stat copy of it was secured from the Boston Public Library, where the original is preserved.

Although John Howard Payne wrote the play, thus enrolling it upon the native list, its scene is laid in Italy and the air of Home, Sweet Home is an old Sicilian tune. It concerns the fortunes of the guileless Clari, who is borne off by the Duke Vivaldi to his palace under false promises of marriage; eventually she returns to her aged father, the Duke repents as all naughty Dukes should do; they marry, and everyone decides to live happy ever after. Humor, both intentional and unintentional, there is aplenty, from the drunken mummer to the aged father who does not know his daughter when she drops a veil over her face. No other piece could throw into such amusing relief the naïveté of that period's plot, sentiment and suspense; and the artistic delight of the whole was that these actors never once slipped over the perilous borderline into burlesque. Where professionals of long experience have recently revived the sentimental drama in caricature, these amateurs have played throughout in the utmost sincerity, letting the humorous contrast of then and now speak for itself. And, cleverly, they have thus brought it to pass that we should see not only the amusing difference in a gentleman's "rich velvet cloak" or his "light blue jerkin trimmed with silver"; but that we should be faced with the fact that beneath the cloak and the jerkin there was no such great difference after all.

THE FOE OF LIBERTY AND PROGRESS

BY JOHN SPARGO

I

WHETHER considered as a philosophy of social progress, as a politico-economic ideal, or as a practical programme for the advancement of the well being of mankind, Socialism is discredited and obsolete. The impotence of the movement everywhere, and particularly in the United States, where according to its own theories it should be strongest, is not difficult to understand. It is not due to repression. It is not due to the superior political skill or intellectual powers of its natural opponents on the one hand, or to lack of ability, courage or devotion on the part of its advocates. Such factors as these have, at most, only temporary and localized significance, wholly inadequate to explain a universal condition. The real explanation is that the philosophy of the movement and the programme by means of which it would attain its goal are in direct contradiction to the basic and controlling forces of life itself. Socialism is not progressive, but reactionary. Its influence is not calculated to assist the onward march of mankind, but rather to obstruct its progress.

The Marxian theories which constitute the philosophical basis of modern Socialism have been discredited by the evolution of life. Its advocates have attempted to prolong its hold on the minds of the faithful by the ancient device of constantly reinterpreting the Master's teaching and modernizing it. No amount of revision or modernization, however, can overcome the fatal fact that the cardinal principles of the movement are obviously, and even grotesquely, contradicted by the facts of life, thus setting the movement in violent opposition to human experience. Wherever we touch the cycle of Marxian theory this weakness is disclosed.

Fundamental to the whole programme and goal of the Socialist

movement is the theory that the growth of industry results inevitably in the ever increasing misery and degradation of the workers. Against that theory may be set the simple fact that precisely the opposite is true; that where industry has developed most the standard of living is highest and the prosperity of the workers has attained the highest level. This is the simple and unchallengeable truth. We have about one-fourth as many people as China, but we do more than ten times as much work, thanks to our highly developed industrial organization, and our wages and standards of living are proportionately higher than those of the Chinese. There is no other country in the world in which the wage earners live as well as those of America. Nowhere else do wage earners enjoy such comforts and luxuries as those of America can and do enjoy. There is no country in the world where the great mass of the working people earn as much as do those of the United States, enjoy as much leisure, or command the means to live as well as do those of this country. The reason for this condition of affairs is our highly developed industrial organization, our abundant mechanical power, and our large scale production. With few exceptions, the actual labor of the workers is lighter, and performed under better conditions, where machinery is most used and industrial organization is most highly developed.

Similarly, the Marxian theory of the irresistible concentration of wealth in the hands of a constantly diminishing number, pointing inevitably to the rapid attainment of a condition characterized by a small possessing class on the one hand and an enormous propertyless class on the other, finds no support in the actual conditions of life. The countries in which industrialism is least developed come much nearer to that state of affairs than any of the highly developed industrial countries. Farthest from it are those nations in which industrialism has attained the highest development, our own country being the foremost of these. We are farther removed from the condition forecast by Marx than at any time in the history of the nation. Never before was there such a wide and general diffusion of wealth. Never before was so large a part of the wage-earning population represented in the statistics of home ownership, bank savings, insurance, stock and

bond ownership, and other evidences of participation in the annual surplus.

Instead of becoming constantly poorer and more oppressed, the wage earners of America are steadily growing more prosperous and free from oppression. The principal reason for this condition of affairs is the enormous growth of mechanical power, far exceeding anything hitherto known to mankind. Behind every American worker today there is mechanical energy equal to four and one-half horsepower. The whole of human experience warrants the belief that in proportion as the mechanical power behind each human unit in industry is increased, so will the prosperity and well being of the worker himself increase. The simple fact of the matter is that we have outgrown many of the abuses and evils common in the early days of industrialism, abuses and evils which were dependent upon the limitations of that early industrialism and upon lack of experience with mechanical power. When we turn to countries like Russia and China, where with a vast abundance of natural resources and of available labor power standards of living are notoriously low, we find competent and candid students unanimously agreed that substantial betterment can be obtained only through those great features of modern industrialism, ever increasing mechanical power and mass production. And these things can be had only in direct opposition to the spirit and programme of modern Socialism; only through the agencies of men and women who disbelieve the Socialist philosophy and repudiate its programme.

It is one of the most ironical facts in the history of economic thought that Karl Marx regarded himself as the first to comprehend and interpret the relation of machine production to social evolution, a belief shared by his disciples, whereas in truth he wholly misconceived that relation. Indeed, Marx's misconception of the rôle of machinery is the explanation, in large part at any rate, of the grotesque divergence of his imposing generalizations from the facts of social evolution. Always a closet philosopher, knowing little or nothing of industrial life at first hand but only its statistical reflections in books, he never got a glimpse of the great outstanding fact of the flexile nature of the social organization resting on and proceeding from machine production.

The introduction of a machine enabling two or three men to do what had previously been the work of a dozen men signified to Marx simply the displacement of so many workers, resulting in increased competition and unemployment, consequent depression of wages and ever increasing misery. He never perceived that the hardships occasioned by such displacements of labor by machinery often the result of inexpert management—were temporary; that the new methods with their increased productivity opened up new channels of employment, and instead of irresistibly forcing the workers downward uniformly presented new means of advancement. He never understood the simple truth that industrial expansion through machinery and mass production brought greater flexibility into the economic system, adding greatly to the opportunities open to the workers, lessening human drudgery and increasing the sum of comfort available to the worker and his family.

That machinery ought to bring these results was obvious to Marx, precisely as it had been obvious to his predecessors, including Robert Owen and others toward whom he adopted such a supercilious attitude. He believed, however, that the beneficial results could not be attained within the capitalist system, but only through a social revolution preceded and made inevitable by a prolonged period of constantly increasing suffering and degradation. He saw this as an inexorable and inescapable process, a sort of Fate decreed pilgrimage along a tragic Via Dolorosa to a promised paradise.

The tragic experience of Russia under the Bolshevist régime has abundantly demonstrated that social revolution in an industrial society based upon machine production must inevitably defeat its own purpose. By revolution it is possible to seize the powers of government without destroying them, and to proceed at once to use them. In a society in which industrialism is not highly developed, where production is still carried on in small work-shops, largely by hand labor, it is possible for social revolution to take place without serious interference with the productive agencies, much less their destruction. It is quite otherwise in a society where machine industry and mass production prevail. In such a society the occurrence of social revolution of necessity