Part 33 (2/2)
[190] ”All people of average healthy build _are born with almost equal intellectual powers, but education, laws and circ.u.mstances alter them relatively_. The correctly understood interest of the individual is blended into one with the common or public interest.”--Helvetius' ”On Man and His Education.” Helvetius is right with regard to the large majority of people; but that does not take away that the natural faculties of each are different for different occupations.
[191] ”If, therefore, the choice were to be made between Communism with all its chances, and the present state of society with all its sufferings and injustices; if the inst.i.tution of private property necessarily carried with it as a consequence, that the produce of labor should be apportioned as we now see it, almost in an inverse ratio to the labor--the largest portions to those who have never worked at all, the next largest to those whose work is almost nominal, and so in a descending scale, the remuneration dwindling as the work grows harder and more disagreeable, until the most fatiguing and exhausting bodily labor cannot count with certainty on being able to earn even the necessaries of life; if this or Communism, were the alternative, all the difficulties, great or small, of Communism would be but as dust in the balance.”--John Stuart Mill, ”Principles of Political Economy.” Mill strove diligently to ”reform” the bourgeois world, and to ”bring it to reason.” Of course, in vain. And so it came about that he, like all clear-sighted men, became a Socialist. He dared not, however, admit the fact in his life time, but ordered that, after his death, his auto-biography be published, containing his Socialist confession of faith. It happened to him as with Darwin, who cared not to be known in his life as an atheist. The bourgeoisie affects loyalty, religion and faith in authority because through the acceptance of these ”virtues” by the ma.s.ses its own rule is safeguarded; in its own sleeves, however, it laughs at them.
[192] ”Scholars.h.i.+p is as often the hand-maid of ignorance as of progress.”--Buckle's ”History of Civilization in England.”
[193] According to the census of 1882 there were in Germany engaged in trade and transportation 1,570,318 persons, inclusive of those occupied in hotels and inns, and exclusive of 295,451 domestics.
[Some opinion may be formed of the volume of useless labor, parasitism, in the United States, from the census figures for 1900. Under this head of ”Trade and Transportation” alone come 4,766,964 persons. Among them, substantially useless, are the 241,162 agents, the 73,277 brokers, the 92,919 commercial travelers, the 76,649 hucksters and peddlers, the 790,886 merchants and dealers (except wholesale), the 42,293 merchants and dealers (wholesale), the 74,072 officials of banks and companies, the 33,656 livery stable keepers, the 71,622 messengers and errand and office boys, and the 59,545 packers and s.h.i.+ppers--in all 1,556,081. Of the remaining 3,210,883--among whom are 254,880 bookkeepers and accountants, 632,127 clerks and copyists, 611,139 salesmen and women--fully two-thirds could be spared to-day under a rational social system. The proportion of wasteful forces, and even parasitism, is still larger under the heads of ”Professional Service” and ”Domestic and Personal Service,” among which--to pick up only a few of the worst items--are 111,638 clergymen, 114,460 lawyers, 86,607 government officials, including officers of the United States army and navy, 33,844 saloon keepers, 1,560,721 servants and waiters, 43,235 soldiers, sailors and marines (U. S.), etc., etc.--THE TRANSLATOR.]
[194] Even the Fathers of the Church, Bishops and Popes could not refrain from preaching in a communistic vein during those early centuries when community of property still prevailed, but its theft was a.s.suming larger proportions. The Syllabus and the encyclicals of the nineteenth century have lost all recollection of this tone, and even the Roman Popes have been compelled to become subjects of capitalist society, and now pose as its zealous defenders against the Socialists.
In contrast therewith Bishop Clemens I. (deceased 102 of our reckoning) said: ”The use of all things in this world is to be common to all. It is an injustice to say: 'This is my property, this belongs to me, that belongs to another.' Hence the origin of contentions among men.”
Bishop Ambrose of Milan, who lived about 347, exclaimed: ”Nature bestows all things on all men in common, for G.o.d has created all things that their enjoyment might be common to all, and that the earth might become the common possession of all. Common possession is, therefore, a right established by Nature, and only unjust usurpation (usurpatio) has created the right of private property.”
St. John Chrysostomus (deceased 407) declared in his homilies directed against the immorality and corruption of the population of Constantinople: ”Let none call aught his own; we have received everything from G.o.d for enjoyment in common, and 'mine' and 'thine' are words of falsehood.”
St. Augustine (deceased 430) expressed himself thus: ”Because private property exists there exists also law suits, enmities, dissensions, wars, rebellions, sins, injustice, murder. Whence proceed all these scourges? From property only. Let us then, my brothers, refrain from possessing anything as our property; at least let us refrain from loving it.”
Pope Gregory the Great declares about 600: ”Let them know that the earth from which they spring and of which they are formed belongs to all men in common, and that therefore the fruits which the earth brings forth must belong to all without distinction.”
And one of the moderns, Zacharia, says in his ”Forty Books on the State”: ”All the evils with which civilized nations have to contend, can be traced back to private property in land.”
