Page:The Woman Socialist - Snowden - 1907.djvu/19

 people, and visions of bombs and dynamite, cruel assassinations and horrid explosions, maimed and mangled limbs and tortured bodies appear before their terrified eyes. Equally uninformed are those individuals who think that Socialism means an equal division amongst its inhabitants of the world's wealth; or that it involves the destruction of private property.

Socialism means none of these things. Not one of these is a part of the Socialist programme. Far from aiming at the destruction of private property its object is to increase private property amongst those whose property is so limited that they have a difficulty in keeping themselves alive. Not the sub-division of wealth but the sharing of it is the desire of the Socialist. A beautiful picture can be shared by all who look upon it, but its value is gone if it be cut up and divided amongst a number. A bloody revolution is not necessary for the advent of Socialism, nor will its coming mean the destruction of religion and the reign of lust and licence.

False and ignorant as are these conceptions of Socialism there is some justification for their existence. Socialists