ipation. Having a Labor Party, there is no such
movement in sight....

"You say: Surely it was something gained in New Zealand to secure
limited hours of employment, to have sanitary factories, clean
luncheon rooms, old-age pensions, workingmen's compensation. Surely
all these things represented progress and an advance toward the
true ideal.

"Yes. But every one of these things has been magnified, distorted
and exaggerated for the purpose and with the result of keeping the
workingman quiet about more vital things. How say you to that?
Every pretended release from his chains has been in fact a new form
of tether on his limbs. What about that? I should think meanly of
myself if I did not rejoice every time a workingman's hours are
reduced or the place wherein he is condemned to toil is made more
nearly tolerable. But what shall we conclude when these things are
deliberately employed to distract his thoughts from fundamental
conditions and when all this state of stagnation is wrought by the
alluring game of politics?

"I cannot help thinking that all this has or ought to have a lesson
for the Socialist movement in America. If it be desired to kill
that movement, the most effective way would be to get it entangled
in some form of practical politics. Then the real and true aim of
the movement can at once be lost sight of and this party can go the
way of every other proletarian party down to the pit. I should not
think that was a very good way to go.

"When we come to reason of it calmly, what can be gained by
electing any human being to any office beneath the skies? To get in
and keep in does not seem any sort of an object to any one that
will contemplate the possibilities of the Cooeperative Commonwealth.
How shall it profit the working class to have Mr. Smith made
sheriff or Mr. Jones become the coroner? Something else surely is
the goal of this magnificent inspiration. In England the radicals
have all gone mad on the subject of a successful parliamentary
party, the winning of the government, the filling of offices, and
the like. I am told that the leaders of the coalition movement have
already picked out their prime minister against the day when they
shall carry the country and be in. In the meantime they, too, must
play this game caref