All these authorities have recognized more or less accurately the nature of private property, which, since its existence, as St. Augustine correctly puts it, brought law suits, enmities, dissensions, wars, rebellions, injustice and murder into the world,--all of them evils that will disappear with its abolition.
[195] ”The employment of water in the cultivation of fruit as well as of vegetables is highly desirable; water a.s.sociations with these ends in view could turn with us also deserts into paradises.” Official report on the Chicago Exposition of 1893, rendered by the Imperial Commissioner, Berlin, 1894.
[196] This prospect seems nearer realization and in a quite different manner than the most far-sighted could have imagined. The discovery of acetylene gas is the point of departure for a long line of products of organic chemistry, that, with proper treatment, can be drawn from it.
Among the articles of enjoyment, that may be expected to be gained first of all on this path, is alcohol, the production of which promises to be the easiest of all and very cheap, and is expected in but few years. If this succeeds, a large part of the agriculture of the East Elbian district, which depends upon the production of alcohol, will be put in jeopardy. The circ.u.mstance will bring on a revolution in the respective agricultural interests that will play mightily into the hands of Socialism. Evidently, what Werner, Siemens and Berthelot held out, is approaching reality.
[197] Dr. G. Ruhland, ”Die Grundprinzipien aktueller Agrarpolitik.”
[198] A pet.i.tion by Julius Zuns, which finally was not sent to the Reichstag, on the subject of an agrarian investigation.
[199] Dr. Rudolf Meyer, ”Der Kapitalismus fin de siecle.”
[200] ”There is a prescription for securing the fertility of the fields and perpetual repet.i.tion of their produce. If this prescription be consistently carried out it will prove more remunerative than any which has ever been applied in agriculture. It is this: Let every farmer, like the Chinese coolie, who carries a sack of corn or a hundred weight of rape, or carrots or potatoes, etc., to town, bring back with him as much if possible or more of the ingredients of his field products as he took with him, and restore it to the field whence it came. He must not despise a potato paring or a straw, but remember that one of his potatoes still needs a skin, and one of his ears of corn a stalk. The expense for this importation is slight, the outlay secure; a savings bank is not securer, and no investment brings in a higher rate of interest. The returns of his fields will be doubled in ten years: he will produce more corn, more meat and more cheese without expending more time or labor, and he will not be driven by constant anxiety to seek for new and unknown means, which do not exist, to make his ground fertile in another manner.... Old bones, soot, ashes, whether washed out or not, and blood of animals and refuse of all kinds ought to be collected in storehouses, and prepared for distribution.... Governments and town police should take precautions for preventing the loss of these materials by a suitable arrangement of drains and closets.”--Liebig's ”Chemical Letters.”
[201] ”Every coolie (in China) who carries his produce to market in the morning, brings home two buckets full of manure on a bamboo rod in the evening. The appreciation of manure goes so far that every one knows how much a man secretes in a day, a month and a year, and the Chinaman considers it more than rude if his guest leaves his house carrying with him a benefit to which his host thinks himself justly ent.i.tled as a return for his hospitality.... Every substance derived from plants or animals is carefully collected and used as manure by the Chinese.... To complete the idea of the importance attached to animal refuse, it will suffice to mention the fact that the barbers carefully collect and trade with the hairs cut from the heads and beards of the hundred millions of customers whom they daily shave. The Chinese are acquainted with the use of gypsum and chalk, and it not infrequently occurs that they renew the plaster in their kitchens merely for the purpose of using the old plaster as manure.”--Liebig's ”Chemical Letters.”
[202] Karl Schober, Address delivered on the agricultural, munic.i.p.al and national economic significance of city refuse; Berlin, 1877.
[203] ”Life, Its Elements and the Means of Its Conservation.”
[204] According to the census of 1890, Germany had 26 large cities of over 100,000 inhabitants each. In 1871 it had only 8 of them. In 1871, Berlin had, in round figures, 826,000 inhabitants; in 1890 it had 1,578,794--it had almost doubled. A number of these large cities were compelled to take within their munic.i.p.alities the contiguous industrial towns, that in themselves had populations large enough for cities.
Through the process, the population of the former rose immediately.
Thus, within the period of 1885 to 1890, Leipsic rose from 170,000 to 353,000; Cologne from 161,000 to 282,000; Madgeburg from 114,000 to 201,000; Munich from 270,000 to 345,000 inhabitants, etc. At the same time, most of the other cities that incorporated no contiguous towns increased considerably during that period. Breslau grew from 299,000 to 335,000; Dresden from 246,000 to 276,000; Frankfurt-on-Main from 154,000 to 180,000; Hanover from 140,000 to 163,000; Dusseldorf from 115,000 to 146,000; Nuerenberg from 115,000 to 142,000; Chemnitz from 111,000 to 139,000 inhabitants. Similar growths were also registered by many middle-sized cities of 50,000 to 100,000 inhabitants.
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