While I endorse all that Mr. Holmes has written, I am too much the advanced Woman to keep silence entirely and let a man speak for me. I was greatly astonished to be accused of patronizing tolerance and veiled contempt. In our joint letter I felt that we were making more of an apology than an assumption of superiority, for forsaking the highest ideals as a working proposition, and joining the numbskull masses in endeavoring to obtain something possible. I still hold all the illusions of the anarchists: sometime it will be possible for us to associate voluntarily; to get together and be good because we want to, and not because we are compelled to by an outside force. I also believe that sometime there will be little of the mine and thine spirit except in matters of toothpicks and keepsakes, and that in some way all will have access to the earth and its resources, and all be able to make life worth while. These are the ideals toward which all the human race is moving. But I cannot shove the race into that condition by anything that can be done or said. We cannot put our ideals into practical realization by our individual efforts; we must move with the great current of progress in which all civilization moves.

I am working with the Socialists not because I have recanted the principles of liberty and have come to believe that authority is right and people must be made virtuous. I would be glad to see the world free tomorrow, would willingly run the risk of being suddenly deprived of the protection of government. But I know it cannot be done.

An idea must be accepted, incorporated into and expressed by the peoples of the earth before it is anything more than a dream.

Our highest ideals are for use among human beings, or they are nothing. Evolution is the law of the universe. The ideals of the dreamers slowly become the realities of the race, and not one of us can leap over a single step or evade one stage of advancement in the great march toward the sublime, uncomprehended goal.

My study of economics and sociology leads me to believe that socialism is the next step, it is not a step backward, and does not necessarily mean more authority and more government. I do not undertake to prove this statement, because of it being like teaching a science in a few minutes.

[22]Read the best socialist authors. The idea of the best informed socialists is that we will have an administration of things, not a rulership of men. All collective human activities and material supplies will be organized and systematized, and very quickly it will be found that there will be no incentive to control and force men to do what they do not willingly perform.

Another mistaken idea, it seems to me, is that socialists are supposed to be trying to establish or bring about, whether or no, some particular cut-and-dried system of society. They are not. They believe that certain systems are worn out, reaching a climax; that other forces, economic and social, are developing and coming up for natural expression and use.

Rulership and oppression will diminish with human progress.

Enforced authority, exploitation of the labor of others, monopolization of the earth, all belong together, with peace, plenty and freedom eventually taking their places as time rolls on.

As a socialist, I am not trying to establish anything, nor to get laws passed that will hold my good anarchist friends in check; I only wish to work in unison with and to become a part of the natural forces that are slowly bringing society up to the anarchist’s highest ideals.