very least, a beauty of use and wont. Today in America the builder is free. If he chooses to dwell in a Greek temple or a Gothic chapel or a Chinese pagoda, there is no one to dissuade him. No one, except perhaps an architect whose plans have been rejected or a good citizen at large, ex-officio adviser of an unheeding world.

In the economic field human conduct is narrowly ruled and restricted by capitalism; but in the non-economic field--the greater and more significant part of life--the good and the evil, the beautiful and the ugly, are set free by capitalism, to struggle for existence. Capitalism offers no direct pecuniary rewards for virtue and beauty. Nor, however, does it impose any penalties upon them. Did any earlier order of society impose such penalties? To be sure. Let us recall the contempt for the arts on the part of militaristic Rome, the pride in illiteracy of the glittering mediæval knight. Capitalism does not require a merchant or a banker to become a connoisseur of art. Nor does it require him to apologize for any such variation from typical instincts.

If good and evil must thus strive in a fair field, neither rewarded nor penalized economically, what will be the outcome? The evil will prevail, say those who--strangely enough--describe themselves as idealists. Most of us refuse to engage in prophecies. But so much is clear: the good and the beautiful that may prevail under a thorough-going capitalism must be better and more beautiful than the values of old time. Capitalistic freedom demands that there must be greater variety and wealth of beauty than an earlier order required; capitalistic fraternity demands that charity and toleration must extend beyond the bounds of class and race. Unless the art and the practical ethics of perfected capitalism represent an advance in universality, they will be thrust aside as meaningless and worthless.

It is, to be sure, more difficult to establish fixed values upon a broad basis of human life than upon a narrow one. More difficult were the problems that confronted Euripides the Pan-Hellene, than Sophocles the Athenian. There is a contrast in technical perfection, between the work of Balzac the Frenchman, and Daudet the adoptive Parisian; between that of Kipling the imperialist, and Bridges the Englander; between that of Ibsen the cosmopolitan, and Björnson the Norwegian. But in all these instances the loss in classical perfection is vastly overbalanced by the gain in human worth. There were poets and dramatists in Scandinavia before the days of Holberg. They had an elaborate canon, all the rules of which were violated by Holberg's iconoclastic cosmopolitanism. What has become of the works of Holberg's predecessors? No one can read them. But Holberg was never so widely read and honored as today.

A broader and more liberal humanity than the world has known before--such, after all, is the evolving soul of capitalism. This does not indicate, however, that capitalism will last forever, or deserves immortality. There comes a time when the most responsive body becomes a clog upon the soul, and should accordingly be buried. The body of capitalism is none too responsive; therefore we may be certain that it must, in the end, be discarded. What the succeeding order will be, no man can forecast. But it will not be one of unbridled individualism; for a spirit of fraternity, transcending that imposed by capitalism, will carry the principle of coöperation to lengths beyond present dreams. And it will not be Socialism; for the spirit of toleration and freedom, now only germinating, will have attained to its full efflorescence in institutions that guarantee a range of personal development not compatible with the well-regimented scheme of a Socialistic state. Capitalism will disappear; but can we doubt that it will be honored in history as a most significant stage in the progress of the human soul towards liberty?

A SOCIOLOGICAL NIGHTMARE

[Greek: Ta môra gar pant' estin Aphroditê brotois.]

Eur. Troad. 989.

The wise Hecuba accused the frail Helen of throwing upon Aphrodite blame which really belonged to no one but Helen herself. Can it be that, now the whole world has turned sociologist, many of us are guilty of throwing upon poor society blame that ought solely to attach to us as would-be students of society? When emancipated spirits give utterance to their views with regard to the iniquities of the man-ruled world of the past, and describe the ideal eugenic world of the future, in which woman is to be man's superior, and the family a new thing under heaven, one wonders how far the nature of the views and the character of the vision are determined by the deficiencies, and how far by the exceptional endowments, mental and moral, of the critic and prophet. When economists cross their scientific hearts, and assure us on their honor as impartial students that, however much they may regret to announce its speedy demise, the monogamous family is a doomed institution, one is tempted to ask whether a few shrivelling leaves of a brief season would be reliable authorities with regard to the condition of a large tree at its roots. To anyone who inquires whether a metaphor or an analogy is an argument, we will say that we have known political economists who spoke of themselves and their work in terms indistinguishable from those employed by students of the so-called physical sciences.

