A Socialist Survey. (1914)

From the July 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

A correspondent writing to the “Daily Citizen” (4.6.14), gives information of a singular occurrence in a signal box on one of the main railways. The box was visited by a company of soldiers, who were admitted in batches of nine. They were accompanied by the district inspector and a plain clothes officer, who instructed them in the art of railway signalling and block working, much to the surprise and discomfort of the signalmen on duty.

Yet the “Daily Citizen” and its supporters are always howling for the nationalisation of the railways !

* * *

When the “Storstad” arrived at Montreal after her disastrous collision with the “Empress of Ireland,” she was at once seized by the sheriff and placed under arrest. When the writ was nailed to the mast Captain Andersen demanded to know: “By what authority do you board my vessel and arrest her?” The sheriff replied (probably because the “Storstad” was a “foreigner”) that his authority was “the authority of the British Empire.”

Under that authority, of course, anything could be “pinched.” That’s how Eugland became “great.”

* * *

Keir Hardie appears to believe that the emancipation of the workers is but of secondary importance. Capitalist measures should receive prior attention. He told his audience at a labour demonstration at Lesmahagow (Lanark) that the Labour Party were out to unite the working “classes,” but before this could be done the Home Rule question had to be got out of the way.

The Socialist Party, I might point out, are also out to unite the workers, but with this difference—they are out to unite them for Socialism. And of the various obstacles in the way of this unification they have had to encounter, one of the biggest is, not Home Rule, but—the Labour Party !

* * *

At a recent meeting of the Blackburn Board of Guardians it was stated that the sum spent in out-relief during 1913 was £2,000 less than that paid in respect of officials’ salaries. I am beginning to see why there is such a rush for these jobs.

* * *

Mr. Rockefeller’s millions appear to bring him endless trouble. He is now expecting to be called to give evidence before the Inter-State Commission which is investigating the affairs of the Newhaven Railroad, U.S.A. In one portion of the evidence a Mr. Millen, ex-president of this concern, said that enormous losses were made through financial trickery. He alleged that over £2,000,000 were juggled away by the late Mr. Pierpont Morgan.

We often read, in stories of the old buccaneering days of the Spanish Main, where pirates used to cheat each other out of their share of the plunder, and which invariably ended up in a fight and a lot of blood-spilling.

Similarly, to-day, the industrial pirates quarrel over their share of the booty. Whilst agreed that the manner of acquiring it is satisfactory (to them), yet, as soon as they begin to handle the loot they cheat each other mercilessly, and invariably wind up in a fight—not a bloody fight, but a legal one.

In this case blood is spilled in order to get the booty—not the blood of the pirates, but that of the toiling millions who are bludgeoned and battered into turning it over to them.

* * *

Many meetings have been held of late to protest against the employment of Chinese and other “foreigners” as seamen on board British ships. Yet one thing seems to have been left out of account. That is that “Sea Scouts” are now being shipped as deck hands on board British vessels. Possibly it is only to gain experience—but experience of what ? Is it the same experience that Boy Scouts are undergoing in connection with the military forces ?—experience that may be turned to account “should any danger threaten the Empire” from within or without ?

The scout law says : “A Scout must be loyal to his King, and to his officers, and to his parents, his country, and his employers. He must stick to them through thick and thin against anyone who is their enemy, or who even talks badly of them.” In other words the “Scouts” are there to be used as the tools of capitalism against the workers. That fact is obvious enough, at any rate. They are well organised on land ; now they are turning their attention to the sea, and the introduction of a few Scouts on board merchant ships also marks the introduction of the thin end of the wedge. Of course, there may be nothing in it, but I “hae ma doots.” It opens up possibilities.

* * *

The Rev. A. G. Waldron tells the “Daily Sketch” (12.6.14) that : “Modern Socialistic philosophy has had a bad effect on many people. They want everything done for them.” Which causes one to wonder what the reverend gent does for a living, that he can afford to talk like that. My experience of these professional medicine men is that they don’t do anything for a living. They live on the product of other people’s toil. To use this pulpit thumper’s own words, they “want everything done for them”—and thanks to the unmitigated foolishness of those workers whom “modern Socialistic philosophy” has not yet “spoiled,” they get “every­ thing done for them.”

Waldron also said that he had “tried the experiment of allowing questions to be asked after the sermon, but it was a failure. Only the fools asked questions in church.” I suppose every person who asked a question was considered a fool. Well, perhaps he was. Only fools and rogues are to be found in churches, and it is the height of a fool’s folly to question a rogue concerning his roguery.

