duction of the labor time, in some individual factory or in some line of occupation, is a purely economic movement; but a movement trying to obtain an eight-hour law, or something similar, is a political movement. And in this way a political movement grows everywhere out of the various economic movements of the working class, that is, a movement of the class to enforce its demands in some general form, in some form, which shall have a general social power.

Wherever the working class is not far enough advanced in its organization to undertake an effective campaign against the collective power, that is, the political power of the ruling classes, it should be trained for this work by a continual agitation against the attitude towards the polixies of the ruling classes which is hostile to us. Otherwise the working class will remain a plaything in the hands of the ruling classes. This has been demonstrated by the September revolution in France and is proved to a certain degree by the game, which is still played with success in England by Gladstone and his helpers.

(Translated by Ernest Untermann.)

KARL MARX.

A Tallow Candle.

HAT'S THIS-what's this-more light wanted? Well, as Br'er Mc Pherson is the first Socialist I ever saw or heard of who didn't think he knew it all and who hadn't information to give away, throw away and burn, somebody ought to send a few scintillating sparks in his direction. But perhaps the situation is not so desperate as he seems to regard it; perhaps as light is known to travel 182,000 miles in a second-the irradiation from a tallow candle will do the trick.

But right here at the outset it is pertinent to inquire: What is there in the philosophy of the under-dog, in the co-operative, as distinguished from the competitive, principle that gives a Socialist the chance to aim at its vital concepts harpoons of logic that would make a Mallock go off and kick himself for envy? Can it be that our terminology is to blame? Shall it finally come to this that a Socialist essay will resemble a New-thoughtbrain-splurge?

"Ay; there's the villainy!" exclaimed Petruchio to the tailor, when he came to the sleeves; and it may be that our wealth of metaphor, our redundant rhetoric, the "scientific" atmosphere created by "intellectuals" and college professors, have in some degree tended to obscure the main issue which is: The planet for those who perform the work of the planet. Or, putting it another way-Happiness and abundance being the only desiderata, these cannot be assured to any until they shall have become the heritage of all through universal co-operation.

A recognition and adoption of the principle must include, in the first place, the ascendency (by pacific or more forcible means, according to circumstances) of the working class; in the second. place, the abolition of classes.

We read and hear nowadays a great deal about economic determinism and the materialistic conception of history. Admirable phrases both; but we should have a standard by which to definitely interpret their precise meaning. Some writers use them interchangeably, while others assume that the materialistic conception of history is simply the antithesis of the theological conception of history; leaving to economic determinism the explanation of purely economic phenomena, that is, the bread and butter side of the question.

Nature, evolution, psychology, metaphysics-are all words

for the unwary to conjure with; for they seem to have whatever meaning the individual writer wishes to juggle into them. In this regard it is perhaps unfortunate that Engels should have written a sentence like this: "Man, at last the master of his own form of social organization, becomes at the same time the lord over Nature, his own master-free"; for it afforded McPherson an opportunity to read into the word "Nature" a meaning never dreamed of by Engels or probably, for that matter, any other Socialist, and gave him a chance to perpetrate that masterpiece of illogical logic entitled "Economic Determinism and Martyrdom."

Nature is the physical universe, the cosmos, composed, according to scientists, of matter and force; and how, in the name of all that is sensible, can man lord it over that combination? Man is the infinitesimally puny creature of Nature, and in the twinkling of an eye she may snuff out the whole race and reconvert into nebulous star-dust the cockle-shell upon which, like any ruffed-up bantam cock, man "struts and frets his little hour." But as man cannot lord it over Nature, neither does she consciously lord it over man, for that would imply a preconceived plan by which the race was being lifted to some glorious height or, on the other hand, rushed to some fearful doom (according as she was benevolently or malevolently disposed) and in either case, being the creatures of a superior will, all our efforts to change the existing order of things would necessarily be as ineffective as they would be ill-advised.

From which it comes about that all this talk about man lording it over Nature and Nature lording it over man is the silliest moonshine. And yet upon this prestidigitation of sovereignty, by which the control passes from Nature to man, is based McPherson's entire argument. When man diverts the raging torrent of the Mississippi into artificial storage reservoirs, to be later drawn upon in times of drouth; when he constructs dykes, retaining walls and levees along that or any stream; when he utilizes natural waterfalls to furnish heat, light and power-he in a sense harnesses Nature and forces her to become his slave. But that cannot be the sort of sovereignty to which McPherson refers, for it is not contingent upon the inauguration of the Socialistic programme-from the earliest times man has thus taken advantage of Nature.

