Page:Pacific Monthly volumes 9 and 10.djvu/67



QUESTIONS OF THE DAY

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change. Herbert Spencer and other profound thinkers declare the chanfi:e is to be toward socialism, or centraliz- ation of wealth, and the instruments for producing wealth, in the hands of government for the common good. The newspapers report Mr. J. P. Morgan as coinciding in this view and declar- ing men like himself are necessary in- struments preparing the way for so- cialism by natural evolution.

There is a certain drift in human events which seems beyond control. It is as if ordered by some power su- perior to man. That drift today cer- tainly seems to me to be toward so- cialism. The first cry of the democrat- ic convention of New York upon the anthracite coal situation was for gov- ernment ownership of the mines. Cer- tainly it is easier for government own- ership to take over a few great "trusts" than to organize a multitude of com- petitive industries into one great gov- ernmental trust; and certainly the ex- istence of trusts provokes a popular leaning toward socialism. I have no doubt in my own mind that the ten- dency is towards socialism, and I be- lieve no argument or force can prevent it. It may be the actual change will be made amid a bloody revolution, the many assailing the few, the populace against the government, as has been usually the case in history ; for the own- ers of privileges assailed have always been as sure of their rights and as hon- estly outraged as is Mr. Baer when he calls for government troops to pro- tect him in his right to do as he pleases with his own. It would have been very easy to have precipitated a miniature "rebellion" or "revolution" or "war" between the strikers and the armed forces of government, and it is not difficult to imagine a situation some day which will embrace the whole coun- try, when the question shall arise of the right of the masses of people every- where to wrest from the few all man- ner of vested rights. But there is rooin to hope that a greater popular intelli- gence in our day will render it possible to make the final transition in peace.

It is quite possible also that before the final transition is made, those own-

ing the property of the country will for many years have been in absolute power by means of a standing army and a proletariat vote, which they can control. It will eventually become a question as to what are vested and inalienable rights. In spite of the pop- ular clamor against him, Mr. Baer is exactly right in his claim to do as he pleases with his own. If Mr. Baer (we will say for the sake of illustra- tion) owns the anthracite coal fields by a perfect legal title, according to the law of our day, he has just as much right to do as he pleases with it as we have to do as we please with our houses. He can forbid any man to mine any coal at all. He can, if he be so minded, shut down all mining and quit, and he is entitled to all the armed force of our land under the existing law to keep oflF trespassers and protect him in his right to mine coal by whom he pleases, or not to mine It at all if he so pleases. So that if it should happen that the anthracite coal owners choose to stop the world's sup- ply of anthracite coal and let the fields lie idle for a few generations, they have today, under the existing law, a right to do it and a right to all the force in the land to protect them in that right. Such a conclusion seems to suggest by its own awful consequences that there is something wrong, not with Mr. Baer, but with legal institutions which admit such a conclusion as a theoretic possibilit)^ For a true right is right all the time and under every theoretic possibility. It is no answer to say the self interest of the coal owners will not permit them to stop all mining. The question is, ought a whole people to depend for its necessaries on the will «>f any individuals.

A truth is right in theory as well as practice — for all truth is theory applied to practice. There is also the feeling that a man's ownership of a. natural de- posit, which he did not make, but which God made and seemingly left as a common inheritance for man, is not on the same footing with the plough or ship or other article his own hands have made from the crude deposit or natural growth. And though the feudal