* * *

How is this ? Have the workers of Tonypandy already forgotten the treatment they got at the hands of the capitalists’ butchers ? It would appear so, judging from a picture which was published in a recent issue of the “Daily News and Leader.”

It seems that the Prince and Princess of Teck had paid a visit to Tonypandy. Of course, they went about the mines, where their presence created great enthusiasm (which, by the way, is a very useful element, and quite necessary now-a-days to the capitalists’ game of bleeding the workers), so much so that, instead of going home, they lined up at the pit-mouth, all in their dirt and grime, just as they had come up out of the bowels of the earth, and sang with feeling and gusto, “Land of my Fathers.” This is distinctly good, only the wording of the hymn appeared to me to be inappropriate. It should have been “Land of my Masters.”

* * *

How terrifying is that oft-maligned and much misunderstood phrase, “the class war” ! How soon it will disturb the even temperament of a respectable congress ! For instance, the International Textile Workers held their congress during the second week in June at Blackpool. The congress was asked by the foreign delegates to say that the International Congress would only accept those unions for membership which stood by the principle of the class war. The English section, however, did not like the phrase, “because in England it had rather a bad repute, and was only connected with one small part of the Labour movement.” (This is where the Labour Party chuckles.)

In face of this refusal the Continental delegates were compelled to seek another expression, so they hit upon the phrase “organisations that combat the present capitalistic state of things.” This was accepted.

What surprised the Continental delegates, said one of them, was that, far from looking down upon the workmen, the English employers treated them on a fraternal footing, and with the ordinary politeness of human intercourse. That will explain the repugnance of the English section to the introduction of the class war principle. Naturally, if they are so pally with the bosses, the class war won’t exist for them.

Tom Sala

The Croupiers and the Faro Wheel. (1940)

From the April 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

Throughout the political system of British capitalism, with its amazing fluidity, its shifts of front and of allegiance, and its apparent contradictions, runs one clear thread: the idea that there are insiders and outsiders.

So says “The Unofficial Observer,” in his work, “Our Lords and Masters.”

The “outsiders” may get the best jobs, if it suits the purpose of the “insiders,” but they can never determine policy.

For behind and beyond the British political scene there is a superior force, which assigns values, which enumerates—or rather takes for granted—”the things no feller can do,” which pulls the wires and decides events. With Americans that power has been the business and financial community, with its tradition of general corruption and its innocent conviction that individual greed is the yardstick of social utility. That such is not the case in Great Britain can be proved at a single glance at the leaders of British industry and banking. Where American bankers oppose and criticise, where American steel magnates defy Governmental labour legislation, where American oil companies have juggled with administration after administration, British industry and finance work hand and glove with British government. It has taken some consideration above the holding of political office and the fattening of the pocket-book to accomplish this result. There are “insiders” in British business as well as politics. Why?

Snobbishness is what helps to make the wheels go round and induces the lamb to go to bed with the lion on the breakfast-for-two basis. For four hundred years the British social system has been elaborating itself until it has become the most potent force in British life. “There has been no ‘free and equal’ nonsense about it. Great Britain has been governed by a privileged caste of aristocrats, whose morale has been high and whose purpose has been plain—to keep themselves and their country on top of the pile.”

This aristocracy has been open to birth and to wealth. You can be born to the purple, or buy it. So for generation after generation society has set the standards that others try to follow and has renewed itself from vigorous and successful men of every age ; ”The Victorian manufacturers, the merchant adventurers and Indian ‘nabobs’ of the eighteenth century, and the historians, artists, poets, scientists and authors of all generations have all seen as the reward of success the patent of nobility.”

“An aristocracy of birth, an aristocracy of wealth, and an aristocracy of brains when combined constitute a formidable society. When they follow the same standards set by the aristocracy of birth and fortified by a system of privilege, they are irresistible. In England Babbit knows that his place is at the tradesmen’s entrance rather than at the front door unless he ‘plays the game,’ whose rules are set by British society. That is the secret of British power.”

The question before this war was can England recapture her old world-wide predominance in economic affairs ? The Bank of England, that powerful organisation, under its influential Governor, Montagu Collet Norman, is one instrument now being used to work towards this end. It exemplifies the baffling fusion in England of the same interests which have led to the incompatible dualism of Wall Street and Washington in America.

