Page:May Walden - Socialism and the Home (1900).pdf/12

 12 When competition is entirely removed, shopping will be done in a different way from the strength-absorbing, nerve-distracting manner we are familiar with. When the department stores are all owned by one large trust (which finally will be absorbed into the Co-operative Commonwealth) there will be no need of advertising in the way they do now, and there will no longer be "bargain days," but each article will have the same price in every place. Then we can order our goods by looking at a catalogue or going to the small store nearest us where samples are kept, and have the things sent us the way they are now, or by the parcels post. Rural delivery is to be established all over the United States as fast as possible, and the small shopkeepers are wasting time and energy in trying to stop it. It is a great help to the farmers' wives and before long the old way of shopping will be another relic of capitalism.

How many of the laboring people own their homes? Almost none. And yet these laborers are always blamed by the upper classes for their shiftlessness because they do not own homes. Let us look into this a little and see what the trouble is. In the first place what do we want homes for? Why aren't we satisfied to look at the outside of rich people's homes? It is because we are human beings and because we have the same love for little ones and for a place to brood them in that is natural to most creatures. It has been said over and over again that the dearest spot in the world is home, but now let us add that the dearest hope of the homeless is to possess one some day. Think of the home. sick, heartsick wanderers to-day, and wonder why it is so. Wonder why they are called tramps, outcasts, lazy vagabonds! A man with no property is looked down upon as the scum of the