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Wail not for precious chances passed away,
Weep not for golden ages on the wane;
Each night I burn the records of the day,
At sunrise every soul is born again.

Laugh like a boy at splendors that have sped,

To vanished joys be blind and deaf and dumb;
My judgments seal the dead past with its dead,
But never bind a moment yet to come.

Though deep in mire, wring not your hands and weep,
I lend my arm to all who say, "I can."
No shamefaced outcast ever sank so deep
But might rise and be again a man.

Dost thou behold thy lost youth all aghast?
Dost reel from righteous retribution's blow?
Then turn from blotted archives of the past
And find the future's pages white as snow.

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Exaggeration is a blood relation to falsehood and nearly as blameable.

Ballou.

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VOL. XXIV.

MY PLATFORM

JOHN F. HOGAN, Founder, Detroit, Mich.

To combat Socialism.

To uphold our Representative Form of Government.
To safeguard rights of Life, Liberty and Property.

To promote respect for Constituted Authority.

To assist in a better mutual understanding between Capital and
Labor, Rich and Poor, Employer and Employee.

To sustain workmen in their demand for Just Compensation.
To support Employers in their right for Reasonable Profits.

To make clear that the interests of both sides are mutual, and
based on Loyalty in its broadest sense.

To advocate Individual Initiative as the basis for all Social, In-
dustrial and Political Progress.

To Defend Integrity of Family, Love of Country, Reverence for
God.

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THE AMERICAN WEAKLING.

by THE EDITOR.

HEN the Colonists resisted the strictures imposed by England and thereby entered into a bloody war-they announced their belief in the theory that progress and prosperity depend upon liberty and freedom.

Jefferson, himself in upholding this principle, declared that "Prosperity is most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise."

The founders of our government did not seek to invade the fields hitherto conceded to the individual, wisely holding that the progress and prosperity of the United States is based, not on government enterprise, but instead, upon the individual himself. Because of this wise policy pursued for more than 100 years, the United States prospered wonderfully.

No. 4

In recent years the tendency of the times points towards government ownership, whether in the nation, state or city.

It is a movement towards paternalism and socialism.

It is, moreover, a confession of our weakness as a people and proclaims to the world at large the sad but true fact that we are not as strong as our forefathers showed themselves to be.

Government ownership demands scientific study and the determination of unvarying principles. Yet, in the whole field of government activity, according to Professor J. W. Jenks, no such principles have ever been established on a fact basis in this country.

The United States Steel Corporation, the Standard Oil Company, the International Harvester Company, the

Example is the school of mankind; they will learn at no other.-Burke.'

telegraph and telephone systems, and thousands of other great business enterprises were all created by individuals. If the tendency towards government ownership and control continues to increase at the rate shown by recent investigations, then we may look for the day to come when no great individual enterprise will be in existence in the United States. We will have gone back among the second and third rate powers of the world.

There have been faults in the creation and operation of these great enterprises and some of them may be justly censured for their transgressions; but how much better help to overcome their faults rather than to destroy the institutions altogether.

The ignorant, the unthinking and the weaklings have backed up the Political Demagogue and the Yellow Press in their attacks on society and business.

They have demanded that the government shall own and operate, not alone public utilities, but also many other kinds of business.

These ignorant and unthinking weaklings do not understand that government ownership is absolutely destructive to our representative form of government. Nor do they know that government service is less efficient, more costly, as well as subversive to political influence; that government ownership opens the way for absolute domination of government by selfish, interested government employes.

If the telegraph and telephone companies, railroads and other public utilities were to be owned and operated by the government, there would be, according to the United States census, more than 4,000,000 new government

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employes. This gigantic labor army would at once become a most powerful organized force in every political campaign. We cannot close our eyes to the fact that their influence would naturally be exerted for the promotion of their own interests and in favor of that party or candidate that promised most for the fulfillment of their own desires. What would be the result?

When we recall that, in the past ten presidential elections, the president has been chosen by a plurality ranging from a little over 7,000 to about two and one-half millions, the danger arising from this source at once becomes clear and alarming.

According to a retired Admiral of the United States Navy, the present day American is a weakling, due to our system of employing women teachers. Germany, he notes, employ men to teach boys.

Whatever may be the cause, however, the fact remains that the people of the United States are depending more and more on the government for protection and less and less on themselves.

If our republican form of government is to be perpetuated, we must build up a strong and intelligent American people-otherwise we may fall as Rome fell through its excesses and lack of personal responsibility. The first lesson must begin at the cradle and be carried on through our educational institutions.

