CHAPTER VII

PROGRAM OF THE SOCIALIST PARTYCONTINUED

THE platform then pledges the party and its elected officers to a program of "measures calculated to strengthen the working class in its fight for the realization of its ultimate aim, the Coöperative Commonwealth, and to increase the power of resistance against capitalist oppression." That is, the program does not pretend to be a preliminary constitution for the Socialist commonwealth, or to limit itself to purely socialistic ideas; it sets forth what ought to be done now to strengthen the working class in its efforts to establish Socialism. If this is understood, then it does not matter so much which of the demands are socialistic and which are merely reformistic.

The first demand is for Collective Ownership. 1. "The collective ownership and democratic management of railroads, wire and wireless telegraphs and telephones, express services,

steamboat lines, and all other social means of transportation and communication and of all

large-scale industries." 2. "The immediate acquirement by the municipalities, the states, or the federal Government of all grain elevators, stockyards, storage warehouses, and other distributing agencies, in order to reduce the present extortionate cost of living." 3. "The extension of the public domain to include mines, quarries, oil wells, forests, and water power.” 4. "The further conservation and development of natural resources for the use and benefit of all the people: (a) by scientific forestation and timber protection; (b) by the reclamation of arid and swamp tracts; (c) by the storage of flood waters and the utilization of water power; (d) by the stoppage of the present extravagant waste of the soil and of the products of mines and oil wells; (e) by the development of highway and waterway systems. 5. "The collective ownership of the land wherever practicable, and in cases where such ownership is impracticable, the appropriation by taxation of the annual rental value of all land held for speculation." 6. "The collective ownership and democratic management of the banking and currency system."

No Socialist who has passed the primer stage of education believes that government ownership under any existing type of government is socialistic. Government ownership may be a terrific tyranny over the employees, and it may be wretchedly inefficient. But it seems wise to the party at the present time, or as soon as may be, first to extend the function of government and then capture the government. This is one way of centralizing ownership, the more easily to seize it. Moreover, the period of government ownership is one to which other forces than the Socialist force are urging us and through which we must pass to emerge to something better. Some Socialists and all non-Socialist advocates of government ownership believe in the direct purchase of public utilities by bond issues, like the purchase of the German railroads by the government. Other Socialists believe in partial confiscation, in the issue of bonds of a limited duration, so that stock and bond owners may have a few years to prepare themselves and their children for the extinction of their securities. Other Socialists believe in dispossession without compensation, in confiscation as complete and immediate as the destruction of black-slave property. It is likely that long before the

Socialists are strong enough to cast the deciding vote on these questions the Government will have extended vastly its ownership of existing industries and will have entered upon hitherto unattempted enterprises, of which the Panama Canal may serve as an example. This will mean a relatively smaller income, but greater security for the plutocracy; the substitution of solid government bonds for uncertain stocks. The identity between the Government and the industrial master will be more nearly complete, and perhaps the two-headed beast will be easier to aim at if more difficult to slay. It will be a more compact, highly organized phase of capitalism, the last phase. But it will be wide as the poles from Socialism. Ignorant men, business persons, and journalists speak of government ownership as "socialistic." A proof that it is not is the fact that the present administration is considering a bill to take over the whole Bell telephone system.

The Socialist party platform next demands the "immediate government relief of the unemployed by the extension of all useful public works. All persons employed on such works to be engaged directly by the Government under a workday of not more than eight hours and not

less than the prevailing union wages. The Government also to establish employment bureaus; to lend money to states and municipalities without interest for the purpose of carrying on public works, and to take such other measures within its power as will lessen the widespread misery of the workers caused by the misrule of the capitalist class." This is an emergency measure of doubtful value. Is it a good thing to habituate the workers to look to theGovernment for employment? When a shoe factory shuts down will the unemployed stitchers and lasters lay bricks on a new post office building or shovel dirt on a new canal?

There follow in the platform what are called Industrial Demands: "the conservation of human resources, particularly of the lives and wellbeing of the workers and their families, (1) by shortening the workday in keeping with the increased productiveness of machinery, (2) by securing to every worker a rest period of not less than a day and a half in each week, (3) by securing a more effective inspection of workshops, factories, and mines, (4) by forbidding the employment of children under 16 years of age, (5) by the coöperative organization of industries in federal penitentiaries and workshops for the