Page:Eleven Blind Leaders (1910?).pdf/9

Rh in the Saturday Evening Post (issue of May 8, 1909), containing replies to a question by the editor from ten prominent members of the Socialist Party, I shall consider the two speeches and the ten replies together.

SYMPOSIUM ON "PRACTICAL SOCIALISM."

The editor of the Evening Post asked the question: "How will the Co-operative Commonwealth be brought about?" and supplemented that by another question: "Suppose that you should elect a socialist President and Congress, how would you go about transferring private property to public ownership?" In the issue containing the ten replies, the editor says: "We leave it to our readers to judge whether the preachers of this new gospel have a cure for social ills which they or any one else can apply practically."

First of the ten comes Eugene V. Debs, who, after making the statement that "no one on earth knows how socialism is to be introduced . . . nor, in fact, anything about it except that it is bound to come," proceeds to answer the above hypothetical question with the statement that if socialists gain the political power and are allowed to proceed peaceably they will doubtless begin by taking over as rapidly as possible the "essential means of social production and distribution, beginning with those most highly centralized and monopolized and most perfectly organized." He also assumes that "the new administration will be able to assure employment to all," and that a new national constitution will no doubt have to be adopted, which will abolish the Senate, take away the veto powers of the Supreme Court, and make Congress directly responsive to the demands and needs of the people.

Victor L. Berger expresses the hope that "both sides will take a lesson from history," and that the workers, instead of provoking a war and seizing the industries by force, will buy them outright from the capitalists.

Gaylord Wilshire says we're "not going to elect a