Mr. Norman’s biographer has called him “the greatest statesman in Great Britain since the war.” As head of the Bank which directs the financial destinies of half the world Mr. Norman has perhaps enjoyed more power than any individual of his generation. He it was who brought the country back to the gold standard in 1925 and moved heaven and earth to keep it there. Between 1923 and 1925 the Bank of England, acting in close and informal co-operation with the Foreign Office, extended credits to a number of central banks in foreign countries and brought most of Europe on what is known as the gold exchange standard. This, by fixing the export value of goods in terms of a single stable commodity, both protected British manufacturers from competition in terms of depreciated foreign money and also assured British exporters with reliable means of payment for their wares.

In the realm of high politics, the Bank’s credits to Germany stabilised Central European conditions, prevented the mark from repeating its nose-dive of 1923 and thus sought to ward off radical upheaval, as well as reconstituting the European balance of power. Thanks to Mr. Norman’s efforts at that time the international gold standard was fully re-established and functioned smoothly from the time the franc was stabilised in 1926 until the disastrous summer of 1931.

The blending of business with diplomacy, however, led to disaster. Mr. Norman’s Central European loans may have been made for political reasons, but they were made at interest rates which accurately reflected the business risk. As it worked out, the Bank of England, not being in business for its health, borrowed money from France at 3 per cent, and reloaned it to Germany at 6 per cent. The Germans, in turn, reloaned some of this money to Austria and Hungary at still higher rates of interest. When the collapse of international wheat prices robbed the Danubian countries of their power to pay, the result was a chain of failures, which ran from Rothschild Bank in Vienna—the Credit-Anstalt—through the German “Big D” banks to the Bank of England, and when the French in their inconvenient way asked to have their money back England went off the gold standard with a bang.

Another “Wizard of Finance,” however, is to be found in Germany, Dr. Hjalmar Horace Greely Schacht, the Nazi Finance Director, the originator of the German confidence game, by which the Allies and America allowed their own cupidity to cheat themselves.

The first step in this game was the inflation of the German mark after the war. German marks were purchased by eager speculators in London, Paris, Amsterdam, Switzerland and New York long after they had become patently worthless. In this way Germany acquired foreign exchange at little or no cost to herself and thus compelled the international bankers to apply the Dawes Plan in 1924, which relieved Germany of much of the burden of reparations by providing a new racket.

This time the racket was in German industrial bonds. These were sold to foreign investors—largely American—and their proceeds eventually were used to pay German reparations. This cost the Germans nothing except interest on bonds for a while, gave the Allies their financial pound of flesh, paid commissions to the international bankers and, best of all, gave the British and American investing public a stake in Germany’s economic prosperity. When investments ran dry, the Germans borrowed short-term funds from British and American banks. Finally, the depression made this impossible, Germany stopped paying reparations and refused to pay back either long-term loans or short-term debts. The American bankers showed their true colours—bright yellow—by offering to sacrifice American investors, if only the banking loans were paid, but by this time Schacht knew he had command of the situation. By its holdings of foreign exchange and by other special controls the Reichsbank had accumulated such large stocks of raw materials that it was able to pass through the difficult winter of 1934-1935 far better than any other country.

Since then Schacht has taken advantage of every crisis Hitler has brought about to bring off barter deals; the game, however, became played out and a naked smash and grab raid was the only way Germany could keep going.

We can now understand her cries of encirclement and her desperate moves to avert the catastrophe the Nazi policy forced upon Germany by capitalist development and the greed of her rivals make inevitable.

The attempt to get capitalism to sail on an even keel after the war of 1914-18 failed. The economic problems confronting the world after the present war is over will be beyond the powers of Montagu Norman, Schacht, and Morgan of the United States.

The firm of J. P. Morgan & Co. is a group of private moneylenders, whose principal office is at 23, Wall Street, New York City, and which has important affiliations in Boston, Philadelphia, Paris and London. The Morgan firm controls (not owns) between a quarter and a third of the organised wealth of the United States, being especially powerful in rails, steel, chemicals and the heavy industries generally. It owes its existence to the opportunities for profiteering in the Civil War and attained its present world-wide importance as Fiscal Agent for the British and French Governments during the period of American “neutrality” in the last world war. “At this time the Morgan firm established the technique of using American money to ‘pay’ for British purchases of American goods, which later flowered in the lavish War Debts and the post-war American loans to the European countries. This practice is an invaluable asset to the British Government, and the relations of the Morgan firm with that Government can only be described as ‘extraordinarily intimate.’ To a very considerable extent Morgan is America and Morgan is the informal viceroy of the British Crown in its American Dominion.”

