Page:The Woman Socialist - Snowden - 1907.djvu/21

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Socialism
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fills the breasts of men. The ideal may be lofty or low, but it will colour the world for the idealist. Our gods are what we make them, and we are the servants of self-chosen masters.

Should the main idea in life be the making of money, every activity will be subordinated to that purpose. Religion, morality, education, politics, habits, friends—all will be looked at from the point of view of their usefulness. Will it pay to belong to that party? Is it profitable to attend that church?

Likewise a belief in Socialism, in the great principle of co-operative ownership and control as opposed to private monopoly and extortion, throws new light upon a hundred problems read before "through a glass darkly," and but dimly understood.

Socialism protests against an order of society which permits the few to live in idleness and luxury whilst the many toil in hopeless and degrading poverty. Socialists claim to have discovered the cause of the painful inequalities of our modern civilisation in the fact that land and capital, upon which the very lives of the people depend, are in the hands of a comparatively small