180 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
dynamite cartridge" legitimate instrumentalities through which to attain their ends; that three of our noblest presidents have fallen victims to the spirit of hate and lawlessness ? The preachers of these inhuman doctrines are the moral lepers of the body politic, more dangerous than the physical, and, like them, should be segregated from the society they would destroy.
Workingmen are, by no means, all or generally socialistic; but the ranks of the socialists are recruited from the labor element. 1 When it comes to a working theory of government, the socialists and anarchists are as far apart as the poles, but we find all these radical propagandas working together in socialistic and political agitation. Collectivism naturally melts into com- munism, and anarchism represents the extreme element of revolu- tionary socialism. Sombart says: "Anarchism is the bloody renaissance of the social Utopia of the past."
Agitation may be good ; in a worthy cause better than stag- nation; but it must not run counter to the well-established prin- ciples lying at the foundation of social order and progress. While the present social order is imperfect, as all human con- trivances are, it is the outgrowth of centuries of human struggle and development. Theorists and poets have dreamed of Utopias and experimented in innumerable ways ; communists and social- ists have drenched cities in blood ; anarchists and nihilists have murdered ; only to make man's upward struggle harder and slower. Violence has ever tended to block the wheels of progress. Reform has achieved much ; her march may have been slow, and sometimes backward, but her triumphs are recorded on every page of history.
There would seem to be little ground for socialistic discon- tent in this country. Nearly all the reforms demanded by the moderate German socialists have been enjoyed here for years.
'The English trades unions in their national congresses, held successively in Norwich, Edinburgh, and Birmingham, adopted strong socialistic resolutions, and their organization sent delegates to the last International Socialistic Congress held in Lon- don. The' American Federation of Labor (federation of trades unions) in its national convention, held at Kansas City in 1898, gave the socialistic resolution the very large minority vote of 500, and in its later congress in New Orleans the socialistic vote was relatively stronger.