The spider of Wall Street is an episcopalian —it is easier for a camel to pass through the needle’s eye than for a Jew or a Catholic to enter the firm of J. P. Morgan.

It was the house of Morgan and its associate firms in London and Paris which was responsible for swinging large-scale international transactions during the last world war. “When foreign exchanges were dislocated and the credit of the City of New York was jeopardised by inability to meet obligations of 80 million dollars maturing in London and Paris, the city authorities appealed to Morgan, who quickly organised a bankers’ syndicate, which raised the needful. The Allied purchases of war supplies and foodstuffs were cleared through the Morgan firm as fiscal agents for France and Great Britain on decidedly profitable terms. To facilitate this activity they first established export departments headed by Edward R. Shellinius, with a staff of nearly two hundred engineers, manufacturers and experts. Two thousand five hundred million dollars’ worth of food and materials were purchased in this way, thus creating an American economic stake in Allied victory, sustained by a series of commercial credits totalling 1,550,000,000 dollars. This credit was floated through the Morgan banks, after being negotiated by a joint French and British commission.”

The ruling class of Britain may hope during the present war that Morgan will eventually swing things their way again, as he did during the last blood bath. Americans may reiterate again and again that under no circumstances will she allow herself to be involved. When the time comes for American aid to be essential to victory the United States is likely to line up with whosoever Morgan decrees she shall support. So much for democracy under capitalism.

The political victory of the British and French Governments in the present conflict can be anticipated, but the results from an economic standpoint will be barren. The world struggle for markets will not have ceased but will be intensified.

As for the future of the human race, everything depends upon the knowledge possessed by the working class. Not least in Britain, the United States and the western world. We are building better than we realise. The common ownership of the means of life, production for use and the elimination of all profit will be an economic necessity after the war if society is to advance.

Charles Lestor

Editorial: Shall We Mourn? (1922)

Editorial from the September 1922 issue of the Socialist Standard

On August 15th the newspapers displayed large headlines announcing the death of Lord Northcliffe, the newspaper magnate. It is an interesting sidelight on the sham hostilities of the papers, that those who were lately his bitter enemies—on paper !—are now deploring his loss as that of “a great national figure and a prince of journalists.”

Working men who ponder over the actions of such “great men” are not moved to deplore his loss. It is to them but the loss of one who has climbed upon their shoulders ; a member of the privileged class ; a staunch supporter of the evil that Capitalism signifies—the havoc of wars and the miseries of peace.

The daily Press, without exception, exists in the main, not merely to give news “calculated to attract at the moment the legitimate interest of a reasonable man or woman,” as one paper would have us believe, but to provide a source of income to the proprietors. In doing this, it endeavours to gloss over the worst features of Capitalism and keep the workers satisfied with the present system of wealth production, which brings ease and comfort to the propertied few, and overwork and misery to the property-less many.

A large slice of the revenue of a newspaper comes from advertisements. A paper that cannot command a large circle of advertisers stands little chance of surviving.

Broadly speaking, those who advertise in the newspapers (we are referring to large advertisers, of course) favour the paper having the largest circulation among those interested in such advertisers’ wares; at the same time, being Capitalists, they will fight shy of a paper publishing information likely to harm their enterprises. Consequently the proprietors of a newspaper have two points of prime importance to bear in mind in the conduct of their journals—to obtain as large a circulation as possible, and, at the same time, to avoid, if possible, publishing anything that may offend their advertisers. The importance of the latter point many an Editor has learnt to his cost.

From the above we can see what attitude a flourishing newspaper must of necessity take towards the workers. It must side with the masters in keeping the workers in servitude. The news we are favoured with is selected with this end in view, though the papers dare not keep back some matters without risking a fall in the circulation upon which largely depends the quantity and value of the advertisements received.

Lord Northcliffe was a successful newspaper proprietor because his papers were conducted with a careful eye to these points ; in other words, he was an enemy of the working class.

How much the Press is concerned about the workers is illustrated by the statement of one paper (Daily News, 15/8/22), which, in an editorial, makes the following reference to Northcliffe’s death :—

“Next to the war, it is probably the most important fact in the history of this generation.”

