was to
be procured as speedily as possible to enable the legal marriage of
the man and the woman he had grown to love.

Those were the facts as they appeared in the press, the facts upon
which so many hundreds of attacks were made upon Socialism and the
Socialist movement. Two or three weeks later, an Episcopal clergyman,
not a Socialist, left the wife he had ceased to love and with whom he
had presumably not been happy. He had legally married his wife, but
he did not bother about getting a legal separation. He just left his
wife; just ran away. He not only did not bother about getting a legal
separation, but he ran away with a young girl, whom he had grown to
love. They lived together as man and wife, without legal marriage, for
if they went through any marriage form at all it was not a legal
marriage and the man was guilty of bigamy. Was there any attack upon
the Episcopal Church in consequence? Were hundreds of sermons preached
and editorials written to denounce the church to which he belonged,
accusing it of aiming to do away with the monogamic marriage relation,
to break up the family and the home?

Not a bit of it, Jonathan. There were some criticisms of the man, but
there were more attempts to find excuses for him. There were thousands
of expressions of sympathy with his church. But there were no attacks
such as were aimed at Socialism in the other case, notwithstanding
that the Socialist strictly obeyed the law whereas the clergyman broke
the law and defied it. I think that was a fair way to treat the case,
but I ask the same fair treatment of Socialism.

So far, Jonathan, I have been taking a defensive attitude, just
replying to the charge that Socialism is an attack upon the family and
the home. Now, I want to go a step further: I want to take an
affirmative position and to say that Socialism comes as the defender
of the home and the family; that capitalism from the very first has
been attacking the home. I am going to turn the tables, Jonathan.

When capitalism began, when it came with its steam engine and its
power-loom, what was the first thing it did? Why, it entered the home
and took the child from the mother and made it a part of a great
system of wheels and levers and springs, all driven for one end--the
grinding of profit. It began its career by breaking down the bonds
between mother and child. Then it took another step. It took the
mother away from the baby in the cradle in order that she too mig