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And with a little brain and thought everybody must easily come to the conclusion that the great number of those who confess to the principles of Socialism cannot possibly consist of blockheads or rather lunatics, which they would prove to be if they demanded such nonsense. In Germany 700,000 voters (more than 1,000,000 at the last election) voted for Socialist candidates. Can they all be crazy?
Therefore there must be something else in Socialism. The number of Socialists in Germany is constantly growing. Even Prince Bismarck confesses that. There must be something in it.
Now if we go the meetings of the Socialists, if we read their papers and pamphlets, what do we find?
They do not intend to introduce division of property; on the contrary, they are for abolishing its division.
This sounds strange, but it is so.
The Socialists are of opinion that division of property is flourishing in our society at present, and further they are of the opinion that this division is carried on in a very unjust manner. If you doubt, only think of our millionaires, and say whether those fellows did or did not understand how to divide and to appropriate to themselves large sums of money. Think of those swindling railroad and other companies. How many honest mechanics, farmers, labourers, have been swindled by them out of the little sums of money they had gathered by hard work and saving?
The Socialists do not claim the honour of being the first to discover that this kind of distribution is going on everywhere throughout the world: they have learned it. Men who belong to their adversaries taught them. John Stuart Mill, who was opposed to Socialism, said in one of his writings: "As we now see, the produce of labour is in an almost inverse ratio to the labour—the largest portions to those who have never worked at all, the next largest to those whose work is almost nominal, and so on in a descending scale, the remuneration dwindling as the work grows harder and more disagreeable, until the most fatiguing and exhausting bodily labour cannot count with certainty on being able to earn even the necessaries of life."
This sounds really dreadful, but if you look around and consult your own experience, is it not so? Certainly it is!
There are people who have a princely income, who plunge from one pleasure into another—and perhaps they have never in their life done the least useful thing; they need not work, they do not work themselves, but—they draw the proceeds of the work of other people and enjoy them.
On the other hand, look at him who "eats his bread in the sweat of his brow," look at the labourer who works for wages. If he is skilful, industrious and strong, and if he is lucky enough to find employment, he may even be able to save a little. But the large majority of labourers cannot even think of that, in spite of all the hardships they undergo. When they have to stop work, they are as poor as when they began it. And many, many labourers, hard toiling men, are not able to protect themselves and their families
