In the January number of this REVIEW appeared an article by M. Emile de Laveleye, entitled "Two New Utopias. 11* A project of industrial reform, recently outlined by M. Charles Secrétan, figures as one of these Utopias, while the other is the plan of national co-operation described in "Looking Backward," and known in the United States by the name of Nationalism. The propriety of the name lies in the claim that the system in question is the logical outworking and development of the germinal idea of a nation, which is that of a union of people for the purpose of using the collective power to promote the common welfare. It is claimed by those who, in this sense, are believers in Nationalism, that this conception of the nation, although at first expressed only by the use of collective

power for military and judicial purposes, logically involved, when it should be necessary for the common welfare, a national organization of industry on the basis of a common obligation of service, and a general guarantee of livelihood. It will be seen that the significance of the word Nationalism, in this sense, quite transcends the merely political or ethnical purport of its ordinary uses.

In the March number of this REVIEW, M. de Laveleye pursued his criticism of Nationalism by a second article under the title of "Communism." I propose in the present paper to respond to the gist of the criticisms contained in the two articles. I have to thank M. de Laveleye for the very fair statement, so far as it goes, of the industrial aspects of Nationalism, to which he gives a considerable part of the first article. The comment with which he concludes his account of

the plan is that there are two principal objections to its practicability" the first referring to the allotment of functions, the second to the distribution of produce." Under the first head he remarks that, obviously, seeing all forms of industry are left open to the election of the workers upon proof of fitness-no other compulsion being used, after the first three years, beyond the requirement that some sort of work should be done "the pleasanter trades and professions would be taken up, and there would be no one to fill the less agreeable ones."

Of course, the answer to this in the book is that the hours of labor are reduced in the more arduous trades to half, a third, or a quarter of those which are required in the more attractive occupations. M. de Laveleye admits that this principle is certainly just, and might be applied in a certain measure in any national industrial organization, but he thinks there are certain occupations so repulsive, that no comparative reduction of hours consistent with any sort of continuous work would suffice to tempt men to engage in them voluntarily. For examples he instances, among others, the miner's work and the work of stokers on steamships. It does not appear to me that these cases offer any difficulty at all. In the first place, let it be understood that, with the advent of Nationalism, the perilous, insalubrious, and revolting conditions which now quite needlessly involve these and many other forms of labor would be done away with. When the administration has to depend, as it then will have to do, upon volunteers to dig coal, and stoke steamship furnaces, mines will cease to be death traps, and a part of the money and ingenuity now lavished in making the saloon deck luxurious will be expended in making the stokehole endurable. When starvation can no longer be depended upon to compel the poor to beg an opportunity to do any soit of work, on any terms, and at any hazard, then, and not a day sooner, will humane and hygienic conditions become universal in industry. Let us suppose the forms of toil instanced by M. de Laveleye to have been thus deprived of their most repul sive features. If it were still found that a reduction of the hours of labor in them, say to three or four a day, were an insufficient inducement to attract volunteers, let us imagine that the length of the vaca

tions given to the miners and stokers were so increased that they had to work but six months out of the year, while other trades worked, perhaps, ten or eleven. Is it not probable that there would be, under such circumstances, a rush to the mines and steamships which would leave the shops and railways short of help?

But I am not going to let M. de Laveleye off with merely answering his objection. I have a serious counter-charge to make. His argument that society cannot afford to abolish poverty lest men, being no longer threatened with starvation, should be found unwilling to do the more repulsive sorts of work, is a very explicit argument for human slavery. Men now living can well remember when this very argument was urged for the retention of slave labor in the sugar-fields of Jamaica, and the cotton-fields of the Southern United States. When Wilberforce and Garrison demanded that the blacks be set free, it was replied, that, if freed, they could no longer be depended on to cultivate cotton and sugar, and the world would be left without these products. Is not this precisely M. de Laveleye's logic when he reasons that white men ought not to be released from the pressure of want, lest we should run short of coal, or our steamships cease to break records? Could there conceivably be a stronger argument against the present industrial system than this deliberate statement by one of its champions that its successful working demands the retention of a race of helots in a state of involuntary servitude?

Next to the difficulty in getting the world's dirty work done without the lash of hunger, M. de Laveleye declares the chief objection to Nationalism to be the system of remuneration, that is to say, the equality with which all share in the total product. To prove that no industrial system can succeed in which equality of shares is the rule, he instances the failure of Louis Blanc's national workshops at Paris in 1848, and of Marshal Bugeaud's colonies at Beni-Mered in Algeria. If he would like a few dozen more examples of the failure of colonies or communities established as social or industrial experiments in the midst of incongruous and hostile environments, I can easily furnish him with them. Such undertakings must usually fail for obvious reasons, and even when occasionally they succeed, their

success proves as little for their theories as the failure would have proved against them. If I had suggested a colony, these illustrations would be pertinent, but, as it is, I fail to see that they are so. Na tional co-operation is my proposal, nor would any Nationalist suggest that the substitution of the new system for the old should be, as to equality of compensation, any more than as to other details, anything but gradual.

