Review of Socialist Tract

The ardent Progressive finds much comfort and satisfaction in the tract under the above title which Mr. Gerard Henderson has written with the purpose of showing that there is but one political creed and that the Socialist is its prophet. The tract confirms the belief upon which the Progressive party is founded, that neither the Republican nor the Democratic party has any realization of the social, political, and economic forces which govern this country, and will continue to govern it.

In sharp and unmerciful phrase the author ranges the Democrats who "far from keeping social justice in the background, cry it out from the house-tops," alongside the Republicans who "treat the new discovery deprecatingly, as a thing, that, in so far as it has not always existed, thanks to the Republican tariff, is a somewhat dubious vision." The Socialist champion agrees with the Progressives that both the Republican and the Democratic party are side-tracked; and are shortly to cease to be factors in the play of political forces.

Dashing in from the back field, so to speak, Mr. Henderson likewise recognizes the Progressive party as the one political organization which is likely to stand in the way of the Socialist movement. He sees in the Progressive party an effort to substitute state capitalism for the present industrial combination, leaving the owners of industrial property in the positions of the holders of the French rentes, perpetually entitled to the first table; and he is convinced that such a policy can never compete with Socialism.

Without for a moment accepting that definition of the economic purpose of the Progressive party, it is encouraging to be assured that the Socialists see in the Progressive party the most immediate and formidable obstacle to their propaganda. The more people realize that fact, the swifter will be the disintegration of parties which fail to recognize even the existence of the real problems of the day. The Progressives are quite willing to be recognized as the great conservative force in the political conflict which actively beginning in 1912, is to go on for years to come. Mr. Henderson believes that "the time will inevitably come when the Progressive party, its reform program enacted, will disintegrate; for capital, which fills the party's war chest, and labor, which gives it most of its votes, cannot long lie together in peace." Inasmuch as from the Socialist point of view, the Republican and Democratic parties have already ceased to be vital forces, this would leave a clear field to the Socialist, were it not for an obstinate and eternal American fondness for and belief in individualism; the right of men to combine in various groups; the confidence that capital can be curbed and skilled management utilized without giving up the individual conscience and will to the collective judgment of a body of representatives--for that is what present Socialism means,-- and future Socialism can hardly escape from these underlying ideas.