," about "dividing-up the wealth with the lazy and shiftless,"
trying to "destroy religion," advocating "free love" and "attacking
the family," all these and the many other matters contained in your
letter, I shall try to answer fairly and with absolute honesty.

I want to convert you to Socialism if I can, Mr. Edwards, but I am
more anxious to have you _understand_ Socialism.

II

WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH AMERICA?

It seems to me that people are not enough aware of the
monstrous state of society, absolutely without a parallel in
the history of the world, with a population poor, miserable
and degraded in body and mind, as if they were slaves, and yet
called freemen. The hopes entertained by many of the effects
to be wrought by new churches and schools, while the social
evils of their conditions are left uncorrected, appear to me
utterly wild.--_Dr. Arnold, of Rugby._

The working-classes are entitled to claim that the whole field
of social institutions should be re-examined, and every
question considered as if it now arose for the first time,
with the idea constantly in view that the persons who are to
be convinced are not those who owe their ease and importance
to the present system, but persons who have no other interest
in the matter than abstract justice and the general good of
the community.--_John Stuart Mill._

I presume, Mr. Edwards, that you are not one of those persons who
believe that there is nothing the matter with America; that you are
not wholly content with existing conditions. You would scarcely be
interested in Socialism unless you were convinced that in our existing
social system there are many evils for which some remedy ought to be
found if possible. Your interest in Socialism arises from the fact
that its advocates claim that it is a remedy for the social evils
which distress you--is it not so?

I need not harrow your feelings, therefore, by drawing for you
pictures of dismal misery, poverty, vice, crime and squalor. As a
workingman, living in Pittsburg, you are unhappily familiar with the
evils of our present system. It doesn't require a professor of
political economy to understand that something is wrong in our
American life today.

As an industrial city Pittsburg is a notable example of the defective
working of our present social and industrial system. In Pittsburg, as
in every other modern city, there are the extre