Page:American Syndicalism (Brooks 1913).djvu/201

Rh held the applause because he forced home to the audience the popular logic of socialism: "If capitalism systematically robs us, why should we pay for what was never owned at all?" By so far as this belief is real, that labor has been fleeced, to that extent compensation is likely to fare ill.

It is not to be forgotten that socialists in control must decide their economic and administrative policies politically. Heads of departments must be politically chosen, fiscal and other measures likewise carried out by some form of majority vote.

I was told on the Alaska boat "Spokane" that Captain Carroll had a petition presented to him begging that some change of route be allowed. He replied, "Madame, this boat is not run by petition." That, under socialism, things are to be "democracticallydemocratically [sic] managed" is an accepted definition. Every question of "compensation" must be "democratically" determined. At popular gatherings opinion must be made then as it is now. Audiences must be warned and exhorted to vote for this or that measure. The last demagogue will not die with capitalism.

In an imagined picture of one of those future audiences discussing what should be paid to the owners of the last ripening "trust,"—which of two socialist speakers, one conservative and one radical, will have the surest hold upon the listening majority?

I do not press this as unanswerable, but it deserves reflection. In all democratic uprisings the easy advantage of the more radical man has been noted since Aristotle. Is it likely to be less so when the whole logic of democracy has become complete? I