Page:The Wisconsin idea (IA cu31924032449252).pdf/323

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CONCLUSION
299

of private property. Those who have seen the land hunger of the American immigrant can well testify to that. Provide the ladder, make free the way and human beings will climb and no plan ever made by Karl Marx or any other man, of whatever party or sect, will prevent the acquisition of private property. The rise of the newly rich class, the evidence of which is seen in the streets of Berlin almost as much as in the streets of New York, proves my thesis. Are there then, issues appropriated by socialism which are really the strength of these movements? Certainly the socialists in the Wisconsin legislature advocate, in the greater part, humane legislation which could be very well advocated by the most bitter opponents of this party and which in many cases has nothing to do with the propaganda of the theory of State ownership. Says Jane Addams:—


"Is it because our modern industrialism is so new that we have been slow to connect it with the poverty all about us? The socialists talk constantly of the relation of economic wrong to destitution, and point out the connection between industrial maladjustment and individual poverty, but the study of social conditions, the obligation to eradicate poverty, cannot belong to one political party nor to one economic school, and after all it was not a socialist, but that ancient friend of the poor, St. Augustine, who said, 'Thou givest bread to the hungry, but better were it, that none hungered and thou had'st none to give to him.'"


Is it good policy or good politics to allow the socialists to become the champions of women in industry, the de-