Further representing the impracticability of an industrial system under which all share alike, M. de Laveleye inquires what punishment is to overtake the idler, or the man refusing to work. That compulsion as to work of some sort and punishment for recalcitrancy is contemplated by the plan, he recognizes, but asks who is to apply it, or judge when it is necessary. lle says: "Certainly men would in all probability rarely refuse to do any work at all; but those who do as little as possible, or do it badly, are they to be punished or to receive the same salary, or rather be credited with the same amount, as the others? The State could not send away a bad workman as it can do now, for, there being no private enterprises, this dismissal would be equivalent to capital punishment."

Let me assure M. de Laveleye that the State would not send away a bad workman for quite another reason than that it would be equivalent to capital punishment. That other reason is that so to dismiss him would be to release him from his duty of service. Under the present system of industry, if a man will not work for his living, he is permitted to go his ways, and thenceforth beg or steal it. Under Nationalism a very different course would be pursued. The man who, being able to work, persistently refused to work, would not, as now, be turned loose to prey on the community, but would be made to work in institutions and under discipline prepared for such cases. To-day, the loafer may find in the injustices of society many fine pleas for idleness; then, he would be stripped of all, and stand forth self-confessed, a would-be robber and forager on others, to be dealt with as such.

To speak in detail of the penalties by which idleness, disobedience of orders, neglect of duty, and other minor infractions of discipline should be punished, would scarcely be in keeping with an

outline discussion like this; but suppose that, besides loss of promotion and its privileges, a temporary increase of work hours, or a severer sort of work, were imposed upon offenders. Is there any doubt that such a punitive system would prove far more effective against neglects of industrial duty than, for example, the system of fines now does in preventing the minor offences against society?

As to who should judge of the worker's idleness or neglect of duty, that would doubtless be, as judging is nowadays, a question of evidence for tribunals existing for the purpose. It appears to me that the difficulties M. de Laveleye sees here are not real.

It will be observed that the objections to which I have been endeavoring to reply, intimate in the critic's mind a probable inefficiency in the disciplinary and coercive powers of the administration under the National plan. In his second article, published in the March CONTEMPORARY, he abandons this ground and dwells strongly upon the excessive severity and iron rigidity likely to characterize the proposed industrial regime. Commenting upon this point, he observes that "the jailer would be the pivot of the new state of society." There is, of course, a sense in which the jail as the ultima ratio of the law, the force which gives meaning to the police-courts and legislatures, is the pivot of all society. If it were the pivot of the new society it could only be said that, in this respect, it would strikingly resemble the present society. There is, however, a very obvious and conclusive reason for believing that the force of public opinion under the new society would make the jailer's duties very light, so far as concerns the punishment of men refusing or neglecting industrial duty. The adventurer who lives by his wits nowadays, scorning honest labor, is a hero and fine fellow among his set, and, so long as he avoids open law-breaking, is tolerated by society. Upon reflection, of course, every one is bound to admit that he who does not labor lives at the expense of those who do; but the relations of production with distribution are so complex and fortuitous under the present system that this is only true generally and not particularly. Under the plan of National co-operation the case would, however, be perfectly clear. As already said, the man able to

work and attempting to evade his duty of contributing to the general produce from which he lived, would be recognized as a thief of the world and a picker of everybody's pocket. There would be no class, no set, no clique in whose eyes such a fellow would be a hero, or anything but a cheat and a cozener-the common enemy of all. It appears to me that, in assuming that the jailer would be overworked under the new industrial régime, M. de Laveleye has overlooked this consideration.

Why, even nowadays, in the better parts of the United States, and I presume in other countries, a man who does not find some regular occupation on coming of age, is, under ordinary circumstances, an object of such general contempt that he must be exceptionally thick-skinned to be able to take comfort in his leisure. How much more would this be true if, as under the plan of National co-operation, the man who shirked his work was recognized as a burden upon the country and upon every one of his neighbors ?

Perhaps enough has been said to indicate that the disciplinary and punitive side, the teeth and claws, of the new régime might probably be depended upon to prove efficient in case of need. But while it is requisite to provide society with due facilities for controlling the unruly and mutinous element which is found in all communities, vastly more important is the question of incentives to be offered to that vast majority who are well disposed and ready to do their duty upon reasonable inducement. While Nationalism will undertake to do more than any other régime ever before attempted in compelling the laziest to at least support himself, no system can make much profit out of unwilling workers. No form of compulsion, even if practicable, could take the place of zeal and ambition on the part of the worker, and if the proposed system should fail to stimulate voluntary diligence, it would be of little value that it prevented outright idleness. What inducement, then, does Nationalism offer to lead a worker to do his best, seeing that all workers, not distinctly negligent, are to fare alike? That is to say, admitting that complete idleness will be effectually prevented, how is zeal in the service to be encouraged? For, without that, there can be no healthy or wealthy industrial state. On this point M. de Laveleye says:

"When remuneration is in proportion to the work accomplished, diligence and activity are encouraged, whereas an equal rate of wages is a premium on idleness. But,' argues Mr. Bellamy, 'honor is a sufficient reward in itself, for men will sacrifice everything, even their lives, for it.' It is perfectly true that honor has inspired the most sublime acts and heroic deeds which have called forth universal admiration; but honor can never become the motive power of work or the mainspring of industry. It will not conquer selfish instincts, or overcome instinctive repugnance to certain categories of labor, or the dislike to the wearing monotony of the daily task. It may make a hero, but not a workman."

