While the Socialists of the United States, “parlor” and otherwise, include in their number many sincere and thoughtful, as well as idealistic people, it is well to remember that a large part of them is composed of individuals who have nothing, and want to divide it all with everybody else.  It is the old jealousy of the “have nots” for those who have, which usually means the “will nots” for those who have the ambition and will.  Or if they are not of this kind, the best that can be said of them is that they are foreigners, who are in reality not Americans, who don’t believe in democracy, but in autocracy, and probably don’t even know what democracy means.  Autocracy is the government of the many by and for the benefit of the selfish few.  Real democracy is the government by and for the many, who express their will through their duly chosen representatives.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 6:  Issue for November 12, 1918.]

[Footnote 7:  Op. cit. p. 172.]

[Footnote 8:  The War and Democracy, p. 58.]

IV

SOME INSTANCES OF ITS PRACTICAL FAILURE

I have stated my conviction, and the reasons for it, that Socialism is essentially undemocratic and unChristian, as well as unAmerican.  Yet after all it is in the practical realm of experience that it has proved to be most lacking and inefficient.  To prove this, it is hardly necessary to point to the classic illustrations of the utter failure of Socialism when actually tried in France under the leadership of Louis Blanc and Albert during the days of the Second Republic in the year 1848, or again when tried under the form of the Commune in 1871.  The horrors of the extreme form of Socialism known as Bolshevism, as seen in the Russia of 1918, are destined to implant a useful lesson, not soon to be forgotten, in the minds of intelligent people throughout the entire world.

One of the best illustrations of the failure of a practical Socialistic State is that of the “Mayflower” settlement at Plymouth in 1620.  In order to raise the money needed for the venture the Pilgrims borrowed seven thousand pounds from seventy London merchants.  In order also to provide a species of sinking fund it was decided to accept the suggestion of the creditor merchants that the net earnings of the colonists should go into a common fund for the space of seven years and then should be divided among the shareholders.  It should especially be remembered that the Pilgrims were a set of people small in number and as a consequence easy to govern; of a high type of industry and integrity; and that they were united by the strongest of all common and social interests,—­that of deep religious conviction.  Furthermore, the relative positions in life of the personnel of the entire Plymouth Colony showed a remarkable equality.  Their method of living was primitive and most simple in form, without