By Victor Yarros.

Socialistic schools of reform are undeniably acquiring greater popularity and receiving more thoughtful consideration as time rolls on and organized labor, or the revolutionary forces all over the bourgeois world in general, grow weary, sceptical, and discountented with the methods and means by which in the past the great battle against capitalism has been carried on. All the resources of our intelligent American mechanic having been exhausted to no purpose, and all the measures that accord with the genuine spirit of true democratic institutions having been found utterly inadequate for the accomplishment of the end of the labor movement, nothing was more natural than that foreign importations should be examined a little nearer and with less prejudice. For a short time it really seemed as if the day of conservative labor reform, trades-unionism, strikes, and boycotts, was over, and the emptiness of the talk about fair wage, harmony between capital and labor, arbitration, profit-sharing, and the American way of adjusting difficulties demonstrated beyond a doubt. Today the fact—viewed with alarm by some and enthusiastic delight by others—which most impresses every student of the labor movement is that nearly all the able and influential leaders and tribunes of organized labor are, if not professedly Anarchistic or Socialistic, at least very pronounced in their tendencies and inclinations to either one or the other of these schools of radical and revolutionary reform; that the number of outspoken organs of Anarchism and Socialism is large and increasing; and that most of the labor organs in the country (and certainly all the prominent and important among them) exhibit strong sympathies and decided leanings either toward Socialism or toward Anarchism. Little is now heard about fair wages, but the propositions that labor is entitled to its full natural reward, that usury must be abolished, and that capital must be dethroned, are everywhere being discussed.

But let no Socialist or Anarchist prematurely congratulate himself. Their triumph is still far from permanent, and they are seriously threatened with being disloged from their position and trampled into dust. After a temporary mental aberration, the intelligent American mechanic, under the skilful discipline of a new expert, is rapidly recovering his sober sense and conservative wisdom, and will soon renew his vigorous opposition to imported ideas in a fashion that will make it plain that no market exists in this health and beautiful land for the drugs of Socialism.

Self-defence impels us to seek to inform ourselves about the man who shall be known in all coming ages as the great conqueror of the nineteenth century and the deliverer of civilization from the heresies of Socialism. George Gunton is his name, eight-hours the terrible weapon, and Wealth and Progress the battlefield.

As intimated above, Mr. Gunton girds himself for no smaller task than the total overthrow of all radical schools of reform in the sphere of economic relations. After the performance of this unparalleled undertaking, we are gradually and carefully made acquainted with the simple, beautiful, natural, easy, modest measure, which if carried out according to instructions, would immediately secure the permanent harmonious coöperation of capital and labor, abolish poverty and crime, establish peace, liberty, and social order, and remove all obstacles from the path of progress. And this miraculous panacea is not within the reach of the new world alone, but there is hope even for the unfortunate countries of the rotten old world. Let Germany, Belgium, France, England, and America adopt an eight-hour standard, and the prophecy of the lamb and the lion will beo n the point of fulfillment.

We might state here Mr. Gunton’s central position and make it an object of extended criticism, leaving minor points for the reader to dispose of in the light of our fundamental principles and essential truths, but it seems preferable to closely follow Mr. Gunton’s line of argument and examine one by one his claims and statements. So far as we are aware his is the first and only attempt to build a systematic scientific theory upon the unclassified and discordant data of conservative labor reform, and to put forward the policy of trades-unionism in distinct and bold opposition to Socialistic doctrines. The advocacy of incomplete and superficial means, hitherto defended on grounds of expediency, is raised by Mr. Gunton to the dignity of an historical method of economic progress, and, far from apologizing for it, he professes to see in it the only true and certain means of reform. While we have no fear that the book will lead astray any considerable number of intelligent and informed people, yet, in view of the admiration, approval, and praise that the organs of capitalism bestow upon it, we are not altogether sure that there is no danger of the Henry George farce being played over again. For, even more than Henry George, is Mr. Gunton determined to maintain the present system, and, though ostensibly written in the interests of labor, his book is really and essentially a plea in behalf of capitalism and an effort to shield it from the onslaught of the radical movement.

Perhaps it is proper, in opening for the defence, to give an outline of our case and of the points we seek to establish. We expect to prove to the reader’s satisfaction that Mr. Gunton is incompetent to deal with the subject-matter of his book: that he has the shallowest and crudest and most superficial conception of Socialistic economics; that his criticisms only expose his own lack of understanding; and that he has no more firm grasp of the scientific, historical, and philosophical aspects of the labor problem—its essence, significance, and extent—than the average unenlightened laborer who joins a union for the purpose of fighting capital by legal and honorable means.

