Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/191

 SOCIAL DISCONTENT AND LABOR TROUBLES 177

munities which was predicted by its promoters. The people have been heavily taxed to meet the deficiencies in the opera- tion of the railroads and other state ventures. In Victoria, with a population of 1,200,000, the annual deficiency for ten years has been from three and a half to four million dollars. In New Zealand, with a population of about 725,000, the annual defi- ciency for ten years has averaged about one million dollars. In New South Wales it costs as much to transport grain an average distance of two to three hundred miles to market as it does to send it from Chicago to Liverpool. The public debt has had to be scaled down, capital has been driven out, population dimin- ished, and general prosperity checked.

A centralized government, to which the theories of state socialists lead with but one employer, one producer, one manu- facturer, and with no competition or voluntary co-operation must assume dangerous power over the lives, conduct, and prop- erty of the people, and individual freedom must disappear. Liebknecht, the great exponent of socialism, introduced in the socialistic congress in Berlin this resolution : "The nationalization of industry for fiscal ends will set the state in the place of the private capitalists, and give it the power of imposing on the working classes the double yoke of economic exploitation and political slavery," which was adopted.

The socialists are split in two sections the revolutionary, and the moderate or evolutionary. The latter branch seeks to gain support by urging reforms supposedly in the interest of the working people, hoping to attain their ends, gradually, through political methods. Rae says : " Notwithstanding the break of the moderate socialist (social democrats) from the revolutionary party, from habit they look tenderly upon revolutionary attempts. The recent national congress in Paris went in force to place wreaths upon the graves of the communists."

The moderate or "sentimental" socialists, who would shrink with horror from schemes of injustice, murder, and assassination, indirectly lend encouragement, perhaps unwittingly, to most dangerous tendencies and give aid and comfort to the worst