We must be taught to be self-reliant and independent; to obey constituted authority; to assume our own measure of personal responsibilityin short, to be like our forefathers. Can we "come back?" Let's try.

~

¶The first great gift we can bestow on others, is a good example.-Morell.

Socialism-If Tried Out!

The Result and How it would work.

A discussion of what may happen under Socialism.

by W. S. KRESS.
AN AUTHORITY.

OCIALISM is an inconvenient word, meaning different things to different people. Some men think they are socialists, because they believe in better wages and shorter hours; others because they believe in government ownership of public utilities; as used in this review, Socialism, shall be considered identical with the international organization, of which our two American Socialist parties are recognized branches.

Capitalism Is Hell.

Socialist orators and journalists gloat over every money-crisis, business failure, labor trouble-not to mention moral delinquencies-ascribing each to the viciousness of the competitive organization under which we are living. They call the latter by the short word, "Capitalism."

They hold capitalism responsible for about all the evils that exist, including prostitution, policemen, soldiers, lawyers, judges and jails. One of their writers summarized all its abominations in the one expressive phrase that is said to stand for war, "Capitalism is hell."

They admit a difference, however, between this hell and the one the Bible tells of our present hell is to come to an end just as soon as enough of us vote the Socialist ticket.

Socialists look with undisguised satisfaction upon the formation of gi

gantic corporations, and they view the swallowing up of small and competing firms with as much delight as a small boy watching the disappearance of live worms down a robbin's gullet. It was the teaching of the first Socialist philosophers that the middle class would be gradually eliminated (which however, has not happened); that the classstruggle would eventually be pitched between powerful capitalists, the holders of centralized wealth, and a propertyless proletariat; then in the end, the proletariat coming to the knowledge of their resistless power, or driven to that crisis by ever increasing misery, would make themselves masters of their means of life and take over the direction of all business of production, as well as of distribution and exchange. They believe that trusts and monopolies are now doing the more difficult work of combining the smaller industries: it will be all the more easy, they say, when the time is ripe for it, to transfer their holdings to the Co-operative Commonwealth.

Socialists expect to bring about their revolutionary change by peaceful means if possible; by force, if necessary. A certain section of the Socialist party, under the leadership of plain spoken Bill Haywood, and in conjunction with a Socialist trade union, have been preaching violence to the evident

¶ Fearless minds, climb soonest unto crowns.-Shakespeare.

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¶ A good way of testing the theory of Socialism, is by constructing an imaginary Commonwealth--much as the inventor carves out his model-applying the recognized and universally admitted principles of International Socialism in our planning. We need waste no time in the temporary demands of Socialist platforms; nor upon the qualifying proposition, sometimes advanced by vote catching that only the big trusts and monopolies are to be taken over; we shall go at once to the ripe fruit of the Socialist tree, and try to get the true taste of what is promsied

us.

The last clause of the platforms of 1908 and 1912, reads: "Such measures as we may be able to force from capitalism are but a preparation of the workers to seize the whole power of government, in order that they may thereby lay hold of the whole system of industry and thus come to their rightful inheritance."

T

How It Would Work.

3

HE rose door of Socialism is attractive; but let us not linger too long among the flowers on the outside. "Step inside, please," is the greeting of a nephew of Victor Berger's; "What would you like to choose out of nature's bountiful store house?"

Will there, to begin with, be an abundance? If the labor hours are going to be shortened considerably, where will the abundance come from?

You will have capital's share to add to your own, they say. But the part capitalists spend upon their own personal wants, for which they have given no equivalent in personal labor, would not increase the stores perceptibly. The bulk of large incomes, goes back into production; and an ever increasing capital will be needed then as now. When you have made the rounds of the community store, and taken a good look at its treasures, I fear you will be disappointed. Your Socialist prospectus led you to expect more than you can find. The soap boxers have been telling the profits in a shortening of hours. workmen they will get the producer's

At another time they tell their workers that they will be able to buy at the cost of production.

Now that they have come to lay in a supply of the good things they will begin to think that somebody must have prevaricated.

It is just possible that after having passed the rose door you will be seated at a long table and a Sears-Roebuck catalog placed before you together with a writing pad, and you will be told to make out a requisition for supplies, as they do now at government store houses.

Governments are fond of doing business in that impersonal way; for it saves time and expense.

Suppose you are not satisfied with the

q He that is good for making excuses, is seldom good for anything else.

Franklin.

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