other instance a man, resigning from his union,
day by day did double the amount of work he had done formerly. And to
cap it all, an English gentleman, going out to look at a wall being put
up for him by union bricklayers, found one of their number with his right
arm strapped to his body, doing all the work with his left arm--forsooth,
because he was such an energetic fellow that otherwise he would
involuntarily lay more bricks than his union permitted.

All England resounds to the cry, "Wake up, England!" But the sulky giant
is not stirred. "Let England's trade go to pot," he says; "what have I
to lose?" And England is powerless. The capacity of her workmen is
represented by 1, in comparison with the 2.25 capacity of the American
workman. And because of the solidarity of labor and the destructiveness
of strikes, British capitalists dare not even strive to emulate the
enterprise of American capitalists. So England watches trade slipping
through her fingers and wails unavailingly. As a correspondent writes:
"The enormous power of the trade unions hangs, a sullen cloud, over the
whole industrial world here, affecting men and masters alike."

The political movement known as Socialism is, perhaps, even less realized
by the general public. The great strides it has taken and the portentous
front it today exhibits are not comprehended; and, fastened though it is
in every land, it is given little space by the capitalistic press. For
all its plea and passion and warmth, it wells upward like a great, cold
tidal wave, irresistible, inexorable, ingulfing present-day society level
by level. By its own preachment it is inexorable. Just as societies
have sprung into existence, fulfilled their function, and passed away, it
claims, just as surely is present society hastening on to its
dissolution. This is a transition period--and destined to be a very
short one. Barely a century old, capitalism is ripening so rapidly that
it can never live to see a second birthday. There is no hope for it, the
Socialists say. It is doomed.

The cardinal tenet of Socialism is that forbidding doctrine, the
materialistic conception of history. Men are not the masters of their
souls. They are the puppets of great, blind forces. The lives they live
and the deaths they die are compulsory. All social codes are but the
reflexes of existing economic conditions, plus certain survivals of past
economic conditions. The institutions men build