e wont to be more
subservient to it, or to look upon it as responsible for the welfare of
its citizens. Therefore Socialism, which stands essentially for the
dependence of the individual upon the State as well as for the
governmental direction of the individual and the substitution of State
for individual judgment, for this reason appeals to them, and it has
made its greatest gains upon the Continent of Europe or among the
foreign-born or descended citizens of the United States.

The Socialists answer the charge that Socialism is not American by
saying--"Neither is Christianity. It is a 'foreign importation.' Its
founder was a 'foreigner,' and never set foot on American soil. Then
there is the printing press. It isn't American, either, though somehow
we manage to get along with it as well as the other 'foreign
importations' mentioned." Of course this smart kind of argument gets
nowhere. It is, in fact, intended to appeal to the half-baked type of
mind which has only begun to think and has never progressed beyond the
point of a consequent mental indigestion that would account for its
Socialist nightmare. What the Socialists do know and are not honest
enough to admit, is that this country was settled three centuries or
more ago by a people who did not come hither to enjoy the fruits of
other men's labor but who came here to carve out a new State in America
literally by the sweat of their brows. Also they consciously founded it
upon the basis of individual freedom and responsibility as proclaimed
and enforced by the precepts of the Christian-Jewish religion and by the
English Common Law. It is upon this foundation that they built their
success. Upon this same basis their descendants and successors to-day
weigh, measure and estimate that which is new in thought or invention
whether "native" or "foreign-born." And they have weighed Socialism in
this American balance and found it wanting.

But they brought with them neither certain loathsome diseases nor
Socialism. All of these are likewise the results of immorality--_moral_
and _political_--and of a type of decadent civilization still prevalent
on the Continent of Europe and at that time threatening to gain a
foothold even in England. It was this last-named threat from which the
founders of the American nation were wise and energetic enough to
escape, even though their escape meant going into the hardships of an
unknown and almost uninhabited wilderness.

Socialism is not