out of business, and the great syndicates which control the liquor traffic, even now, in the midst of the terrible pressure for opportunities for employment, are able only with the greatest difficulty to find men with such qualities that they can trust them as their representatives in the traffic who still have the capacity to transact the business. Suppose every bartender in America should be given as good an opportunity to earn a living as any other man on the continent, free from discredit, free from the long hours, free from the disorders of the disorderly house, with himself and his family freed from the contempt of which both he and they are now the victims, but which they rarely deserve, how many saloon keepers would bear the discredit of the disorderly resort for the sake of a business from which they were receiving no personal advantages whatever. If places of drunkenness and disorder shall exist under Socialism, it will be for their own sake and not for the sake of the profits. Then, for the first time in many centuries, if the vices remain, they must find a means of doing so without the special service of "The Trafficker in Vice." Some men will bear the discredit of being the keepers of disorderly houses for a profit in the sale of drinks, so long as others are willing to bear the discredit of being sharks or thieves for the sake of the profits in all other lines of trade.

778. End of the Profit in Vice.-The profit system is responsible for the larger share of the harm done by drinks, drugs, cards, the races and the boards of trade. The profit system can be overthrown in The Traffic in Vice only by its overthrow in all other lines of business. The profit system can be overthrown only by the coming of Socialism.

779. Total Abstinence.-If it is asked will total abstinence then prevail, we do not need to wait for the

coming of Socialism to give a practical answer to this practical question, for if total abstinence does not prevail it is evident that self-possession and self-control will prevail, not because enforced by legislation or by social interference with the personal habits of the people, but because self-possession and self-control will speedily become a necessary condition to the comradeship essential to all rational human life when all men are free and personal excellence must become the sole ground for personal consideration.

780. Summary.-1. Back of all the vices are economic conditions which so weaken and waste the forces of life as to lead to the practice of the vices.

2. Back of all the vices is The Traffic in Vice, forever setting a snare for the feet of others, in enterprises where the profits of the trade of one depend on the physical and moral ruin of others.

3. Socialism would make possible such industrial opportunities that the ignorance, the long hours, the exposure, the exhausting toil, the economic dependence, especially of women, which make the people easy victims of the vendors of drugs, of evil solicitations and of the chances of the games of chance will entirely disappear.

4. Socialism would remove all temptation for one man to ruin another for a profit, and so to be a trafficker in the vices of others, by providing equal opportunity for rational and humane employment for all.

1. What is vice?

REVIEW QUESTIONS.

2. What is The Traffic in Vice?

3. How will Socialism affect the harmful use of drugs? As to sanitation? As to medical use and as to physical training?

4. Why will prostitution cease?

5. Why will gambling lose its interest under Socialism?

6. What is the moral difference between betting on cards and betting on the wheat market?

7. What relation have the sports of to-day to the previous life of the race?

8. Will prohibition be likely under Socialism?

9. Why, if the saloon remains, will its character change?

10.

Under what conditions will vice remain under Socialism?

11. Why will The Traffic in Vice come to an end?

12. Will total abstinence prevail?

CHAPTER XLIII

THE CHARITY ORGANIZATIONS AND SOCIALISM

781. Primitive Co-operation Not Charity.-The charity organizations and the poor laws belong exclusilvely to the era of capitalism. By this it is not meant that before the development of capitalism there had been no provision made for the relief of the distressed. Nor is it true that the appearance of the charity organizations marks the beginning in our human nature of a kindly regard one for another. While great cruelty was frequently practiced, and even cannibalism seems to have been universal at one stage of man's development, still during the entire period of savagery and until the closing years of barbarism, common ownership and co-operative industry, so far as industry existed, sought to provide for the welfare of all; and hence, within the primitive tribal life there was no place either for the charity organizations or for anything which could in any way correspond to the poor laws now in force.

782. Slaves and Serfs Not Victims of Charity.When this primitive co-operative society had been destroyed by tribal wars and the successful warriors had been made the masters and the conquered tribes had

been enslaved, there was no place for relief funds among the masters themselves, and no master would have tolerated such an interference on behalf of his own slaves from the master of a neighboring slave pen. The poor were slaves and, if relieved at all, except as they relieved each other, it was by those who were at the same time engaged as masters in wearing out their lives.

The same thing was true when, in the growth of society, slavery was outgrown and serfdom had taken its place. If a lord had needed relief from a charity organization or a poor fund, he would have ceased to be a lord. If a serf needed relief, it would be provided, if at all, by his own lord, on whose land the serf was exhausting his life in enriching the very lord from whom he would seek relief.

783. End of Personal Relations Between Masters and Servants.-It was necessary that a whole class should be developed among which the unfortunate would be found, and another class entirely distinct from the unfortunates, who were more fortunate than they, and who could be induced to contribute to the relief of those not of their own class. These characteristics of the society which produces charity organizations and poor laws, it is necessary to bear in mind. So long as the unfortunate workers maintained personal relations to those who had personally profited by their services the obligation remained upon the individuals of the more fortunate people to directly relieve the distress of the less fortunate, who were individually and personally both the sources of the masters' wealth and the subjects of their care. But under the wage system the relations of personal dependence are not recognized. The man who hires labor, that is, buys labor, instead of buying the laborer, does not admit any obligation as resting upon him to support his

employes, further than by the payment of wages. He buys his labor in the open labor market, and if he is interested in relieving the distressed, it is upon the ground that he is himself more fortunate, and that he ought to help the helpless, but not upon the ground that he is under any personal obligation to benefit those by whom he has himself been benefited.

Under primitive industry, however, all were of the same class. There was no more fortunate class which could be induced to be, or to pretend to be, especially good to a whole class less fortunate than themselves. All were provided for in the regular organization of the tribal industry. Neither the poverty-stricken class nor the class of those who were rich and able to patronize, and accustomed to patronizing those povertystricken, had any existence, and consequently the charity organization made up of the class of those unusually fortunate, to relieve the distress of those unusually unfortunate, could not exist.

These classes did exist under slavery and serfdom, but the relations between the helpless and their masters were direct and personal, and therefore the charity organizations and the poor laws as they exist now, could not then exist, and as a matter of fact did not exist.

784. The Early Church and Mutual Aid Among the Slaves. This statement is likely to be disputed on the ground that the Christian church was boundless in its charities, and from the very beginning of its history gave itself immediately and continuously to the relief of the distressed. This position is correct, but it in no way affects the truth of our position. The church was a church and not a charity organization. Long before the Christian church came into the Roman world, associations among the poor for their mutual relief, and especially in order to provide for the decent burial of