Here I must beg leave to differ most emphatically from M. de Laveleye. Honor does make a workman as well as a hero, and is as essential to the make-up of one as the other. This is a matter of common observation, and every man and woman who reads these lines is able to judge between M. de Laveleye and myself on the issue raised. Upon it I am ready to rest the whole case of Nationalism, and appeal to the country. I know that in America, at least, the workman who does not carry the feeling of honor into the performance of his task is not worth bis salt, and I shall be slow to believe it otherwise in England. So utterly wrong is M. de Laveleye on this point that, so far as there is any good and honest work done under this most ill-jointed system of industry, it is because the sentiment of honor, fast disappearing from the world of commerce and finance, still lingers in the workshop.

Of the motives which will spur the well-disposed to diligence under the system of Nationalism, three general classes may be mentioned: First, the sense of honorable and moral obligation to one's duty, a sentiment which may be expected to develop great influence under a system based, as no other ever has been, upon justice and fair-play for all. Second, the love of approbation, the desire to be thought well of, and to be admired by one's fellow men and women. This sentiment has, no doubt, in all ages and among all races, been on the whole the most powerful, constant, and universal of human motives. It is to-day, and always has been, the motive at bottom of the greater part of that zeal in business and industry which is ascribed, by superficial observers, to love of money. Under Nationalism, when diligence will be public service, and not mere self-service as now, the approba

tion of the community will attend it and crown it as never before. Even now the able business man and the clever workman are admired by the community, although they are only good to themselves. How much stronger, warmer, and more inspiring that admiration will be under Nationalism, when the able manager and the skilful artisan will be looked upon as the direct benefactors of all their fellow-citizens !

The third class of motives which will inspire diligence under Nationalism will be the desire of power, authority, and public station, the wish to lead and direct instead of being led and directed. Let us suppose a system of industry under which superior diligence and excellence of achievement should not only secure vanious immediate minor advantages of preference and privilege, but should offer the sure and single way to all positions of authority, of official rank, of civic honor. and of social distinction, of which the express purpose indeed should be to open the career to talent as it never was opened in human affairs before, in order that the strongest and ablest among the people might find themselves at the head of the

nation!

Under such a régime, it appears to me highly improbable that the equal provision made for the needs of all will diminish the disposition of men to do their best, but, on the contrary, altogether likely that it will be greatly intensified, in comparison with anything we see to-day.

I have gone thus explicitly into the question of the motives to diligence under Nationalism for the benefit of candid read ers, and not as a response really called for by M. de Laveleye's argument. So far as concerns the merits of his contention that the rule of equal wages is an impracticable one, the simplest and most conclusive way of disposing of that, is, no doubt, to refer him to the fact that a large, if not the largest, part of the world's work is at present being done on the basis of standard rates of wages. There are, of course, many industries in which the rule of piece-work prevails, and many sorts of employment in which the rate of pay is settled as to each individual by haggling with the employer, but there are, I think, many more (though the precise proportion is immaterial), both of the unskilled and the skilled occupations, in which the wages of the worker are deter

mined, not by his particular merits, but by the custom of the locality or by a fixed rule of the trade. There is, then, no question as to whether the rule of equal wages will work; it does work.

The standard of wages in different trades does indeed differ, and the pay of foremen and bosses is more than that of the men. It is not, of course, claimed that the Nationalist principle of equality is anywhere as yet fully carried out. It is claimed that in a large proportion of industrial occupations the rank and file of the workers receive a fixed and equal rate of wages, not dependent on personal efficiency, and that this plan is found, as a matter of practical experience, to work satisfactorily.

66

I wish to call particular attention to the fact, that in proportion as trades become highly organized, they tend to adopt the uniform rate of wages. Not to recognize in this tendency one of the lines of the evolution toward the Nationalist principle of a uniform maintenance for all, is to miss a sign of the times so plain that it would seem a wayfaring man, though a fool, need not err therein." The method of this particular line of evolution will appear as we consider why the members of a trade are moved to adopt the uniform rate of wages. It is simply because the integrity and harmony of the Trade Union, and its consequent ability to provide for its members, require a unity of sentiment and interest on the part of all, and this unity cannot be secured except on the basis of a uniform wage. The cleverer worker knows that in accepting the same wage with the less clever he relatively loses something. But he recognizes that the common gain which he, together with his fellows, derives from the greater efficiency of the union more than compensates him. He has, in a word, learned by hard knocks. the wisdom of unselfishness and the bad policy of a too narrow individualism. When, in the progress toward National cooperation, there shall be a question of an organization inclusive of different trades, and ultimately of one including all trades, precisely the same necessity of an identity of feeling and of interest on the part of the different groups of workers, if the organization is to hold together, will necessitate uniformity of wages in all trades alike, the less attractive being equalized with the more attractive by differences of hours. Any attempt to