The fact is just the contrary. Look at any part of Europe over which the Socialists have ruled and you will see far greater dest.i.tution under Socialism than there was before. As for places that have never yet tried Socialism, enough arguments were given in the chapter, "Socialism a Peril to Workingmen," to show that there would be so many upheavals, so much turmoil, discontent and strife in a Socialist state, that production would be at a minimum and entirely insufficient to supply the needs of the people.
We concede that poverty often leads to prost.i.tution, and this is one reason out of many for sincerely wishing that our poor people were better supplied than they now are with the necessities of life. Still it must not be forgotten that poverty and want are often greater factors in preventing prost.i.tution than in helping it. Think of the millions of poor people whose very poverty indirectly makes prost.i.tution and vice in general less likely by keeping them from immoral theatres, movies, dances and cabarets and a.s.sociation with bad companions of greater means who would be attracted by better clothes and greater wealth if these poor people had them.
Do the Socialists claim that the average poor woman is less moral than the average rich one? Do not the Marxians know that poverty, rather than wealth, fosters religion and piety, the greatest of all factors in keeping persons pure? Do the Reds deny that millions and millions of the very poorest are chaste? If these souls can remain pure, notwithstanding their poverty, so, too, can others; and when these others do not remain pure, usually something other than poverty is the cause, _e.g._, irreligion, lawlessness or disregard of authority, all of which the Socialists are advocating, day after day, in their books, pamphlets, papers and speeches.
Again, Debs and his followers, by having a separate party for workingmen, are dividing the laboring cla.s.s against itself, knowing full well that millions upon millions of decent, honest workingmen will never join them. And since Socialists are making unjust and impossible demands, and injecting into labor organizations radical leaders who cause general distrust and fear, labor cannot succeed in its battles against the abuses of capitalism nearly as well as it would if all were united. Hence, because of the existence of the Socialist Party, low wages still prevail in many cases, with extreme poverty which often leads to prost.i.tution.
If the Socialists ever gain control of our country they will probably do so through a revolution. Or they will come into power gradually, by an increased vote at each election. In the meantime, as victory came near, there would be business failures by the thousands, owing to the impending destruction of the existing system of industry and government.
In either case there would be terrible dest.i.tution and a great dearth of the necessities of life. This, according to the Socialists" own argument, would mean a great increase in prost.i.tution.
It has been proven theoretically in the chapter ent.i.tled, "Socialism, a Peril to Workingmen," and actually by events in Europe, that a Socialist state, even should it endure, cannot be a success. Hence, were the Marxian argument about prost.i.tution as strong as the Socialists claim, picture the immorality among the people where a Socialist government plunges the industries and sources of production and distribution into total chaos.
With this refutation of the claim that prost.i.tution would become a very rare thing under Socialism, the national conspirators must confess that the same argument they have for years been using to further the interests of their cause, can with telling effect be turned against them.
Not alone are the Socialists defeated in their argument that prost.i.tution would be less prevalent in the Marxian state, but they are hypocrites in using the argument they do. "The Call," for instance, which frequently uses the argument which has been refuted, in the magazine section of its issue of June 8, 1919, published a poem ent.i.tled, "The Harlot," to satisfy its l.u.s.tful patrons:
"I do not understand you-- I cannot see How you can lie pa.s.sive in my arms When such a pa.s.sion swells in me....
You lie in my arms-- Your face is close to mine.
I look into your eyes, Revelation!
And you Look into mine Unmoved."
We now return to the question of free-love--we have not forgotten it, though no doubt the Reds wish we had. Socialists who deny that an active free-love propaganda exists within their ranks must either confess their ignorance of what is going on, or plead guilty to the base charge of deceiving the American people.
The "New Encyclopedia of Social Reform," edited by the Socialist, W. D.
P. Bliss, on page 484 contains an article on the family which reads in part as follows:
"We then come to the third form of free-love, the free-love theory par excellence, which is held today by many Socialists, and an increasing number of radical men and women of various schools of thought. According to these neither the state nor organized religion should have aught to do with the control of the family or of the s.e.xual relation. They would make free-love supreme. They would have it unfettered by any tie whatsoever. They argue that compulsory love is not love; that all marriage save from love is sin; that when love ends, marriage ends."
In another article, on page 1135, under the caption, "Socialism," Bliss informs us that it is perfectly true that Deville, a French Socialist, said that "marriage is a regulation of property.... When marriage is transformed, and only after that transformation marriage will lose its reason for existence, and boys and girls may then freely and without fear of censure listen to the wants and promptings of their nature....
The support of the children will no longer depend on the chance of birth. Like their instruction it will become a charge of society. There will be no room for prost.i.tution or for marriage, which is in sum nothing more than prost.i.tution before the mayor."
