Newspaper Page Text
8 ' THEATLANTiAN
rF= ^
CENTRAL BANK
AND TRUST CORPORATION
Candler Building
Capital, Five Hundred Thousand Dollars
Deposits, Three Million and Five Hundred
Thousand Dollars
A STRONG, WELL EQUIPPED, CON
SERVATIVELY MANAGED BANK
4 % on Savings Deposits
Your Account is Invited.
BRANCH, CORNER MITCHELL AND FORSYTH STREETS
Asa G. Candler, President.
THE SOCIAL SETTLER.
Tlio Raison d’Etre of Socialism.
The astute editor of the Saturday Eve
ning. Post makes a shrewd observation
apropos to the remark of a former may
or of New York, who declared that our
large cities were rapidly progressing to
ward Socialism. The editor of the Post
remarks that the private lessees of the
municipally constructed New York sub
way have made immense profits on their
fifty-year contract and have issued a vast
quantity of watered stock thereon, while
for several years the city has been try
ing ineffectually to get the subway ex
tended. He also mentions the fact that
the city of Chicago went through a ten
year’s struggle with the owners of the
street railways, enduring abominable
service all the while, before it could
bring them to reasonable terms. “It is
numberless experiences of this sort,’’ he
adds, “and not the political dogmas of
Karl Marx that have brought the inhabi
tants of large American cities to that
attitude of public service corporations
that the ex-mayor of New York describes
ns socialistic. ’ ’
This is an absolutely correct diagno
sis. The Socialism of today is not a
theory ‘made in Germany’ or even a
conspiracy hatched by revolutionary agi-
tntora. It is a movement that has grown
inevitably out of certain underlying so
cial conditions. The chief factor in the
spread of Socialism in this country is
undoubtedly the rise of trusts and mo
nopolies. On the one hand, the short
comings and far-reachings of the na
tional combinations of capital, and on
the other hand the depredation and cor
ruptions of the municipal monopolies
have made supporters for Socialism. The
concentration of industry in monopolies
and trusts has naturally led to a demand
that the people undertake collectively
the management of industry in order to
protect themselves from exploitation by
the capitalistic combination. At the‘
same time this concentration of industry
has created the conditions for easy tran
sition to a socialistic state. The closer
the concentration, the easier it is for
the people to substitute a single people’s
trust for the few private trusts remain
ing in the field. Thus the trust move
ment has fostered Socialism.
There are, of course, other causes of
growth of Socialism besides the influ
ence of monopolies and trusts. The dis
tinguished German economist, the late
Professor William Roscher, gave an
analysis of these causes, which has be
come classic. He points out five social
conditions that have combined to pro
duce the socialistic movement.
1. The first condition is “a well-defin
ed confrontation of rich and poor. So
long as there is a middle class of con
siderable numbers between them, the two
extremes are kept, by its moral force,
from coming into collision. There is
no greater preservative against envy of
tho superior classes and contempt for the
inferior than the gradual and unbroken
fading of one class of society into an
other. . . . But when tho rich and
the poor are separated by an abyss which
there is no hope of over crossing, bow
pride, on the one side, and envy, on tho
other, rage! and especially in the cen
tres of industry, the great cities, where
the deepest misery is found side by side
with the most brazen-faced luxury, und
where the wretched themselves, conscious
of their numbers, mutually excite their
own bad passions. It can not, unfor
tunately, be denied that when a nation
has attained the acme of its develop
ment we find a multitude of tendencies
prevailing to make the rich richer and
the poor, at least relatively, poorer, and
thus to diminish the number of the mid
dle class from both sides; unless, in
deed, remedial influences are brought to
bear and to operate in a contrary direc
tion. ’ ’
2. “A high degree of the division of
labor, by which, on the one hand, tho
mutual dependence of man on man grows
ever greater, but by which, at the same
time, the eye of the uncultured man be
comes less and less able to perceive the
connection existing between merit and
reward, or service and remuneration. Let
us betake ourselves in imagination to
Crusoe’s Island. There, when one man,
after the labor of many months, has hol
lowed out a tree into a canoe, with no
tools but an animal’s tooth, it does not
occur to another, who, in the meantime,
was, it may be, sleeping on the skin of
some wild animal, to contest the right
of the former to the fruit of his labor.
