In the adjoining column frend Holmes makes a plea for Fair Play. Where in all jurnalism will he find it if not in this publication? No one has been debarrd.

Fair Play implies the sporting chans in Contest. Contest is the outcom of the natural desire to test our powerz. One might as wel be powerles as to posess powerz of which he is unaware. The test of power is by comparison of one’s powerz with those of another; in short by Competition. Conflict, also a manifestation of Competition, is the result of stifling Contest.

This nutshel statement may not be true, altho I think it is. If it is not true its fallacy remains to be indicated. if it is true political socialism has no rational or logical justification.

My socialist friends (many of whom I esteem most highly, — Holmes being one such) hav formd mental habits which som of them wil overcom. Others, having fixt opinions, ar hopeles if numerus: arrested developments. Like som singletaxers who ascribe finality and infallibility to Henry George, thez fixt-opinion socialists belittle the capacities of Marx, LaSalle, Engels and other standard authors, by conceiving of such men as holding, if they wer alive today, the same opinions to which they subscribed befor their utterances had been subjected to the attrition of Test and Contest.

Among the mental habits to which I refer ar the following:

The habit of considering capitalism as the Caus of anywhat, whereas it is itself causd by the stifling of Contest, — the smothering of Fair Play;

The habit of clinging, despite masses of scientific data, to an analogy whereby the individual is relegated to the role of a cell in the body politic, — an analogy based upon a few minor resemblances as opposd to innumerable disparityz;

The habit of regarding Competition as opposed to Cooperation; for it is only by Contest that one approvs himself an efficient cooperator;

The habit of considering inefficient Cooperation as having merit for no other reason than that it is Cooperation;

The habit of decrying liberty in one breath and in the next to claim that political socialism haz freedom as itz goal;

The habit of classing as vile, vicious or immoral what is frankly done by the individual for his own interest; and attributing virtue only to such as profess to be actuated [2] by an impossible motive;

The habit of confusing organization, administration, association and cooperation with Government, as tho ungovernd men coud not or woud not organize, administer, associate and cooperate without being compeld to do such things;

The habit of being sure that unles power is lodged in officials to keep human beings in order that tranquility is impossible;

The habit of looking to Government, as tho such an abstraction had any existence apart from the governors who operate in its holy name for protection as if ther wer anywhat against which protection is required than the very spirit of invasive meddlesomeness that animates governors inevitably.

And ther ar mor of the like — and it is the addiction to such habits that distinguishes between the Two Socialisms. Voluntarian Socialists ar devoid of such habits. Compulsists, calling themselves Socialists all hav all or most of the habits abov catalogd. Compulsists hav no faith in the decency of human nature. Voluntarian Socialists ar favorabl to the hypothesis that gregarius man is neighborly and wil associate with his fellows profitably to each if untrammeld by authoritarian devices.

How shall it profit us, if mankind be inherently decent, to scheme and contrive to compel him to be what by nature he iz?

And if by nature he is unbrotherly, unkind and uneighborly by what miracle shal compulsion overthro the mandate of nature?

So here then is a test: if men ar social ther is no place for compulsiv socialism and if they ar not social by nature and bondage is a suitable correctiv, why pretend that any measure of Liberty is included in the Compulsist program?

Let me assure frend Holmes that I hav read standard works on socialism. The writers of all hav most, and som hav all the habits abov listed; and som hav others equally vicious that ar not included on my necessarily abbreviated compilation. The half-baked com quite legitimately to their demand that each man should be put to work by authority, and that no man, under Compulsist Socialism shal be permitted to map out his own career. For however much the full-baked may repudiate such a purpos Holmes cannot deny that Authority such as all socialist writers demand for their Ghost (the State) could be so used. In that case what is needed is a good and sufficient [25] bond that the powerz Holmes woud so nonchalantly entrust to the numbskul masses wil be used, not despotically, but with a moderate sort of full-baked conservatism. If, now, it were the best we could do — this granting of our powerz to governors to be used over us — we woud have to chans it and trust to the mediocre doctrinaires to hold the radical if half-baked majority in check. But is it the best that can be done? I think not.

As between Voluntarian Socialism (individuals free to combine for such purposes as wil augment the powers of each associate) and the Compulsist Doctrinaires, my chois is made. All the same the Compulsists will hav Fair Play in INSTEAD OF A MAGAZINE. Holmes imputation to the contrary is without the slightest basis.