Socialism by George W. Rine

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Apr 2, 1912

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 39, No. 14.

Socialism

By George W. Rine

Its Recent Phenomenal Growth

It would be difficult to state the exact date or incident which might be called the beginning of Socialism in its modern form. Some authorities hold that it had its birth in the Communist Manifesto, in France, February, 1848. Others, again, maintain that it was called to life by the organization of the Universal Workingmen's Association, in May, 1863. Be that as it may, the growth of Socialism was so slow up to 1889 as to be almost negligible. In the latter year, four hundred delegates from twenty countries met in Paris, and worked out a plan for international organization. This convention is known as the first International Socialist Congress. A second congress was held in Brussels, in 1891, with delegates from the United States, Australia, and every country of Europe. The seventh International Socialist Congress convened in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1907. There were present more than one thousand delegates, representing twenty-five nationalities of all parts of the world.

It was at the fifth of these congresses, held in Paris, in 1900, that the International Socialist Bureau was created. The bureau is composed of two representatives of the organized Socialist movement in each affiliated country. Its headquarters is located in Brussels, and is in charge of a permanent secretary. The bureau is the executive committee of the international congresses, and meets whenever its business so requires. It was at the eighth and latest international congress, in Copenhagen, in 1910, that the chairman, in his opening address, stated that the International Socialist Party comprised thirty-three nationalities, and that the number of adherents to the cause of Socialism, in the world, is no fewer than thirty millions, of whom ten millions are voters. To-day the Socialist movement has representatives in the national legislatures of seventeen distinct countries. Even in the Upper Chamber of France, of Belgium, of Denmark, and of Australia, there are Socialist members.

In the United States

The first Socialist political body on a national scope organized in the United States, was the Social Democratic Workingmen's Party, called into life on July 4, 1874. This party, with several other then existing Socialist organizations, merged into the Socialist Labor Party of North America, in 1877.

In 1892 the Socialists for the first time nominated a presidential ticket, and they have ever since adhered to the principle of independent politics. Up to the close of the last century the growth of Socialism in this country was extremely slow. The movement was mostly composed of foreign workmen, especially Germans. During the last decade a number of circumstances combined to insure a more favorable reception of the teachings of Socialism. The marvelous industrial development of the country, accompanied by the evolution of gigantic trusts and powerful labor-unions, the growing intensity of the militant struggle between capital and labor, and the collapse of the Populist and other reform movements, all served to prepare the soil for the Socialist seed.

Alongside the Socialist Labor Party, largely built on the narrow lines of a mere propaganda club, a new party, the Socialist Party, sprang up, absorbing the greater part of the members of the older party, and attracting hosts of new converts from all parts of the country, recruited largely from the manual working class. In 1909, the party had 3,200 local organizations, dispersed over all the United States, with a dues-paying membership of 50,000. In 1900, the Socialists polled 150,000 votes; in 1902, 300,000;

Captain Roald Amundsen, with his skees and wearing his south pole expedition clothes

and in each of the years 1904 and 1908, approximately 450,000. In the State and congressional elections of 1910, however, the Socialistic vote aggregated 620,000.

More than fifty daily, weekly, and monthly Socialist journals are to-day published in this country. There are, at this writing, not fewer than 534 Socialist office-holders in the United States. They hail from thirty-three States, and represent 188 municipalities and election districts. In point of function they include one congressman, seventeen State assemblymen, two State senators, thirty-three mayors, thirty-four judges and police magistrates, 167 aldermen or city supervisors, etc. The most important cities whose mayors or mayors-elect are Socialists are Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Schenectady, New York; Berkeley, California; Butte, Montana; and Canton and Dayton, Ohio.

In Germany

There are now more Socialists in Germany than there are people in Spain, or in Mexico, or in Belgium and Holland and Denmark and Norway put together. The German Socialist Party polls a million more votes than any other party in the empire. By reason of an antiquated system governing the distribution of seats, the Socialist Party is represented in the Reichstag by only fifty-two members instead of 115, to which it would be entitled on parity of numbers. And by reason of unequal suffrage, instead of controlling nearly every large city of the empire, the Socialists elect only about a third of the members of the city councils. The growth of Socialism in Germany can be best appreciated by a comparison of the Socialist vote in the parliamentary elections of that country. In 1871 the Socialists cast 124,655 votes; in 1890, a trifle more than 1,400,000 votes; 1907, 3,258,968 votes. During the five years 1898-1903, the Socialist vote was increased by one million.

The journals published by the German Social Democratic Party reach no fewer than 1,049,707 regular subscribers. The party publishes sixty-five daily papers, and twelve weekly and monthly periodicals. One of these journals has a circulation of 230,000. The party employs twenty-eight organizing secretaries, who go about the country and give direction to the branches in their work of organization and propaganda. In 1906, the national committee on education opened a school in Berlin for the distinct purpose of training working men as organizers, secretaries, and editors. The German trade-union movement now numbers 2,300,000 members. The women in the movement number 135,000. At least ninety-five per cent of these trade-unionists are Socialists.

