. Once it
is assumed that there is plenty of time, the difference between the
conservative and the radical disappears. For even those who have the
most to lose realize in these days the inevitability of "evolution." The
radical is not he who looks forward to great changes after long periods
of time, but he who will not tolerate unnecessary delay--who is
unwilling to accept the so-called installments or ameliorations offered
by the conservative and privileged (even when considerable) as being
satisfactory or as necessarily contributing to his purpose at all. The
radical spirit is rather that of John Stuart Mill, when he said, "When
the object is to raise the permanent condition of a people, small means
do not merely produce small effects; they produce no effect at all."

Some political standard and quantitative measure is as necessary to
social progress as similar standards are necessary in other relations.
If the political standard of the Socialists is so low as to regard
social reform programs which on the whole are more helpful to the
capitalists than to other classes--and therefore "produce no effect at
all" as far as the Socialist purpose is concerned--as if they were
_concessions_, then it follows naturally that the Socialists will be
ready to pay a price for such concessions. They will not only view as a
relative gain over the capitalists measures which are primarily aimed at
advancing capitalist interests, but they will inevitably be ready at a
price to relax to some extent the intensity of their opposition to other
measures that are capitalistic and antipopular. For instance, if old age
pensions are considered by the workers to be an epoch-making reform and
a concession, they may be granted by the capitalists all the more
readily. But if thus overvalued, advantage will be taken of this
feeling, and they will in all probability be accompanied by restrictions
of the rights of labor organizations. On the other hand, if such
pensions, however desirable, are considered as a reform which will
result indirectly in great savings to the capitalist classes, to public
and private charitable institutions, to employers, etc., then the
Socialists will accept them and, if possible, hasten their
enactment,--but, like the French, will refuse to pay for them out of
their own pockets (even through indirect taxation, as the British
workingmen were forced to do) and will allow them neither to be used as
a cloak for reaction, nor as