crease its vote at the ballot box. It believes that by this increase
the attainment of its goal is brought ever nearer, and also that _the
menace of this increasing vote_ induces the capitalist class to grant
concessions in the hope of preventing further increases. _It criticizes
non-Socialist efforts at reform as comparatively barren of positive
benefit_ and as tending, on the whole, to insure the dominance of the
capitalist class and to continue the grave social evils now
prevalent."[169] (My italics.)

Because non-Socialist reforms tend to prolong the domination of the
capitalist class, which no Socialist doubts, it is asserted that they
are also comparatively barren of positive benefit. And if, from time to
time and in contradiction to this view, changes are bought about by
non-Socialist governments which undeniably do very much improve the
condition of the working people, it is reasoned that this was done by
the _menace_ either of a Socialist revolution or of a Socialist
electoral majority.

"A _Socialist_ reform must be in the nature of a working-class
conquest," says Mr. Hillquit in his "Socialism in Theory and
Practice"--expressing this very widespread Socialist opinion. He says
that reforms inaugurated by small farmers, manufacturers, or traders,
cause an "arrest of development or even a return to conditions of past
ages, while the reforms of the more educated classes if less reactionary
are not of a more efficient type."

"The task of developing and extending factory legislation falls entirely
on the organized workmen," according to this view, because the dominant
classes have no interest in developing it, while the evils of the slums
and of the employment of women and children in industry can be cured
only by Socialism. Such reforms as can be obtained in this direction,
though they are not considered by Mr. Hillquit "as the beginnings or
installments of a Socialist system," he holds are to be obtained only
with Socialist aid. In other words, while capitalism is not altogether
unable or unwilling to benefit the working people, it can do little, and
even this little is due to the presence of the Socialists.

Another example of the "reformist's" view may be seen in the editorials
of Mr. Berger, in the _Social-Democratic Herald_, of Milwaukee, where he
says that the Social-Democrats never fail to declare that with all the
social reforms, good and worthy of support as they may be, conditions
_cannot be permane