Part 38 (1/2)
”Yes,” said Debs, but Berger boomed: ”No; not the trusts. Private owners of the trusts do harm, yes; but not the trusts.”
”Well, but how would you deal with the harm?”
”Remove 'em,” snapped Berger, and Debs explained: ”We would have the government take the trusts and remove the men who own or control them: the Morgans and Rockefellers, who exploit; and the stockholders who draw unearned dividends from them.”
”Would you pay for or just take them?”
Berger seemed to have antic.i.p.ated this question. He was on his feet, and he uttered a warning for Debs--in vain.
”Take them,” Debs answered.
”No,” cried Berger, and, running around to Debs, he stood menacingly over him. ”No, you wouldn't,” he declared. ”Not if I was there. And you shall not say it for the party. It is my party as much as it is your party, and I answer that we would offer to pay.”
It was a tense but an illuminating moment. The difference is typical and temperamental; and not only as between these two opposite individualities, but among Socialists generally. Debs, the revolutionist, argued gently that, since the system under which private monopolies had grown up was unjust, there should be no compromise with it. Berger, the evolutionist, replied angrily that it was not alone a matter of justice, but of ”tactic”; and that tactics were settled by authority of the party.
”We (Socialists) are the inheritors of a civilization,” he proclaimed, ”and all that is good in it--art, music, inst.i.tutions, buildings, public works, character, the sense of right and wrong--not one of these shall be lost. And violence, like that, would lose us much.”
Berger cited the Civil War: ”All men can see now that it was coming years before 1861. Some tried to avert it then by proposing to pay for the slaves. The fanatics on both sides refused. We all know the result: slavery was abolished. But how? Instead of a peaceful evolution and an outlay of, say, a billion, it was abolished by a war which cost us nearly ten billion dollars and a million lives. We ought to learn from history, so I say we will offer compensation; because it seems just to present-day thought and will prove the easiest, cheapest way in the end. And anyhow,” he concluded, ”and besites, the party, it has decited that we shall offer to pay.”
From the article by Mr. Steffens, _Eugene V. Debs_, in _Everybody's Magazine_, Oct., 1908.
VII
TRAMPS AND VAGRANTS
Tramps, professional and amateur, and trespa.s.sers of both s.e.xes and all ages, are simply swarming over the railroads east of the Mississippi River, forming a very serious problem for both railroads and State Governments, according to reports which O.F. Lewis has received from most of the great roads of the East, and recently published in _Charities_ and _The Commons_. Mr. Lewis finds from these reports that the railroad tramp and trespa.s.ser evil is on the increase, with roads and States through which they pa.s.s unable to check it, and one road, the New York Central, declares that half of the loss and damage claims currently paid by railroads may be ascribed to robberies committed by tramps and trespa.s.sers. Much of this increase in trampdom is ascribed to the effects of the panic and the hard times, which threw thousands of men out of employment.
”Most of the railroads,” says Mr. Lewis, in summing up the replies received to the questions he sent out, ”report a very noticeable increase in vagrancy on their lines. The Central Vermont says 75 per cent, the Chicago & Eastern Illinois 50 per cent, the Great Northern 200 per cent. Great increases are reported by the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western, the New York Central, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia & Reading, and many others. The Northern Pacific reports more vagrants travelling than ever before.
”A decrease is reported on the Central of New Jersey, the c.u.mberland Valley, Chicago, Indiana & Southern, and on the Missouri Pacific.
Emphasizing the increase on the Pennsylvania, President McCrea states that four times as many arrests were made for illegal train riding in June, 1908, as in June, 1907.