THE WASTES OF EXTRAVAGANCE, CRIMES, AND WAR ARE FILLING THE WORLD WITH DISCONSOLATE AND DESPAIRING MEN.
The Burdens of Criminality, Vice, and War
By LUCAS ALBERT REED
The World Being Pauperized by the Enormous Toll—Socialism Proposes a Cure—Is It Possible for Their Plans to Succeed?
By LUCAS ALBERT REED
We recognize the fact that there are hundreds of noble-hearted men and women enlisted among the socialistic workers. We know that conditions among the laboring classes in many places are absolutely intolerable. We are thoroughly in sympathy with anything that will uplift the downtrodden. We wholly believe in fulfilling the divine admonition, ‘Break every yoke,’ and ‘let the oppressed go free.’ If laws can improve conditions, let laws be passed. If education can better conditions, let the light shine. But let all this be done without hatred or class embitterment. In the following paragraphs, however, we speak only of one phase of Socialism,—the impossibility of its ever re-creating the earth. We know that it will not do this, but we know it solely because of what the word of God predicts for the days that are to come.
HIGH COST OF LIVING AND EXTRAVAGANT EXPENDITURES
We hear much, these days, about the cost of living. We have not seen, in connection with this discussion of the cost of living, much reference to some of the greatest drains made upon the pocketbook to-day. We quote the following34from the San Francisco Star to show one of the leaks from the great financial treasury of the people:
‘Let us for one little minute consider the costs of what is called ‘crime’ in these United States. It comes to $4,500,000,000 annually, according to Hammond’s estimates,—the latest available. Think of this total. Compare it with what we spend for education, for pensions, for army and navy, for the entire costs of our state and national governments. What shall we do?’
‘For one thing, Hammond suggests, ‘Take from the courts the power to sentence men for definite terms.’ Make every sentence indeterminate—to run until the convicted person becomes a safe member of society. Then help him to get there, but have him go before a ‘rehabilitation court’ in order to get out of prison.’
‘Does it not look as if we could find some better way of dealing with criminals? Suppose we begin to study the larger causes of wrong-doing which lie deep in our social order. Many a well-meaning but weak brother is ‘shoved over the line’ by things beyond his control. Let us try to stop making criminals.’
In connection with this tremendous expense due to the suppression of crime and vice, remember, also, that six nations spent in 1913 a round $1,000,000,000 in preparation for war. Here are multiplied billions of dollars due to vice, crime, and war, flowing in a mighty torrent out from the people’s treasury. This tremendous sum must be paid for by you and me and the rest of peace-loving, law-abiding toilers of the earth, and there is no use to rant and declaim and orate over the thing, for that won’t help matters one particle.
There is only one means of preventing sin, which is at the heart of the vice and the crime and the war preparation in the world to-day. The only cure for sin is the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Men reject this, and therefore there is no cure, only as they do accept it, or in so far as they accept it.
COMFORT FOR ALL, WERE IT NOT FOR THIS WASTE
But there is a profitable theme for consideration in this connection. To bring the matter home, suppose that you have an income of $200 a month, but that $150 of this is wasted, is lost, so that you receive no benefit from it. Then you really have but $50 a month. It would require some pinching on your part to get along.
In the world to-day there are many who are laboring as producers. They are builders of the wealth of the world. On the other hand, there are thousands who are wasting a portion of the money thus earned.
We think next of the millions of dollars that some have secured unlawfully and hoarded unnecessarily, and which they use to no profit; then of the millions that are wasted in war, crime, and vice; and we think finally of an ideal world, where all this will be stopped, the great money waste will be no more, and the wickedly unequal distribution of wealth will not exist. What an amount of means this would place in the hands of all! There would be comfort and prosperity, and no necessity to toil more than a few hours or perhaps an hour or two a day,—just enough for exercise.
THE FALSE HOPES OF SOCIALISM
Socialism sees the force of all this, and therefore demands an industrial commonwealth, where all shall labor and none be idle, where all shall ideally treat one another according to the Golden Rule, and all who will not thus labor nor behave shall be starved into submission. It is an ideal conception, possible only in an ideal world. But the gospel alone can produce ideal people, and place them in an ideal kingdom, among ideal conditions. And it will do it, because it is able to change the heart, and fill with love those who are to enter into that kingdom, and God is powerful enough and just and true enough to see that none others get in. But Socialism has no means nor facilities for doing any such work. It will never accomplish its self-appointed task.
