A Socialist is a Fanatic Believer in an Economic Fallacy by P. H. Scullin 1910
To the man who does not know, and has not the time nor desire to find out for himself from actual contact and experience of the blind, unreasoning belief of the Socialist in his own economic religion (for it is his religion and his only religion), I would recommend the reading of "The Veiled Prophet" in Moore's "Lalla Rookh," where he tells us:
"That ne'er did Faith with her smooth bandage bind
Eyes more devoutly willing to be blind
In his own cause—never was soul inspired
With livelier trust in what it most desired.
The babe may cease to think that it can play
With Heaven's rainbow—alchemists may doubt
The shining gold their crucible gives out,
But Faith, fanatic Faith, once wedded fast
To some dear falsehood, hugs it to the last."
Once a man embraces Socialism he is outside the pale of all logical reasoning; he will not listen to anything excepting what pertains to the propagation of his own dear, false belief. He has no time to listen to those who do not believe as he does. He wants to do all the talking, and he takes care that he will do all the talking. He doesn't want to be convinced; he is already convinced beyond all hope of change. His mission henceforth is to convert, not to be converted. However patient you may be you cannot get in a word. He never tires; he talks to you, at you, over you and all around you, but he never listens. What's to be done with him then? Just leave him alone, that's all; he'll die sometime. But let us try and save the rising generation from imbibing his false economic doctrine.
Socialism in its present stage is a creed, a faith, a blind, unreasoning belief amounting to fanaticism. They teach that they have founded the only infallible, economic religion by which the working man may or can be saved from oppression and injustice. They have their share of hypocrites and unbelievers who preach their gospel for no other reason than to make an easy living, but I believe there are others who have embraced higher and holier creeds, who are equally imposed upon, but the preaching impostor does not, nor can he, detract one iota from our admiration for the honest believer who sits, listens and believes both in the preaching and the preacher. Why, then, blame the Socialist, if he does but honestly believe?
Socialism is a disease. It is a disease of the mind, and what is worse, it is an infectious disease and anarchy is but an acute stage of the disease. It is, from the first, all but incurable, for the simple reason that in its insidious development it blinds the moral perception as to what is just and what is unjust. It strikes its devotees with moral blindness. This is the most hideous feature of this new political faith.
People wonder at the spread and growth of Socialism, but why? Simply because they wonder without thinking. When the followers of Joseph Smith could be brought to look on the bestial institution of polygamy as a religion; when Dowie, the ex-convict, could make thousands not only believe that he was Elijah II, but could get them to surrender their wealth in evidence of their faith, what then? Is not Socialism promising the workingman a heaven here on earth with a choice of broad highways to reach the next?
Any man who has made a study of Socialism, mixed with Socialists, reasoned with them and has himself remained healthy, will confirm my statement that it is an infectious disease. But if it is a disease of the mind, why does it not attack the rich and well-to-do? Easily answered. The subject must be in a receptive mood or it is impervious to disease of any and of all kinds. There are men who could not take smallpox, yellow fever or the mumps. Poverty has ever been responsive both to disease and malignant influence.
We do not find fault with a man for having a fever, smallpox or diphtheria,—not at all. Instead we call upon the most eminent doctors and medical practitioners in our midst to care for the patient and safeguard the community from the spread of the disease.
But what have we ever done, either to cure the diseased Socialistic mind or check the growth or spread of Socialism among our otherwise healthy and well-disposed American workmen? I answer, nothing and worse than nothing. Not content with our neglect at home we are engaged in the business of importing the foreign article. Every vile concoction of international human filth is being dumped upon our American shores. We see the Mafia, the Carbinarria, the Black Hand, the Socialist and the Anarchist take root, grow and flourish in this our land of liberty and equal rights. We see the imported product of foreign nations come to our country and in a few short years, through influence gained in irresponsible organizations, becoming dictators in the political field, dictating to American-born citizens the men for whom they shall vote, and assailing our laws and the dispensers of our laws.
Ex-President Roosevelt has declared that the worst enemies of our American institutions are the men who are trying to array one class of American citizens against another. The scriptures tell us that a house divided against itself must fall. Yet, in spite of the warnings of our president, the scriptures and experience; in spite of our own better judgment; in contemptuous defiance of what may and will follow if we persist in our past and present wicked, selfish, uncharitable and un-American industrial and political methods of disintegration and despoliation, we sleep on.