On page 897 of the old 1897 edition of the "Encyclopedia of Social Reform," an earlier work edited by W. D. P. Bliss, we are informed that Socialism would allow all to live in permanent monogamy, but would not force people to remain married if they were unwilling to do so. "The Communist Manifesto," the work that made Marx and Engels famous among Socialists the world over, thus answers the charge made against the Revolutionists regarding their opposition to monogamy:
"What the communists might possibly be reproached with is that they desire to introduce, in subst.i.tution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalized community of women."
Jules Guesde, a French Socialist, affirms in "Le Catechisme Socialiste"
that "the family is now only an odious form of property and must be transformed or abolished."
The French Socialist leader, Jaures, in a parliamentary speech said that "They [_i.e._, married men and women] were free to make the marriage and should in the same way be free to unmake it. In fact, just as the will of one of the parties could have prevented the marriage, so the will of one should be able to end it. The power to annul should, of course, be all the stronger when both parties desire it." It need scarcely be added that free-love would in most cases begin with the voluntary dissolution of the marriage ties.
While the program of the French Socialist Party, adopted at Tours in 1902, does not explicitly advocate free-love, still it calls for "the most liberal legislation on divorce." Ernest Belfort Bax, a prominent English Socialist, in "Outlooks From a New Standpoint," affirms that "a man may justly reject the dominant s.e.xual morality; he may condemn the monogamic marriage system which obtains today; he may claim the right of free union between men and women; he may contend he is perfectly at liberty to join himself, either temporarily or permanently with a woman; and that the mere legal form of marriage has no binding force with him."
["Outlooks From a New Standpoint," by Ernest Belfort Bax, page 114 of the 1891 edition.]
"Prost.i.tution for private gain is morally repellent. But the same outward act done for a cause transcending individual interest loses its character of prost.i.tution." [Ibid., page 123.]
"There are few points on which advanced radicals and Socialists are more completely in accord than their hostility to the modern legal monogamic marriage." [Ibid., page 151.]
"There are excellent men and women, possibly the majority, born with dispositions for whom a permanent union is doubtless just the right thing; there are other excellent men and women born with lively imaginations and Bohemian temperaments for whom it is not precisely the right thing." [Ibid., page 157.]
"Herein we have an instance of the distinction between bourgeois morality and Socialist morality. To the first it is immoral to live in a marital relation without having previously subscribed to certain legal formalities.... To the second ... to live in a state of unlegalized marriage defileth not a man, nor woman." [Ibid., page 158.]
"Socialism will strike at the root at once of compulsory monogamy."
[Ibid., page 159.]
Quotations from this base free-love book will end with the following: "If it be asked "is marriage a failure?" the answer of any impartial person must be "monogamic marriage is a failure"--the rest is silence.
We know not what the new form of the family, the society of the future in which men and women will be alike economically free, may involve, and which may be generally adopted therein. Meanwhile we ought to combat by every means within our power the metaphysical dogma of the inherent sanct.i.ty of the monogamic principle." ["Outlooks From a New Standpoint,"
by Ernest Belfort Bax, page 160 of the 1891 edition.]
"Outlooks From a New Standpoint," from which these quotations have been taken, was advertised in the price list of the Social Democratic Publishing Company of Milwaukee; and though it was sold for a dollar a copy at Victor Berger"s establishment, it has never been used by the Socialists of America to prove to the world that they do not advocate free-love.
In view of the fact that "Outlooks From a New Standpoint" was sold at Berger"s own publishing company, it is somewhat surprising to see him, in the August 10, 1912, edition of his paper, the Milwaukee "Social Democratic Herald," attacking, in a party squabble, "the men in control of the "International Socialist Review," ... who publish books in defense of what our enemies call free-love." Further on in the factional quarrel he writes: "I shall leave out the Christian Socialists entirely.
Many of them are honest in this fight. But these Christian Socialists--who are only a handful--are being used by cowardly a.s.sa.s.sins and practical free-lovers as a cat"s paw." Perhaps the Socialist publishers would be a little more free with their love for each other, if there was less compet.i.tion for the silver dollar.
Ernest Belfort Bax in another book, "Religion of Socialism," thus denounces the present form of family life: "We defy any human being to point to a single reality, good or bad, in the composition of the bourgeois family. It has the merit of being the most perfect specimen of complete sham that history has presented to the world." ["Religion of Socialism," by Ernest Belfort Bax, page 141 of the 1891 edition.]
"Socialism, Its Growth and Outcome," edited by Ernest Belfort Bax and William Morris, also advocates free-love, for its authors tell us that under Socialism "property in children would cease to exist, and every infant that came into the world would be born into full citizenship, and would enjoy all its advantages, whatever the conduct of its parents might be. Thus a new development of the family would take place, on the basis, not of a predetermined life-long business arrangement, to be formally and nominally held to irrespective of circ.u.mstances, but on mutual inclination and affection, an a.s.sociation terminable at the will of either party.... There would be no vestige of reprobation weighing on the dissolution of one tie and the formation of another." ["Socialism, Its Growth and Outcome," by Ernest Belfort Bax and William Morris, pages 299 and 300 of the 1893 edition.]