We are free to confess that these perhaps inconsequential remarks proceed from a middle aged person who is not a sociologist, or an economist, or even an adept in the New History. That we make any remarks at all is due to the fact that, as our title perhaps indicates, a little too much sociological diet has induced in us a condition analogous to nightmare. When a small boy of our acquaintance, in a family not yet extinct, is afflicted with this disorder, he invariably screams out lustily and runs to his mother. Following his example as nearly as manners and circumstances permit, we vent our feelings in THE UNPOPULAR REVIEW.

"But who forces you, in this free country, to feed upon sociological diet?" This hypothetical question from a hypothetical reader admits of an easy reply. It is impossible to earn one's living pent up in a barricaded study, reading Greek; and outside of such a fastness, how can one escape the amateur sociologist? He intrudes himself into your most select circle at your club. He, or she, sends you through the mail notices of "thon's" books and lectures. He preaches at you if you go to church, and you make him an excuse for staying away. He assails your ears at college commencements. He makes the _Congressional Record_ duller. He solicits your vote for this and that candidate, on the ground that they are advocates of a new freedom, or exponents of a progressive social and political movement, or, at the very least, stanch friends of the people. He writes editorials and letters in your morning and evening newspapers, and articles in your favorite magazine. He punishes you for your weakness in attending a public dinner. He--or rather she--airs his--or rather her--most advanced ideas when you are just beginning to sip your afternoon cup of tea, and you are fortunate if, in your disgust, you do not play havoc with the china of your hostess. Avoid sociological diet in the year of our Lord one thousand, nine hundred and fourteen? It was far easier to avoid the Plague in the year sixteen hundred and sixty-five.

We admit frankly that the amateur sociologist is not the only person our weak nerves dread. We avoid a Pragmatist and a New Realist almost as assiduously, and with but slightly more success. Latter-day novelists, poets, statesmen, and educators, "uplift-men" in general, and advocates of scientific efficiency in particular, preachers of social service who blandly assume both that society wants their services and that they have services to render, when what is chiefly apparent is their own need of education--these and other sons of thunder too numerous to mention have given us many a bad quarter of an hour. But it is the amateur sociologist alone who is able to give us a nightmare.

We confess that such was not always the case. We entered one of the first classes ever taught in this country in what was then called the Science of Society. We listened with amused interest, possibly with profit, to the remarks, interspersed with puns, which the erudite professor allowed himself to make on the subject of marriage as an institution. Later we read ponderous books on this topic and kindred ones, and we even plumed ourselves upon our advocacy of woman suffrage and our practical interest in organized philanthropy. Political economy and history were not neglected by us, and so we rounded out the last century cherishing the delusion that we were somewhat progressive. Alas, we were primitive enough to spell it with a small "p." And now, but a few short years later, we are wailing in or about a Sociological Nightmare! Is it that, in the natural course of things, we have merely become conservative, have been caught up with, and passed, by a more radical generation, and are taking out on them, regardless of justice and of shifting metaphors, a spite caused by our own weakness of mental digestion?

Perhaps so, perhaps not. Thus far we have not flung even the tiniest of stones at the important study known as Sociology, nor have we meant to hit any of its serious students. The banner under which we enlisted as the humblest of privates, we still salute, and as the army of workers marches on, we, droppers-out yet loyal, raise our feeble cheer. But behold! we are caught in a frantic mob of camp-followers, and we struggle in vain to extricate ourselves. And what a mob it is! Men and women who call themselves "Progressives" without being able to read a pedometer; anarchists who, with less sense than bulls, mistake a red flag for a new Gospel; propagandists of peace who have no respect for rest; advocates of nostrums who actually resent being called quacks; women who rejoice in being "hikers;" philanthropists who are doing their foolish best to make the under dog a mad one; lecturers who convert their lungs into cash; fashionable women who open their drawing-rooms to cranks, and their heads to whims;--but why attempt an impossible description? It seems better to fall back upon Matthew Arnold's more decorous expression of his feelings, in _Bacchanalia; or, the New Age_:--

Thundering and bursting
In torrents, and waves,
Carolling and shouting,
Over tombs, amid graves,
See! on the cumbered plain
Clearing a stage,
Scattering the past about,
Comes the new age.
Bards make new poems,
Thinkers new schools,
Statesmen new systems,
Critics new rules.
All things begin again;
Life is their prize;
Earth with their deeds they fill,
Fill with their cries.