What a callous lie ! The most important fact in the history of this generation is the fact that hundreds of thousands—ay, millions—of human beings are dying of overwork and underfeeding in presence of wealth, and means of producing wealth, accumulated in quantities undreamt of in the world before. Beside this the death of a newspaper magnate sinks into insignificance.

The Daily News (15/8/22) whilst commenting on Northcliffe’s death, made the following significant remarks :—

  “His judgment of men was sound, with the result that he surrounded himself with a band of able colleagues and assistants, who did much to aid him in establishing and carrying on the manifold undertakings of which he was the founder.”

The above remarks may excuse us for making a little digression.

Turn, to the life of any of the so-called “Great Men” produced by Capitalism, and it will be found that the tale is nearly always similar; they climbed to wealth and fame by appropriating the product of other men’s brains.

In this connection two men in particular may be mentioned—Andrew Carnegie and Pierpont Morgan. Both acquired huge fortunes, and both accomplished this end by using the genius of others.

Carnegie, the “great” ironmaster, knew nothing of metallurgy, but employed those who did, and rose to affluence on the results of their genius. He successfully took the fruits of others’ toil from the time he got control of Woodruff’s invention of the embryonic Pullman car until his mills turned out steel made by the Bessemer process, the process discovered by a genius whose name is unknown.

Pierpont Morgan acquired much of his “fame” in connection with the organisation of combinations in the American railway industry. He is spoken of as having had a marvellous head for taking in the position of the affairs of a company almost at a glance. How did this “great” man do the trick? The following quotation from “The Life Story of J. Pierpont Morgan,” by Carl Hovey (Heinemann), gives the key :—

  “All credit for this series of railroad rehabilitations is by no means his alone ; to one of his partners—the late Charles H. Coster—was assigned the task of solving the intricate and interwoven relations of railroad obligations, bonds, underlying bonds, collateral trust mortgages, and every other artificial form of securing a loan—and determining the amount fairly represented by each. Coster was a kind of rare genius, a sort of financial chemist, and possessed a gift of analysis in this new and difficult field; it often happened, when everyone else was baffled, that he alone was able to lay before his chief solutions clear and sound, which made it possible for Mr. Morgan to go ahead with his plans for a new structure” (p. 233).

That is how the trick was done ! And that is the way the “prince of journalists” did the trick.

When the workers of the world own the product of their labours, there will be no need for one to steal the work of another. Each will take his part in the production of needful things, and each will share in the enjoyment of such things.

The Kings of Capital and the Captains of Industry. (1929)

From the January 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

Once again America’s rapid economic march illustrates the truth of the Socialist case. Twenty years ago we had occasion to point the lesson of the struggle between the Titans—Andrew Carnegie and Pierpoint Morgan. That was a conflict between two powers representing two factors in economic life. Not two individuals having a wrestling match, not a personal struggle between two great minds; but a dramatic and mighty clash between two social forces—one waning and outstripped by the economic advance, the other triumphant and in harmony with the economic trend. Carnegie’s personal knowledge of the steel industry and his life-work in personal conduct of the steel business—this could not withstand the influence of mere moneyed men, Morgan and his banking colleagues of Wall Street; men who knew not the making of steel, but who controlled vast financial resources. And so Andrew Carnegie’s Pittsburgh and other huge foundries became part of the United States Steel Corporation. Morgan won because those who controlled finance were able to buy and buy out those who knew the industry, but whose capital was smaller.

And that lesson illuminated industrial history since that day. The silent but sweeping changes in social life saw the passing of famous firms and famous names who had been absorbed by the huge financial combines. Men who boasted how much personal interest they took in the control of their business were pushed aside, crushed or swallowed up by the men who had a finger in hundreds or thousands of different businesses and who took no personal interest in manufacture. It was the day of the Big Banks, the Finance Company, the Debenture Loan or Stock, the Mortgage Bond and other strangleholds of finance that took charge of the title deeds of “the man of property and the men of industry.”

Then upon the scene emerges the ideal of all anti-Socialist arguments—the Man of Invention appears—Henry Ford. Henry Ford was a pioneer in the industry with a small workshop actually engaged in the manufacture of motor engines. The suitability of the cheap motor to the times gave a rapid and continuous fillip to Ford’s business. By using the inventions of many others and gathering round him the picked and trained brains of the workers to superintend and run the industry, Fords became the largest motor business in the world. .

