Читать книгу The industrial republic: a study of the America of ten years hence онлайн

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“Viewed to-day from any intelligent standpoint, the outlook of the Socialist movement is full of promise—to the capitalist, of struggle and conquest; to the worker, of coming freedom. It is the break of dawn upon the horizon of human destiny, and it has no limitation but the walls of the universe.”

Whatever the reader may think about the foregoing narrative, there is one part of it which he cannot dismiss; the statements concerning the growth of the American Socialist Party. In 1888 the Socialist vote was two thousand. In 1892, it was twenty-one thousand. In 1896, it was thirty-six thousand. In 1900, it was one hundred and thirty-one thousand. In 1904, it was four hundred and forty-two thousand.

The Socialist Party has some twenty-seven thousand subscribing members, who pay monthly dues. It has over eighteen hundred “locals,” or centres of agitation; the members of these “locals” are for the most part workingmen, who give their spare hours to the cause, holding meetings and debates, and circulating the literature of Socialism. In the larger cities, there are generally several lectures each week, and there are a score of “national organisers,” who travel about, speaking night after night in various towns, forming new “locals,” and taking subscriptions to the Socialist publications. Of these there are four monthlies and about thirty-five weeklies. Since 1892, Wayland’s paper, The Appeal to Reason (Girard, Kansas), has increased its paid circulation from one hundred and twenty-six thousand to over two hundred and seventy-five thousand, and last year it printed one edition of two millions and a half, and another of over three millions. Another Socialist paper, Wilshire’s Magazine (New York), has increased its circulation from fifty-five thousand to two hundred and seventy thousand in a single year. In addition to this, there are many publishing companies, which distribute books, leaflets and pamphlets, at little more than cost. I have before me a treatise, the price of which is one cent, of which over five million copies have been sold since its publication some years ago. Its title is “Why Workingmen Should Be Socialists,” by Gaylord Wilshire.