Have we, then, got at the root of the matter? Tired out with "strenuosity," fatigued with American "progress," dinned with lectures, conferences, civic forums, and all the other modes of vociferous self-expression dear to this Age of Talk, are we, like the poet, the poet who, be it remembered, wrote of Sophocles that he "saw life steadily, and saw it whole," are we really longing for an impossible golden reign of universal silence, and, in despair of obtaining it, railing at what happens for the moment to be the most noisy object within our dyspeptic range of hearing--the amateur sociologist?

We are not sure that this is not the case, but why should we undertake to analyze our own feelings? The main point is that we feel them; the next point, almost as important to ourselves, is that we want to express them. And who that is past fifty is not warranted in indulging in mild objurgations when it is possible to overhear at a dinner party, as the dominant note of an eager conversation between a lady and a gentleman, that latest intruder into the limited vocabulary of fashionable life, the ugly word "prostitute"! No one placed in so astounding a situation would stop to reflect that, if he had overheard such a conversation--save the mark!--two centuries ago, the dominant word would have been, most assuredly, both shorter and uglier. Not for us at least such cold philological comfort in the presence of our arch-enemy, the amateur sociologist. Here we have caught him in the innermost recess of civilization, caught him at our very dinner table--a more loathsome and dangerous foe than the Satan-Toad squat at the ear of sleeping Eve!

For where in all Creation's round
Can now a _sleeping_ Eve be found?

They are all awake--God bless them and save them!--awake and listening to the amateur sociologist, or else to the sociological dramatist, which is every whit as bad, or worse. They are awake and forming drama-leagues, attending lectures for political education, giving suffrage teas and balls, flocking to conventions, marching under banners and "hiking" in squads, grabbing at slippery presidents, writing their pretty fingers off, converting the tenets of the New Morality into lullabies, in short, following a modern Pied Piper--into what?

We are brought up with a shock before the blank wall of our own question, and we are out of our nightmare. This world, even if in this particular year of grace it does seem to be overstocked with sociologists, is a pleasanter place to inhabit than a Hades tenanted by gibbering ghosts. It is possible to advocate equal franchise and to help along other causes in which one may believe without mistaking one's heels for one's head, difficult though this may be in these dancing days. We suspect that a suffrage ball in New York is in many ways a less objectionable affair than a London masquerade of the early eighteenth century given under the direction of the long forgotten John James Heidegger. It is fairly certain that in the same city at the same period "Orator Henley" was as convinced of his own omniscience as any sociologist or political economist who discusses the future of the family or white slavery before a woman's club. Every age must cherish its pet variation of the standing illusion of the race--that for our day and generation we are wiser than our ancestors were for theirs. Who would not run after a good thing, and what better things are there to run after than schemes for human regeneration, even if we frequently find that our rainbow has not led us to a pot of gold? Have we not been assured on good authority that out of the clash of opinions truth emerges? Is it not the prime article of our democratic creed that the _vox populi_ is the _vox dei_, and, even if the _vox populi_ speaks with an unmistakably sociological twang, is it not our duty, at the risk of being labelled "undesirable citizens," to imagine, nay, to believe and aver, that we are listening to the dulcet harmonies of heaven? What if that gruff old person, Dr. Samuel Johnson, would, were he alive, assert in his most stentorian tones that our strenuous democratic optimism is the vulgarest and the shallowest philosophy ever permitted by a too indulgent Providence to flourish under the sun! Is not the grumpy Doctor safely buried, and common sense along with him?