France, Great Britain, and Other Countries

Until 1905 the French Socialists were split up into several mutually hostile groups; but at that time they were united into one body, through the good services of the International Socialist Congress held in Amsterdam, 1904. This united party took the name of Le Parti Socialiste. It has organized local groups in eighty out of eighty-seven departments (counties). The party has elected 149 mayors and 2,160 municipal councilors. In the national Chamber of Deputies the Socialists hold fifty-two seats in a total of 584.

The parliamentary representation of the party is militantly arrayed against all the political parties of the bourgeoisie (middle class). The Socialist group in parliament must refuse the government all the means which tend to continue the domination of the bourgeoisie and its maintenance in power. It therefore refuses to give its vote in favor of any military or naval appropriation, of any secret fund, and ever refuses to accept the budget as a whole.

In 1887 the Socialists polled 47,000 votes in France; by 1898 they cast not less than 700,000 votes; and by 1906 they actually

swelled their votes to 1,120,000. Among the French working class there are, including women, six million avowed Socialists. Of the agencies devoted to the propagation of the Socialist faith in France are two daily papers, thirty-seven weeklies, and two monthlies.

The beginning of the Socialist movement appeared in Austria in 1867, when the Imperial Council granted a partial right of assembly to the people of the empire. Two years later the movement was strong enough to force the government to revoke its ban against the Socialist propaganda, by a remarkable and unexpected demonstration on the streets of Vienna. Its growth, however, was sporadic up to 1888, when a unified, well-knit organization was created. For years the Austrian Socialists, by tireless agitation and monster demonstrations, directed their efforts mainly to the attainment of universal manhood suffrage, till at last the government was compelled to yield; and in the parliamentary elections of 1907, held for the first time on the basis of universal suffrage, the Social Democratic Party polled over a million votes, electing eighty-seven deputies to the imperial Reichsrath. Here again Socialism has absorbed practically the whole of the labor-union movement. Not fewer than fifty periodicals are published in the interest of the "cause."

Since 1892 Socialism has had a phenomenal growth in Italy. In that year the Socialist Party was organized on the general European model. The party now comprises 1,250 local groups. It has returned thirty-two members to the national Chamber of Deputies, and controls politically about one hundred municipalities. The party commands great strength among the rural population, principally farm laborers. In spite of their extreme poverty, 200,000 of these rustics pay their party dues with scrupulous fidelity. In 1910 there were 340,000 Socialist votes polled in Italy. Five daily papers, sixty-five weekly, and twenty-three trade-union journals are devoted to the Socialist movement in that historic peninsula.

Socialism in Russia was at first represented by many widely scattered groups; but in 1901 they combined their forces and created a national party with the ominous title of "The Socialist Revolutionists." The party is responsible for the numerous political assassinations preceding and accompanying the recent warlike contest between the government and the discontented elements of the people of Russia. It is impossible to estimate the present strength of Socialism in Russia; but the fact that the second Duma, elected on a restricted suffrage and under rigid government surveillance, had one hundred Socialist members, is eloquent testimony to the immense spread and power of Socialism in that unhappy empire.

As a political factor, Socialism in Great Britain made extremely slow progress prior to 1908. In that year British labor-unionism and British Socialism practically coalesced, and they now constitute a solid political unit. This significant coalition was effected at a conference of the most influential leaders of both movements at the city of Hull, and is known as the Hull Conference Compact. As the result of this wholesale alliance, the English Socialist vote of 1910 was sixty per cent in excess of that of 1906. The Socialist Labor Party now hold forty-two seats in the British Parliament.

The Socialist Labor Party of Belgium had its genesis in 1885. To-day at least one fourth of the political officials of the kingdom are Socialists. In 1908 the Socialists cast half a million votes, and elected to parliament thirty-three out of a total of 166 members. The 252 trade-union bodies of Belgium have unreservedly espoused the program of Socialism.

The distinguishing characteristic of Socialism in the three Scandinavian countries is its complete fusion with the trade-union organizations. In 1889 the Socialist Party of Denmark had but one representative in the national legislative body. In 1907 that party returned twenty-eight deputies, out of a total of 114, to the Danish parliament.

Under the far-off Southern Cross Socialism finds a congenial soil. Fifteen members of the Upper Federal Chamber of the Australian Parliament, out of a total of thirty-six, are of the Socialist persuasion. Of the seventy-five seats in the Federal Lower Chamber, twenty-six are held by Socialists.

Captain Robert F. Scott and his automobile sledge which he is reported to have used in his south pole expedition

In view of the astonishing progress that Socialism has made in all parts of the world during the last twenty years, as briefly indicated above, it is not at all strange that Mr. J. N. Larned, in the Atlantic Monthly for May, under the title "Prepare for Socialism," should have said anent the Socialist movement: "The movement has now gathered a momentum that will carry it surely to some vital and momentous outcome of change in the organization of society." And again: "It is a movement which moves continuously, with no reactionary signs. . . . It is a movement of such nature, in fact, as seems likely to break suddenly, some day, into avalanches and floods."

(NOTE.—In the next two articles of this series, I shall try to set forth the meanings—dangerous and otherwise—of this movement.)