Page:James Hudson Maurer - The Far East (1912).pdf/69

 Feudalism. Instead of being confined to principalities, it encompasses empires. Under State Socialism (capitalism) the worker would be a serf no different from that of the feudal serf any more than he might be granted the right of franchise, otherwise the principle is the same. No matter by what name a system is called, no matter if capital is owned privately or by the state, if it is operated for profit, it is capitalism. We can only be purely Socialistic when the industries are operated for use and not for profit. To illustrate the disadvantage of the workers under State Capitalism: To protest against unfair conditions would be equivalent to treason against the state.

China on pain of extinction, is taking the great step from Feudalism to Capitalism. Advancing by great strides are also Germany, France, England and the United States. They form the most highly developed capitalist countries. They can no more stand still than could Japan or China. They too MUST change. In the past China furnished a wonderful market for the highly developed capitalist countries to unload their surplus upon. All this will now change; in a few years she will be able to not only supply her own market, but will be looking for a foreign market upon which to unload her surplus. And with the completion of the Panama Canal, the United States promises a fertile field for this surplus.

In this small work, the writer has shown how very low the standard of living is among the toilers of the Orient. Capitalism will harness these hundreds of millions of cheap toilers to the most modern tools of production, and this cheap labor, surrounded with seemingly inexhaustible natural resources, will come in direct competition with the workers of the Western world. What will America do? Stand still as China did, and take a chance in competing with the Orient? Or will we profit by the experience of the past and prepare ourselves for a new social order?

Just as China on pain of extinction had to take the step from Feudalism to Capitalism, so much we of highly developed Capitalist countries, take the next great step from Capitalism to Socialism.

The application of large machinery and the establishment of the factory system, begun little more than a century ago, completely revolutionizes, the. institutions of every civilized nation, and has even aroused