What, then, did so clear a thinker, so logical a writer, as Engels mean when he prophesied man's ascendency over the forces of Nature? Why, just what every student and every Socialist has always supposed him to mean. As a figure of rhetoric, as an allegory-as when one speaks of owning the earth-all writers indulge in such flights of fancy, and Engels was no exception. Out of his rich imagery, when dreaming of the day

that man should throw off his industrial shackles, and what was of infinitely more importance, his mental shackles, Engels allows himself that harmless metaphor.

"It seems to me," declares McPherson, "that neither he (Engels) nor Marx ever proved how man could become free, in the sense in which he uses the word. Since he and Marx admit that man has come up from savagery by the road of pain-by being slaves to Nature, how, then, can he consistently assert that by a transition more or less cataclysmic or revolutionary, man suddenly awakens to the fact that he is no more the slave of Nature, but Nature is thenceforth his slave? As he puts it, ‘man emerges from mere animal conditions to human ones.'

It is very true that neither Marx nor Engels ever did prove how man could become free, in the sense in which he (meaning McPherson) uses the word; but that is only an incomplete statement of their position. To add the finishing stroke one is compelled to say they never tried to. And while we're all ready to admit that man has come up from savagery by the road of pain (the pain is not all out of the road even yet) we must strenuously balk at the idea that he came up by being a slave to Nature; nor will Nature presently or more remotely become his slave-in any sense, excepting a figurative one. Nor in Engels' matter-of-fact and (to me) entirely reasonable statement that man emerges from mere animal conditions to human ones (that is, as soon as he has had the good taste to throw monopoly off his back) can I discover good cause for believing that he expected Nature to thenceforth allow herself to be saddled and bridled in man's service-in any different sense than she so allowed herself before the said emergence.

Yes, yes, Br'er Mac, this is a "weary warld" and the "pale nemesis" still pursues us, her golden hair a-hangin' down her back. From ancient Babylon to San Juan Hill (there was at least one Spaniard shot in the back during the latter and now historic engagement) the record is black with human hatred and red with human blood. Whether it be primitive barbarism, early slavery, feudal serfdom or the more up-to-date capitalistic maelstrom that we put under the limelight we see nothing but blood and tears and sweat and misery and victims by the million-by the billion-but don't, for heaven's sake, charge that up to Marx or Engels or economic determinism or Nature or progress or evolution; for they're each and all, seriatim or bunched, absolutely guiltless. If you believe in a God and think his shoulders are broad enough to stand it-put it onto him. If you do not believe in a God-lay it to Harry Orchard-or to heredity or both.

"In all earnestness" inquires McPherson, "is there not something radically preposterous in this continual enslavement of one generation for the betterment of the next? We seem, even at

our so-called high scientific and intellectual stage, to be still no better than the blind and brutal savages, our ancestors. Yet, so far as we know, or so far as Marx or any of his disciples has told us, there is no alternative."

Indeed, there is something radically preposterous in the continual enslavement of one generation for the betterment of the next; but when we are gravely assured that neither Marx nor any of his disciples has proposed an alternative it is perfectly in order to protest and we rise to insert a correction.

In the grandest and most pregnant words ever uttered by mortal tongue-words that will reverberate down the ages when lesser perorations shall have been buried a mile deep under the rubbish-heaps of history-Karl Marx, his lone and stalwart form silhouetted against a background of almost universal sycophancy, thundered forth: Workingmen of the world unite! You have everything to gain; you have nothing to lose but your chains.

That was his alternative to an endless-chain of human sacrifice, and some at least of his disciples and followers are still thrilling with that vibrant message the dull, quiescent and unimaginative slaves to ignorance, to convention, to heredity, to superstition.

Let us pass on to the crême de la crême of McPherson's argument, the grand climax of his ratiocinative method, by which are reduced to nihilistic kindling-wood not only martyrdom and progress, but the essence-the quintessence, one may say-of Socialism itself. He says:

"Reasoning from Marx' and Engels' doctrine, and using the criteria and ideas provided by my capitalistic surroundings (as we all perforce must do) I should be compelled to predict that if the future releases man from the necessity of blood-spillingfrom the well-known method of making martyrs, he must inevitably become extinct. Furthermore, I should be compelled to say, that since capital began its own negation, and since this negation is the germ of a higher development, and that higher development will be Socialism, and since Socialism implies reversal of the timehonored relations between man and Nature (as Engels says) Socialism will contain no negation; therefore, containing no negation, it will contain no germ of a higher development. Consequently we are forced to admit that Socialism cannot be progressive. In other words Socialism precipitates a social organism in which no martyrs are manufactured by economic determinism. And as martyrdom, since the dawn of life on the globe has been borne in the same womb with progress-is, in fact, its twin brother; therefore Socialism cuts off the possibility of martyrdom, and, at the same time, cuts out the womb which, it is held by Marx, gives conception to progress. And to assume