e sincerity or the
ability of writers on this subject.

When I was more or less familiar with Socialistic controversy the
Socialistic propaganda was devoted in different countries to the
accomplishment of the immediate program which in the respective
countries was considered the essential thing to be done next, very
little being said about the ultimate end which it was hoped to reach in
due time. Thus it happened that in some countries what was called the
Socialistic agitation was directed to the accomplishment of what was
already established by non-Socialists in other countries. That is
doubtless so still. Those discussions do not interest me and I have not
followed them and shall not discuss any of them here. I shall consider
only the ultimate aims of theoretical Socialism and whether if
accomplished they probably would or would not make for the general
welfare and especially for the welfare of the least efficient.

The ultimate aim of Socialism is the nationalization of all land,
industry, transportation, distribution and finance and their collective
administration for the common good as a governmental function and under
a popular government. It involves the abolition of private profit, rent
and interest and especially excludes the possibility of private profit
by increase of values resulting from increase or concentration of
population. The majority of Socialists would reach this end gradually,
by successive steps, and with compensation to existing owners. A violent
minority would reach it per saltum, by bloodshed if necessary, and by
confiscation--"expropriation" they call it. All alike conduct
their propaganda by endeavoring to create or accentuate the class
consciousness of manual workers who constitute the majority of human
beings and whose condition, it is insisted, would be improved under
a Socialistic regime. The violent wing promotes not merely class
consciousness but class hatred.

I have no time to split hairs in this discussion and it may be assumed
that I understand that Socialists do not expect to absolutely control
all personal activity but would leave all persons free to pursue any
vocation which they might desire and to have and hold whatever they may
acquire by personal activity and enterprise so only that they make no
profit on the work of another or absorb for their own use any gift of
Nature. No Socialist that I know of has attempted to draw the exact line
between activities to be wholly absor