owns some real estate, including the house in which he lives. Consequently he is unable to see why he should divide up the fruit of his hard earning and frugality with the fellows who spent all their money in his saloon, while he was collecting it carefully and putting it in property to be divided among his children when he goes to the happy hunting grounds of the social reformers. He encouraged the socialists and the newspapers to advertise him and his place until he became independent, and then he did not have much use for either. The socialistic slate has been broken years ago, and the man who used to proclaim in the language of Prudhomme that "all property is robbery," now adheres firmly to the plunder which he was then amassing. Justus Schwab is a whole object lesson in himself, when the fiery Justus of seven or ten years ago is contrasted with the sedate and tenacious property owner of the present time.

John Swinton is another of those who have been careful to adhere to a fair share of the good things of this life, and, though he has been fairly consistent and has contributed according to his means both materially and intellectually to the cause of socialism, yet he has never been known, I believe, to let his own supply of loaves and fishes run short. John Swinton has always been the first consideration with him. Even when he started a newspaper he called it John Swinton's paper, so much was he in favor of giving John the preference; and probably the name helped to kill it, for socialists are very jealous about individual honors, though their theory is the reverse.

These eminent failures, and many others similar in kind, go to show that the proposed revolutionary system of reform must be sadly lacking in the elements of cohesion, popularity, and permanency. The great problem which these reformers have yet to solve is the exclusion of the selfish principle in human nature. In that they have apparently made very little headway in half a century, and without this solution their socialistic schemes are so many ropes of sand.

CHAPTER XXXI.

THE ANNIHILATORS' METHODS.

For the regeneration of society. A closer examination of the remedies which the various destructive fraternities entitled to this common appellation propose for the inequality complained of, and how they would work in practice. Where will they get the men to help them to demolish thrones and break up present political organizations?—They could put down the present tyranny only by establishing a greater. Failure of all previous attempts to establish communities. — Our ballotbox and existing law are ample to maintain the strictest quality, to remedy all wrongs and redress all grievances.

IN

N another chapter I have sketched a general outline of those restless, reckless, and revolutionary spirits who may be classed under the general appellation of "annihilators." They propose to abolish private property and suppress the motives for its acquisition. Of the various types of these revolutionists the only kind that seem to have a clearly thought out and analyzed programme of reconstruction after the destruction, are the scientific socialists. The anarchists and nihilists, as a rule, have only vague ideas of the detailed course of action of humanity after the emperors and presidents and legislatures and police are abolished; they have boundless faith in luck after the universal disintegration; but they make no provision that the same things which they now hate shall not happen again. Therefore it seems to me that those two kinds, anarchists and nihilists, are to be regarded by sensible people only as pestilent disturbers, who deserve no respect because they have not even a plausible programme to offer.

But socialists have a pretty well-arranged plan of reconstruction. The governmental socialist is an evolution from the early communist; but in the spirit of enforced equality,

equal sharing of everything without regard to merit,they are alike. Let us begin with the governmental socialist, and examine the programme he offers us. Those who hold his views, like the revolutionists, propose to abolish the heads of all governments, European kings, presidents, and governors of states, also the various houses of legislation. Then they propose to establish a system of compulsory equalization. In their own words they mean to have, “instead of the capitalistic and individualistic system of production and distribution, a system of governmental coöperation and governmental production and distribution. The whole people of a country in their collective capacity shall produce and distribute everything, like a great joint stock company, only more equitably." The new government is to control railroads, telegraph lines, and all kinds of industrial forces. In this scheme there will be no room for, or incentive to, individual enterprise. Every person is to work under no other stimulus than that the fruits of his labor are to be divided equally among the members of the community to which he may belong.

These people, while making high-sounding statements regarding the happiness sure to result upon the adoption of their principles, are quite reticent as to the means for effecting the transformation, although it is to be the most radical change and on the largest scale that has ever been attempted. "Socialism," they say, "would abolish poverty by preventing it, by removing its causes. As poverty is the cause directly or indirectly of nearly all crime, therefore, by the abolition of poverty, crime would become almost unknown, and with crime would disappear all the 'leeches,' 'vampires,' and 'vermin' that fatten on its filth, such as the entire legal fraternity, soldiers, police, judges, sheriffs, priests, preachers, and many others."

Now, this is very well as a description of society in its metamorphosed condition, but how we are to get there is another matter. The socialists point to a development through the trusts, forgetting that between the largest aggregation of commercial trusts and the smallest attempt to give to every member of the community an equal share in the general profits,

there is a great gulf to be jumped. Not one of the four leading species of annihilators gives any satisfactory explanation of this. They all seem to take it for granted that the only thing necessary will be to send around the cards of the new candidates for the committee on reorganization, and the latter will be elected unanimously. No allowance seems to be made for the possibility of any opposition to the new régime. It is thought to be so attractive in its nature that everybody must irresistibly embrace its doctrine the moment it is presented to them.

Why the reformers, or rather the upsetters, have a right to expect this sudden change in human nature is not stated. It is not considered necessary to state it. It is one of those things that are supposed to be self-evident. Yet when one begins to canvass the opinions of the community anywhere, he finds that this change, or rather transformation of mind, and this desire for another condition of society, have very few adherents. There is not one person in twenty, or perhaps in a much greater number, who would not set the individual down for a crank or a crazy person who began to talk on the subject of the impending revolution and the new state of society and politics, where nobody would desire to get the money he earned, but would be willing to have it put into a general fund to be divided equally at the times set apart for such division. It is safe to say that not one out of a thousand would listen for a moment to any such extraordinary arrangement for the disposal of the fruits of his or her labor.

Where, then, are the converts to the new régime to come from? Can the annihilators manufacture them? When Marshal Ney sent to Napoleon for more men at Waterloo, the answer of the chief was, "Does he expect me to make them?" The annihilators seem to have some such expectation. They appear to think that some unseen power will make these men to order, fully imbued with the ideas of a new dispensation, and prepared to enforce it despotically upon society as it exists at present.

That the change proposed is not adapted to the nature of

mankind, as the latter has existed from time immemorial, will be readily understood if we go back a few thousand years to the patriarchal age when people lived in tribes. This was communism on a small scale, and if it had been consonant with human nature to adapt that mode of existence to a larger scale, then was the most appropriate time to begin the operation. But instead of this being the social purpose at the period in question, the tendency was all the other way. This may have been owing to the perversity of human nature, its general inability to discern what is for its best interests, and its natural proneness to evil; but it is a condition, and not a theory, which confronts us," and in considering this question in all its bearings, we are obliged to take both human nature and society, as at present constituted and as it formerly existed, in the concrete, not the abstract. In other words, we are obliged to take it in the most practical sense in which any scheme of organization or reorganization must deal with it. We may people the world with imaginary beings, and work out Utopian theories for our own amusement and the entertainment of others who delight in that kind of theorizing; but in practical life such theories will prove of the most delusive character, and leave us eventually the sorry victims of our own folly and overheated imaginations.

One of the most interesting features of the proposed new social state, in which everybody is to be supremely happy in the thought that he is working for the benefit and maintenance of everybody else, is the currency idea. This part of the programme outshines anything that has been suggested by either silverites or Populists. It is to be a new currency, of course, based upon the credit of the new state. The material has not yet been agreed upon, but it will be neither of the precious metals. These are tabooed, and the unit of value to start with will be a hundred minutes of labor for one dollar, or a cent a minute when the minutes are fewer than a dollar's worth, and there will be no means of measuring the quality or quantity of labor performed except by the conscience of the laborer.

Nothing is to be taken note of except the time, and it is