In the Introduction Mr. Gunton, admitting that poverty is more inimical to society today than ever before and that there never was a time when the demands of labor were so urgent, quarrels with those who raise the cry that the rich are growing richer and the poor poorer. He denies that the laborer is no better off than in the middle ages, but grants that his poverty is now more intense in kind and dangerous in character than ever before. Without stopping to argue this phase of the question, we, satisfied with Mr. Gunton’s own way of putting it, pass over to his first important postulate and objection against Socialism. To eliminate poverty, he affirms, there is but one way,—to increase wealth; and further, that the question for the social reformer to ask is how can the aggregate wealth per capita of the population be increased. Schemes involving artificial manipulation of profits, rent, or taxes contain no remedy, as they would at best result in a transfer, not an increase of wealth. The well-nigh universal complaint among the working classes and their intellectual advocates that distribution of wealth is unfair and inequitable, and that consequently the problem to deal with is how to so change social, economic, and political institutions as to secure an equitable distribution, is due to their inability to see that distribution is only a mental concept and not an actual independent economic fact. Distribution being in reality an inseparable part of the process of production, no reform in distribution is possible except through direct influence upon production. A greater diffusion of wealth among the masses is only possible through a larger aggregate production, and such an increase of wealth is only possible by extending the use of machinery and improved methods of production. The question how to abolish poverty resolves itself into these two simple propositions; 1. How can the use of improved means of production be increased? and 2. How can the general rate of wages be advanced?

When we add that the incomes of the rent- and profit-receiving classes must not be diminished by the arrangements, we have stated the whole problem as it appears in the Introduction of Mr. Gunton’s Wealth and Progress.

Students of Socialistic economy will at once perceive the vulgar prejudice to which Mr. Gunton has fallen a victim. He obviously imagines that the Socialists desire to divide the existing wealth more equally among the population. I say, prejudice, for it is impossible to regard it merely as an error of judgment. His way of stating the Socialistic position is in itself sufficient to prove to all competent to express an intelligent opinion that Mr. Gunton is criticising proposals which he has not troubled himself to examine with any care or candor. Had he read Proudhon’s What is Property? or Marx’s Capital, with any attention, he would have avoided the sin (and consequently the mortification resulting from exposure) of making a grossly false statement and a ridiculously weak hypothesis. Mr. Gunton will be surprised to learn from me that all Socialists do seek to increase the aggregate wealth per capita, and well understand the sphere of distribution. He advances nothing new in his Introduction, and, if he is honest in his claim to originality (he or Ira Stewart, who appears to have been his teacher), it shows that his twenty years of study of economics have left him at a point where it will certainly take him at least twenty years more to reach the line of modern thought. We shall explain just what the Socialists mean by charging the present way of distributing wealth with being mainly responsible for our industrial evils. And we shall have no difficulty in making it clear that the Socialists of all schools base their wholesale condemnation of rent, interest, and profits—that is, usury, or reward of capital—precisely and strictly on the consideration that they alone are in the way of a natural and progressive increase of wealth through the extension of improved methods of production and lay their effective veto upon the tendency of wages to rise concurrently with material progress.

Throughout the book Mr. Gunton’s criticisms of Socialistic schools are trivial, purely verbal, and utterly forceless. In the First Chapter, treating of the respective shares of labor and capital in production, we have a fair sample of his logic. He combats the popular idea among reformers that labor creates all wealth, admitting freely at the same time that, if this should be proven to be really the case, their claim that all wealth belongs to the laborer would have to be acknowledged as valid, and the accusation that capitalists who derive incomes from sources other than personal productive labor are exploiters and robbers considered borne out by the evidence. And how does Mr. Gunton refute that idea? He does it in a way that reflects alike upon his honesty and intelligence. He repeats the well-known and long-exploded arguments of Bastiat in favor of interest on capital, entirely ignoring the question of original accumulation as well as that of the legalized monopoly of credit, the introduction of which plays havoc with that Bastiat argument and deprives it of its seeming reasonableness. By pointing out that a laborer who works with tools obtains more products than one without them, he imagines that he makes out a case for a legitimate reward of the capitalist tool-lender, whereas, in fact, he does not even touch the main question, which is, why the industrious laborer happens to be in need of borrowing tools, and why competition among lenders of tools does not bring the price of their use down to the cost limit, or as near it as in other legislatively unprotected products of labor.

Besides this argument in favor of reward of capital, which is not now and which, in spite of the appearance of force, ought not to deceive those who profess to be familiar with Socialist economics, Mr. Gunton has another, which, if puerile, has at least the merit of being original with our author. He speaks of the objection against interest advanced by some reformers that capital is simply labor in another form or stored-up labor, pronouncing the phrase stored-up labor a very misleading metaphysical expression, where the error begins. It appears that labor, being simply human force or energy, cannot be stored up, and the most that can be claimed for it is that the amount of human energy expended in producing an object is transferred to and preserved in that object. Between stored-up labor and preserved labor there is doubtless sa vast a difference as between tweedledum and tweedledee, and are we to wonder at the preposterous and absurd conclusions of the ignorant Socialists who fatally err at the very start in confounding these two conceptions?

To be continued.