Personal control and personal supervision played a good part in the early days of the business, but the time arrived in economic competition when mere personal control, brains and knowledge of an actual industry, no longer decided who was victor in the world of industry. The bankers of Wall Street, led by Morgan, heavily financed Ford’s competitors, who were able to produce a cheap car which sold quicker than Fords. Henry Ford closed down for nearly a year in 1927, while the whole factory was overhauled and new machinery installed to get out an improved car that would once more capture the market. The 1928 Ford car came and was heralded as the wonder of autos, but the power of finance in the modern world was hardly reckoned with. The great competitor of Ford was no personally conducted firm with personal savings behind it, but the General Motors Corporation, backed by the leading financiers of America—a combine which had absorbed dozens of motor companies and other firms making all the parts and trimmings of the modern car. Ford’s great asset—the use of the most modern machinery, each doing one small part and that only—this was duplicated and triplicated by the combine which had more finance than Ford. So the General Motors Co. at Detroit, Flint, and many other “plants,” completely re-planned their machine industry and laid down the best and most efficient machines with the latest speeding-up methods.

Henry Ford—God of the Individualists, Apostle of Competition, Father of the Gospel of Personal Service—finds his firm to-day losing ground heavily. The great concern opposing him—owned by men who know not engines, but who have finance and can hire the trained workers who do know engines—this General Motors Co. are able to say that their Chevrolet Car—the one put out to smash the Ford—sold 84,503 in July, against 43,094 Fords. 

Where will it end and what does it portend? The story of Morgan and Carnegie looks like being repeated. King Capital is no respecter of persons—Grow or bust, is his dictum! 

And so the firm of Ford looks like eventually being driven to combine with the large financial trust or go under. The workers will go on making cars and the bondholders will continue to reap the profits. Their employers will read stock exchange lists and thus get their knowledge of the industry. Henry Ford and his type will be shareholders in the concern which can do better by hiring hungry workers than by waiting for the working pioneer to get fresh ideas.

There is the lesson—ownership of wealth and more wealth is the winning card.

Finance buys up the personally-conducted businesses and becomes the ruler of more and more workers.

Shall the octopus grow or will the men and women who do the actual work in business and industry learn that they can run society without the parasite—financial or industrial?

Adolph Kohn

Past, Present, and Future (1908)

From the May 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Andrew Carnegie! Pierpont Morgan! Names not without meaning to the man in the street, but, to the Socialist, symbolic of something of far deeper significance than their mention calls up in the mind of the uninitiated.

Designative of types of two distinct orders of capitalist dominators, representative of two definite eras of industrial history, they bear inconvertible witness to the truth of our scientific conclusion anent the evolutionary nature of capitalism. They are to be cherished as invaluable aids to the understanding of one of the most important lessons the workers have to learn; as raised letters to the blind, ocular demonstration to those who cannot hear.

As far as may ever be properly said  of human kind, the men they nominate are makers of a page of history incomparably more pregnant of consequences to the world than any which chronicles the activities of royal hero or military genius—ancient lights or modern. They mark an epoch.

Their story will bear repeating.

It is common knowledge that at the end of the last century Andrew carnegie was head of the largest steel rail factory in the world, an establishment with an output so vast that to state it is to court suspicion of extravagance.

Here the famous Scot had dominion over which his rule was complete; his word was law, his whim destiny, life and death his prerogative—as was shown when he had his workmen shot down by bargeloads of armed detectives.

Came Pierpont Morgan with new conception. Andrew's method of business was based on competition—the undercutting of rivals. The very essence of Morgan's system was the elimination of competition by amalgamating the powerful concerns of an industry, crushing the smaller, and then,—why then Competition had reached the end of the strife-strewn path that history had foreordained she should traverse, and is discovered taking her ease at least, sitting in peace "under her olive," suckling a sturdy son—Monopoly.

Andrew was asked to abdicate, and, like himself, refused. He would see Morgan hanged and Wall Street sink into the bowels of the earth before he would surrender his factory.

Did Andrew speak without due reflection? It would seem so, for, just as, when he declared the disgrace of dying rich, he underestimated the difficulty of becoming poor, hurling defiance at Wall Street, he depreciated the tremendous power opposed to him.

He quickly found that Morgan had control of the railways, and was therefore in a position of dominance; for without his consent not a rail could be freighted out of the vast Pittsburg steel works. He quickly found also that the new conception did not wait upon the pleasure of the master of Pittsburg; for if he would not submit to be bought out, then Wall Street would amalgamate the remnants of the industry against him and fight him out.