How different this form the condition of
things where civilization is advanced, as
it is in our day; where the banker by a
single stroke of his pen seems to earn
a thousand times more than a day-labor
er in a week; where, in the case of those
who lend money on interest, their debtors
too frequently forget now laborious was
the process of acquiring the capital by
the possessors, or ti.eir predecessors in
ownership. More especially, we have in
times of over-population whole masses
of honest men asking not alms, but only
work—an opportunity to earn their
bread, and yet on the verge of starva
tion. ’ ’
3. “ A violent shaking or perplexing
of public opinion in its relation to the
feeling of right by revolutions especial
ly when they follow rapidly one oh the
heels of another, and take opposite di
rections. On such occasions both parties
have generally prostituted themselves for
the sake of the favor of the masses.
... In this wav they are stirred up
tc- the making of pretentious claims which
it is afterward very difficult to silence. ’ ’
4. * ‘ Pretensions of the lower classes in
consequence of a democratic constitu
tion. Communism is the logically not
inconsistent exaggeration of the princi
ples of equality. Political equality, in
the course of time, very naturally leads
to thoughts of economic equality—equal
ity in the enjoyment of spiritual and
material goods. ’ ’
5. “A general decay of religion and
morality in the people. When everyone
regards wealth as a sacred trust or office,
coming from God, and poverty as a di
vine dispensation, intended to educate
and develop those afflicted thereby, and
considers all men as brothers, and this
earthly life only as a preparation for
eternity, even extreme differences of
property lose their irritating and de
moralizing power. On the other hand
the atheist and materialist becomes only
too readily a mammonist, and the poor
mammonist falls only too easily into
that despair which would gladly kindle
a universal conflagration, in order either
to plunder or lose his own life,”
The last proposition is questionable.
It may be doubted whether any decline
of religion and morality in the deeper
sense has really taken place. Unques
tionably, however, formal religion and
ecclesiastical authority have lost much
of their control over the working class.
And this change has contributed to the
spread of social discontent.
ON CHOOSING A CLAIRVOY-
ANT.
One can not be too careful in choos-
a clairvoyant, says Judge. When one
wants to peer into the future, a clear
rision is required. Tradition, supported
strongly by popular practice, says the
best results are to be expected from the
most disreputable-looking objects of hu
man dereliction; hence, gypsies. ■ A
gypsy (usually of the feminine gender)
accomplishes her proper attributes by
living along the roadside, avoiding laun
dries, sleeping in a covered wagon with
seventeen children and about the same
number of dogs.
But it is not necessary to le a gypsy.
One can accomplish the greasy complex
ion in other ways, and the garb may be
procured at slight expense from a cos
tumer or from the wardrobe woman in
almost any musical comedy.
It is customary for clairvoyants to
claim to be the seventh daughter of a
seventh daughter, but it is not necesasry
to produce genealogical proof in support
of the claim.
Beyond that, it is only necessary for a
clairvoyant to be vague and to place
her perdictions far enough in the future
to enable her to get out of town in the
interim.
The profession of a clairvoyant is
easy, because any person who will go to
clairvoyants is credulous enough to be
lieve anything that they tell, even when
their words do not mean anything.
WHEN DO BIRDS WAKE UP?
An elderly person afflicted with in
somnia and forced to lie awake all night
has sent to the London Spectator some
observations which he made of the hab
its of birds. He found that the black
bird was the last of the feathered kind
to go to bed, while the robin was the
first to awaken in the morning. Tho
latter’8 song with heard at half past 2
a. m., while at a quarter to 3 a thrush
flew up to a bare branch, and, after
stretching and brushing himself, also be
gan to sing. By 4 o'clock all the trees
were alive with the songs of many and
various birds, the medley of voices form
ing 11 general harmony. At 5 a. m. there
was an intermission in the musical pro
gramme, the birds seeking their break
fasts in the shape of early worms. At
twenty minutes to 6 a cuckoo alighted
in a leafless branch and sang with great
vigor for a short time. The observer
then felt disposed to sleep, but a young
sparrow in the ivy near his window
awoke and chirruped so loudly that he
became as wakeful as ever.—Leslie’s
Weekly.
• -V’ WHY IT IS OFF.
She—Will you- love me just the same
when l am oldt •
Ho—Ah, darling, see how soon I shall
prove it to you!—Judge.