In the present condition of society, where only wealth or eminence can gain a hearing, where the average business man has neither the time to read nor to listen, it is little short of folly on the one hand and presumption on the other, for the unknown to give expression to thoughts, fraught though they be with importance in relation to our country's future; yet would I call upon our representative men to pause and think, and I would have them do their thinking now, this very minute. There is no to-morrow. It is only the fool that says to-morrow will do. The Socialist, the Anarchist, the professional agitator, the social and industrial disrupter of our peace and unity does not wait for to-morrow. He used up yesterday; he is using to-day, and he will be here tomorrow also, with only this difference: To-morrow there will be two where there is one to-day. If there is one evil in our country to be deplored above another, it is our individual indifference to community interests, and the future of our Nation. No one seems to have a moment to spare for the safeguarding of the best interests of all, and yet if we but took a sane or common-sense business interest in our own children's future how easy it would be to hand down to them and theirs, in perpetuity, that National stability which we have enjoyed and whose very foundations are threatened to-day. And threatened by what? By irresponsible, glibtongued orators, who are spreading abroad the spirit of discontent and instilling in the mind of ignorance the poison of class hatred. They are successful in their mission of evil because of our indifference, but let us not forget that if their converts are not endowed with an overplus of intelligence, they are at least endowed with muscle, and that infuriated ignorance loses little time in its deliberations over who shall be its victims. It strikes first and deliberates afterwards.
While it is my intention, in the near future, to treat at length and in a separate pamphlet, the cure for the evils I have pointed out, I believe the following exposition of Socialism, its methods and designs, would be incomplete did I not endeavor to interest our thinking business and professional men in some specific and earnest movement to counteract the evil that is being done to the present and coming generation, by the false and materialistic education of to-day. This question of Socialism and anarchy can no longer be considered merely a passing delusion. It is here. It is a disease and it is spreading. It is insidious, and like a cancer or leprosy. When it takes the patient he is incurable. What, then, should be done to safeguard society from the dire results that are sure to follow in the fullness of time? There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that can be done except that which the Socialists themselves are doing, namely, educate the people. What our country wants, needs and must have is a well-organized and systematic plan of wholesome economic education. Socialistic and Anarchistic literature is, at the present moment, being printed in the United States in seven different languages and is being distributed by the ton. Emma Goldman and Anarchist Berkman distributed 135,000 anarchist pamphlets to the working men of Chicago and New York during the Labor Day parade of 1903, and are to-day lecturing all over our country, hiring our most expensive halls and stopping in first-class hotels, being interviewed by special reporters, and are given whole columns of advertising in the public press. The Appeal to Reason has 250,000 subscribers and is read by probably 1,000,000, including women and children. There is a Socialistic newspaper in every city of any size in the United States. They have their public lecturers by the thousands, from Debs down to the curbstone orator on the street corner. In the workshop they include the Workmen of the World and the Western Federation of Miners. Their latest move on the Pacific Coast is the offering of money prizes to our public-school children for the best essays on SOCIALISM. This is for the nefarious purpose of inducing our children to read their own literature to the end that their young and impressionable minds may become poisoned or inoculated with the Socialistic virus of to-day.
In my varied experience of sixty years as an observing man, I know of no public evil of which we have been so neglectful. I know of no menace to community interests, to public or national welfare or to the well-being of coming generations to which we have shown such utter indifference. Other diseases kill the body only. This disease affects the mind, destroys all peace, blights hope and hurls the souls of men to perdition. In page 26 of State Socialism and Anarchy, it is said: "We look upon divine authority and religious sanction of morality as the chief pretexts put forward by the privileged classes for the exercise of human authority." "If God exists," says Proudhon, "He is man's enemy." In all other affairs of life we are most watchful, ever on the alert to checkmate, prevent, eradicate and banish from our midst anything and everything that might be hurtful to either the individual or the community. If crime is rampant we add to our police force and pass more stringent laws for the suppression of vice. If typhoid fever is epidemic we immediately improve sanitary conditions. If contagious disease appears we establish quarantine hospitals. Our scientists are forever delving into the mysterious chambers of the unknown to find the means of relieving pain, renewing health and prolonging life, not to speak of the infinite service they have done and are still doing by their classification of microbes, to the end that the good microbe may eat the bad one.
We permit a fool his liberty so long as he is harmless; we do not interfere with the faith and prayer healers so long as they do not neglect to call in the doctor, but the moment the fool becomes dangerous we send him to an asylum, and should the faith curist neglect to call in the doctor and the patient die, we immediately put the man of prayer in jail. There is just one protection against Socialism, and that is to beat the Socialist at his own game. How? Simply by an honest, earnest campaign of wholesome economic education, free from every bias, non-partisan, logical and clean. I feel certain that if some man of standing would only take up this question of combating Socialism in the way I have suggested, not by fault-finding, suppression or harsh treatment, but through rebuttal and by showing the fallacy and degradation of the entire Socialistic structure, great good would result from the effort. There are thousands of wealthy and patriotic citizens who would be glad to give the movement their warmest support. For the entire ten years that I have been before the people, working for industrial peace, both business and professional men have been saying to me, "Something must be done, Mr. Scullin; something must be done." Here they leave the matter.
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