Here was a situation in which all Pinkerton's army could afford Andrew no assistance. Those who threatened him were no longer working men, the natural defence against whom was the levelled rifle. No weapon existed to batter the forces of the financial monarchs, so Carnegie was a beaten man. he retired from the contest—made way for the "Billion Dollar Trust."

Now great change came o'er the land. Pittsburg became a province in the empire of the Steel Trust; the seat of government was shifted to Wall Street; the sceptre had passed from the great ironmaster, acquainted with every corner of his factory, proficient in the technics of his art, supervisor of the operations of producing his commodities, into the hands of the great financier, who knew not what steel was. The position that Andrew had filled with majesty was now the place of a hireling - a mere foreman whose only princely semblance was his salary. Great powers of direction had been given to an employee, but control had passed for ever from the overseer of the productive forces, and had become vested in outsiders, whose utility or necessity the most subtle imagination fails to conceive.

Nor did the change end here. The strife of competition gave place to the peace of monopoly. In the field of steel production there was one master instead of many; in the field of steel distribution there was one seller instead of many. So peace reigned in the steel industry as it does at times in Russia under the soothing influence of the Czar's Cossacks.

All this marks an epoch in capitalism's evolution.

Not the first, be it understood, for the merchant prince was a ruler in his generation, even as the manufacturer has been in the days now slipping into history, and the financier is to be in the days which are to come.

Type of the dying past—Andrew Carnegie; type of the youthful present—Pierpont Morgan; where shall we seek a type of the yet unfulfilled future?

For it may not be doubted that the reign of this present capitalist dominator is transient, even as the others have been. That which has beginning must of necessity have end. Capitalism has not always existed, nor will. It has been revolutionary in its time, has risen against and dethroned its immediate predecessor—Feudalism: what os to dethrone it in its turn? Long since the manufacturer seized the baton of the merchant prince and pushed him from power, only to be himself thrown down in the fulness of time by the financial upstart—who is there left under the sin to unseat this last?

The prophetic finger of Science points to him who even now stands in revolutionary opposition to the regalism of the financial Molloch and his phase of capitalism. For scientific inquiry has furnished abundant evidence that through all history power has moved in the direction of economy, of adjustment to the needs of the social organism, of ultimate advantage to humanity. The manufacturer has played his useful part in production, as did the merchant prince before him in distribution, but what necessary place, in either production or distribution is filled by the financier? The final vestige of useful function has been relegated to an employee, who, however munificent his remuneration, remains a hireling.

Irony of fate—the only use the last of the capitalist rulers can have is to prepare the way for his successor. For long capitalism has been engaged in the lugubrious occupation of digging a grave: it has at length discovered that this grave is its own. For has not Pierpont Morgan himself announced that the function of his kind is to organise production in such form that it may be taken over by the community?

Capitalism is itself to be the educator of the revolution which is to shatter it to pieces. Its latest development, by separating entirely from the productive processes the owners and controllers of the means of production, is making very clear to the worker, what he could never believe before, that he alone is necessary to the creation of material wealth. Control of production, he begins to see, has passed to an order of men who can be removed without any industrial disturbance, and the growing knowledge of this fact pronounces the doom, not only of the phase of financial monarchy in capitalism, but of the capitalist system itself.

Wherefore the prophetic finger aforesaid, which must be pointing somewhere, could indicate none other than the worker as the successor of the modern capitalist. The needs of the social organism demand his rise to power, for it is impossible for that organism to continue to flourish while the vast bulk of its component cells are ill-nourished and stinted. Logic also demands that the worker become paramount, for it is the very antithesis of logic to produce goods for profit instead of for use, to have the producers hungry and unemployed because they have produced too much and glutted the market. Finally, history demands the supremacy of the worker; for why else has it provided this last of the long concatenation of changes which, starting by depriving him of the means of life as necessary condition of their perfection to such as would afford him fuller subsistence and higher existence, end by offering him once again those means of life—radiant with their added wonders of fertility, and large with the promise of still greater wonders yet to be added unto them—if he will only stretch out his hand and take them?

The transition is so easy—merely the substitution of the old property condition for that which so long has played the usurper. Private property in the means of life must go. It has dug its own grave, it remains but for the workers to push it in and cover it up decently.

Then, with common ownership of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth the sound, sure and kindly basis of all human affairs let come what will.

A. E. Jacomb