widows who do washing for the support of families to have water-rates remitted by the city; standard weight of bread in every loaf. The socialist mayor proposes that the new government accomplish all this and much more. Celebrating the victory, he rose to these high sentiments: "Our task is to take this, our city, and make of it a home a real home for its hundreds of thousands of men and women and children; a place where there is little room for tears and heartaches; a place where our boys can become men and our daughters women; a place where virtue is protected, a place where the strong stand for the weak, holding their hands over the heads of the weak, shielding them from all harm. Ours is the task of realizing the dreams of the great men of the past."

Still more important than getting control of the government of a great city, is the extraordinary increase of the socialist vote in the various States in the election of November 8, 1910, the crowning feature of which was the placing of fourteen socialists in the Wisconsin legislature, and one, Mr. Victor L. Berger, in the Congress of the United States. This really looks like beginning a new era.

During the interval between the two significant elections which have just been noted, President Taft declared the next great political issue to be the problem presented by socialism, "that problem than which we have had none greater in the history of the country."

CHAPTER V

SOCIALISM INTERNATIONAL

A perfectly valid objection to an inheritance-tax law drawn to embody the principle advocated in the preceding chapter, is this: the effect of such action, taken by one country alone, would be large withdrawal of capital to other countries. Such a consequence not even a convinced socialist legislature could confront with equanimity. Evidently, drastic legislation of this sort can be practicable only when the leading nations generally are ready to adopt it. Just as it was found in the time of Owen and Considérant that socialism could not be successfully inaugurated by isolated communities in the midst of a population following the old order, so would it be now with any attempt of this or that State to take over even by slow degrees the wealth of dead men, by means of it to socialize the instruments of production, while the rest of the nations keep to the old ways. The individuals in whose hands capital is aggregated are not going to look on quietly and see the State turned into an industrial rival of theirs, another and mightier capitalist; they are going to resist any such movement, and resist it the more furiously because of the pledge that this new capitalist is not to exploit but to emancipate the workers, deliver them from the odious wage system, and make

them the owners of whatever they produce. Private capital, if it cannot prevent so grave a catastrophe (to itself), will fly the country which, without concert with other countries, enters upon such a course. Not all forms of capital are thus mobile, but so much of it is, that no one country can afford to bear down upon it greatly more than do other countries.

Socialism, therefore, is not going to be realized as a new religion, or free trade, or universal suffrage, might be first in one country, and later, when it has been fully tried and approved there, adopted elsewhere. On account of the nature of one of the elements it has to deal with, and its relation to that element, it cannot be tested experimentally on a small scale to see how it will work. To find that out experientially we must await its adoption, so manifestly approaching, in all the leading countries.

Moreover, this universality is in the nature of the movement itself. In all lands, under all forms of government, the social question is the same; the same classes exist, arrayed one against the other; the same crushing pressure of the industrial system bears upon the wage-earners. There is, therefore, between the working-men of different countries a strong bond of sympathy, coming from the experience of like hardships and the suffering of like wrongs, from feeling the same longings and asserting the same claims. Go where the American socialist will in the civilized world, he is at home among socialists; the common sentiments and interests that link him with them are strong enough to override distinctions of language,

nationality, race, and give the sense of a new sort of citizenship, one which halts at no frontier, and whose unfailing watchword is Social Justice. A world-wide fellowship is found actually to subsist, resting on common vital interests and on that convergence of thought which is induced by similar experiences.

THE INTERNATIONAL

In 1862 the workmen of France sent a deputation to visit the International Exhibition at London. The members in the course of their stay were entertained one evening by some English workmen, and views on the subjects most nearly touching them all were freely exchanged. Visitors and hosts, the sons and daughters of traditional enemies, discovered then and there that they were closely akin, having identical interests, aims, ideas; were in fact so drawn together that the following year a second deputation of French workmen came over to the Exhibition, and renewed the happy fellowship with their British brothers. The result was the calling in 1864 of a great meeting of the working-men of all nations to be held in London on the 28th of September. Of that meeting the outcome was the formation of The International Association of Working-men, or, as it came to be called, The International, the most famed society and the most feared that was ever constituted out of representatives of different peoples. A committee of fifty, which included Mazzini, Karl Marx, and other no

tables, was selected to draw up a constitution. The work finally fell to Marx, and the form of constitution. produced by him and adopted by the committee, remains one of the monuments of his greatness. It was to be passed upon by the Association the following year. To emphasize the international character of the body, it was proposed to hold the meeting on the continent, and Brussels was chosen as the place. But the Belgian government refused its permission, and the General Council, provisionally created by the committee, could arrange for nothing more than a conference in London. The first congress went over to the following year, when, republican Switzerland making no objection, it was held at Geneva in September, 1866. The constitution presented by Marx was adopted, and the working-men of the world had a veritable organization, which in its brief career did great things for the class it represented, and made a tremendous impression upon other classes. Any lack of harmony in the membership arose, not from racial or national distinctions, but from tactical preferences due to the different circumstances and conditions in which their socialism had come to consciousness and to the differing stages of its development here and there. As far as nationality was concerned, the more unexpected and strange the delegation that sought admission, the heartier the welcome accorded. The very contrast in the appearance of the members, their difference of dress, of color, and of speech, gave piquancy and strength to the