The "International Socialist Review," December, 1908, states that "Socialism, Its Growth and Outcome," by William Morris and Ernest Belfort Bax, is "a standard historical work long recognized as being of the utmost value to Socialists." According to the price list sent out from the National Office of the Socialist Party this work on free-love was on sale there for fifty cents a copy. Chas H. Kerr and Company, the Socialist publishing company of Chicago, in their catalogue advertised the same book as being one of the most important works in the whole literature of Socialism, by the two strongest Socialist writers of England. From these facts the reader may judge for himself whether or not the Revolutionists of America tell the truth when they claim that they are not the enemies of the family.
In a speech delivered on November 12, 1907, Henry Quelch, editor of the Socialist paper, "London Justice," made the following statement: "I do want to abolish marriage. I do want to see the whole system of society, as at present const.i.tuted, swept away. We want no marriage bonds. We want no bonds at all. We want free-love."
Edward Carpenter in his book, "Love"s Coming of Age," tells us that "marriage relations are raised to a much higher plane by a continual change of partners until a permanent mate and equal is found."
That this work on free-love might find a ready market among Socialists, Chas. H. Kerr and Company advertised it as follows in the "International Socialist Review," Chicago, December, 1902:
"He [i.e., Carpenter] faces bravely the questions that prudes of both s.e.xes shrink from, and he offers a solution that deserves the attention of the ablest leaders of popular thought, while his charmingly simple style makes the book easy reading matter for any one who is looking for new light on the present and future of men and women in their relations to each other."
In a 1912 catalogue the same publishing company volunteered the information that ""Love"s Coming of Age" is one of the best Socialist books yet written on the relations of the s.e.xes." In a 1917 booklet it was advertised by the company as being "by far the most satisfactory book on the relations of the s.e.xes in the coming social order."
Carpenter"s work was sold for a dollar a copy at the National Office of the Socialist Party in Chicago, and yet the Revolutionists persist in telling us that they do not advocate free-love.
August Bebel, the late leader of the German Socialists, was the author of a book ent.i.tled, "Woman Under Socialism." This work, however, is better known by the simple appellation, "Woman." A simple quotation will suffice to show that Bebel, like many other excellent Socialist authorities, advocates free-love:
"If incompatibility, disenchantment or repulsion set in between two persons that have come together, morality commands that the unnatural and therefore immoral bond be dissolved." ["Woman Under Socialism," by Bebel, page 344 of the 1904 edition in English.]
Bebel"s book has had an immense circulation. Over thirty editions have been issued, and translations have been made into nearly all the European languages. Before his death in August, 1913, he was the admiration of millions of the Revolutionists the world over. His book is considered everywhere as a standard work on International Socialism and is, of course, on sale with the other free-love publications at the National Office of the Socialist Party. Chas H. Kerr and Company in 1917 advertised Bebel"s work as being one of the greatest Socialist books ever written.
Frederick Engel"s "Origin of the Family," a work that has made its author famous among Socialists on both sides of the Atlantic, contains the following statement relative to free-love:
"These peculiarities that were stamped upon the face of monogamy by its rise through property relations will decidedly vanish, namely the supremacy of men and the indissolubility of marriage.... If marriage founded on love is alone moral, then it follows that marriage is moral only as long as love lasts. The duration of an attack of individual s.e.x love varies considerably according to individual disposition, especially in men. A positive cessation of fondness or its replacement by a new pa.s.sionate love makes a separation a blessing for both parties and for society. But humanity will be spared the useless wading through the mire of a divorce case." ["The Origin of the Family," by Fredrick Engels, page 99 of the 1907 translation into English by Untermann.]
"The Comrade," New York, November, 1902, thus commends Engel"s book: "One of the most important issues of that excellent Standard Socialist Series published by Chas. H. Kerr and Company is "The Origin of the Family," by Fredrick Engels, now for the first time translated into English by Ernest Untermann. This book, first published in 1884, has been translated into almost every European language and has long been regarded as one of the cla.s.sics of Socialist philosophical literature."
"The Call," New York, February 27, 1910, deems "The Origin of the Family" worthy of editorial comment: "The one book that contains in small compa.s.s what every woman ought to know is Fredrick Engel"s "The Origin of the Family." Every Socialist woman should become a book agent to sell this book."
"The International Socialist Review," October, 1902, expressed its admiration of Engel"s work by stating that "this book has long been known as one of the great Socialist cla.s.sics and has been translated into almost every other language than English.... The book is really one of the two or three great Socialist cla.s.sics; and now that it is in English, it must find a place in the library of everyone who hopes to master the real fundamental philosophy underlying Socialism."
"The Origin of the Family," notwithstanding[20] the fact that it contains matter too foul to comment on, for example a certain comparison that is made on page 39, was listed with the books sold at the National Office of the Socialist Party, and at Chas. H. Kerr and Company, the largest Socialist publishing company in the United States.