Profits--Private profit is far less a private right than a public necessity. Its absence would involve a waste which Society could not endure. With individual operations controlled by fallible men enormous waste is inevitable. It is essential to Society that this waste be minimized. No industrial or commercial enterprise can go on without risk. Profit is the compensation for risk. One of the things which I believe, but which cannot be proved, is that from the dawn of history losses to individuals by which Society gained have exceeded profits to individuals, and the excess of these losses is the Social acc.u.mulation, increased, of course, by residues left after individuals have got what they could. Whitney died poor, but mankind has the cotton-gin. Bell died rich, but there is a profit to mankind in the telephone. Socialists propose to a.s.sume risks and absorb profits. I do not believe Society could afford this. I am profoundly convinced that under the Socialist program the inevitable waste would be so enormously increased as to result in disaster approaching a Social cataclysm. This is an old argument whose validity Socialists scout. Nevertheless I believe it sound. The number of these whose intellectual and physical strength is sufficient for the wisest direction of great enterprises is very small.
Some who are interested in our great industrial trusts are said to carry heavy insurance on the life of Mr. Morgan, lest he die and leave no successor. If the natural ability is found its possessor will probably lack the knowledge which Mr. Morgan[4] has acc.u.mulated, and in the light of which he directs his operations. It is essential that great operations--and the business of the future will be conducted on a great scale--be directed by great wisdom and power. The possessors of high qualities we now discover by the trying-out process. They can be discovered in no other way, and great effort can be secured only by the hope of great reward. Until human nature changes we can expect nothing different. Socialism implies popular selection of industrial leadership.
Wherever tried thus far in the world"s history there has usually been abject failure. The ma.s.s can choose leaders in emotion but not directors of industry. The selection of experts by the non-expert can be wise only by accident. If the selection is not popular, then Socialism is tyranny, as its enemies charge. If it be popular, or in so far as it is popular, direction is likely to fall to the great persuaders and not to the great directors. Never did a "peoples party" yet escape the control of the unscrupulous. No political movements result in so much political and Social rascality as so-called popular movements originated by earnest and honest men. I see no reason to suppose that the Socialistic direction of industrial affairs in any city would be directed from any other source than the back rooms of the saloons where political movements are now shaped. If the Socialistic program were to go into effect tomorrow morning there would be here tonight neither lecturer nor audience. The good dinner would remain untasted in the ovens. Every mortal soul of us would be scooting from one Social magnate to another to a.s.sure that we were on the slate for the soft jobs and that n.o.body was crowding us off. I have no faith in human nature except as it is constantly strengthened and purified by struggle. That struggle is an irrepressible conflict existing in all nature, and from which man cannot escape. It is better for mankind that it go on openly and in more or less accord with known rules of warfare than in the secret conspiring chambers of the cla.s.s which in the end controls popular movement. All serious conflict involves evil, but it is also strengthening to the race. I wish misery could be banished from the world, but I fear that it cannot be so banished. I have little confidence in human ability to so thoroughly comprehend the structure and functions of the Social body as to correctly foretell the steps in its evolution, or prescribe const.i.tutional remedies which will banish Social disease. If I were a Social reformer--and were I with my present knowledge still an ingenuous youth in the fulness of strength with my life before me I do not know that I would not be a Social reformer--I would profess myself a Social agnostic, and prosecute my mission by the methods of the opportunist. I would endeavor to direct the Social ax to the most obvious and obtrusive roots of the Social evil, and having removed them and watched the result, would then determine what to do next. Possibly I would endeavor to begin with the abolition of wills and collateral inheritance, and so limiting direct inheritance that no man able to work should escape its necessity by reason of the labor of his forefathers. I might say that I recognized the vested rights of the Astors to the soil on Manhattan Island, but that I recognized no right as vested in beings yet unborn.
I might say that it was sufficient stimulation and reward for the most eminent Social endeavor to select, within reason, the objects of public utility to which resulting acc.u.mulations should be applied and to superintend during one"s lifetime their application to those purposes.
I might think in this way, and might not, were I an enthusiastic Social reformer in the heyday of youth, but it appears to me now that at any rate we shall make most progress toward ultimate universal happiness if we recognize that out of the increasing strenuousness of our conflict there is coming constantly increasing comfort and better division thereof, and if we direct that portion of our energies which we devote to the service of mankind toward such changes in the direction of the Social impulse as can be made without impairing the force of the evolutionary movement, rather than to those which involve the reversal of the direction of the force with the resulting danger of explosion and collapse.
[Footnote 4: This was written and originally printed long before the death of Mr. Morgan, but there is a general feeling that he has left no successor of his caliber.]
Here ends The Inhumanity of Socialism, being two papers--The Case Against Socialism and A Critique of Socialism--By Edward F. Adams.
Published by Paul Elder and Company at their Tomoye Press, in the city of San Francisco, and seen through the press by John Swart, in the month of June, Nineteen Hundred & Thirteen