ist mayors of towns and
members of State legislatures, a vast literature, and single Socialist
papers with subscription lists running up into the hundreds of thousands.
In 1896, 36,000 votes were cast for the Socialist candidate for
President; in 1900, nearly 200,000; in 1904, 450,000. And the United
States, young as it is, is ripening rapidly, and the Socialists claim,
according to the materialistic conception of history, that the United
States will be the first country in the world wherein the toilers will
capture the political machinery and expropriate the bourgeoisie.

* * * * *

But the Socialist and labor movements have recently entered upon a new
phase. There has been a remarkable change in attitude on both sides.
For a long time the labor unions refrained from going in for political
action. On the other hand, the Socialists claimed that without political
action labor was powerless. And because of this there was much ill
feeling between them, even open hostilities, and no concerted action.
But now the Socialists grant that the labor movement has held up wages
and decreased the hours of labor, and the labor unions find that
political action is necessary. Today both parties have drawn closely
together in the common fight. In the United States this friendly feeling
grows. The Socialist papers espouse the cause of labor, and the unions
have opened their ears once more to the wiles of the Socialists. They
are all leavened with Socialist workmen, "boring from within," and many
of their leaders have already succumbed. In England, where class
consciousness is more developed, the name "Unionism" has been replaced by
"The New Unionism," the main object of which is "to capture existing
social structures in the interests of the wage-earners." There the
Socialist, the trade-union, and other working-class organizations are
beginning to cooperate in securing the return of representatives to the
House of Commons. And in France, where the city councils and mayors of
Marseilles and Monteaules-Mines are Socialistic, thousands of francs of
municipal money were voted for the aid of the unions in the recent great
strikes.

For centuries the world has been preparing for the coming of the common
man. And the period of preparation virtually past, labor, conscious of
itself and its desires, has begun a definite movement toward solidarity.
It believes the time is not far distant when the histor