The American socialist party with an enrolled membership largely of immigrants, many of them still unnaturalized, was more unpatriotic and pro-German than were the socialists in any of the other allied countries. A number of its American members and of those born in allied countries left the Amer ican socialist party. The socialist vote for presidential electors fell to 590,000 in 1916, but rose again in 1920 to 900,000. In addition over a quarter of a million of votes were cast, mostly in the Northwest, for the Farmer-labor party, pre senting a state-socialist program.
§ 16. Economic legislation and the political parties. These figures, while indicating no landslide to communism, do not forecast the disappearance of the radical socialist philosophy and of the socialist party. Both philosophy and party are based on the fact of great inequality in the distribu tion of wealth, on the growth of cities and the spread of the wage system, on resentment at the abuse of power and at many cases of individual injustice suffered by the poor at the hands of employers, and on the conviction that conditions cannot be come better under the present regime. The masses now, for the first time in history, have the ballot without hereditary, class, or property limitations. The world is for the first time trying the experiment of full political democracy side by side with great private fortunes and great economic in equality. The democratic Samson may be blind, but he has the power to pull down the temple of capitalism in ruin upon our heads.
The future of partizan socialism depends on the policy of the other political parties quite as much as it does on its own policy. The floating liberal vote with socialistic sympathies is now so large that it is eagerly sought by candidates of the other parties. These independent voters care little for the radical and distant tenets of the socialist party leaders, who, to attract wider support, are forced to place in creasing stress upon immediate and moderate reforms. On the other hand, men of larger qualities of leadership in the older parties are constantly adopting and advancing pend ing measures of social reform. Where this is not done the
radical socialist party tends more quickly to develop into the one powerful party of protest and of popular aspiration, receiving support from many elements of the middle and small propertied classes and from non-radical wageworkers. This movement from both sides is leaving less noticeable the con trast between the socialist party and other parties claiming to be "progressive" or "forward looking." The strongest allies of the more radical communistic faction of the socialist party are those members of the conservative parties who fail to rec ognize the need of humane legislation, who irritate by their unsympathetic utterances, and who unduly postpone by their powerful opposition the gradual and healthful unfolding of the social spirit, energy, and capacity of the nation. The greatest problem of social and economic legislation for the next generation is to determine how far, and how, the prin ciple of authority may wisely be substituted for the principle of competition in distribution.
The many and varied forms of economic legislation de scribed in the foregoing pages are so many experiments to find that better and that best adjustment of economic insti tutions to the needs and actual capacities of the people. Some of these experiments turn out badly, others well, and accordingly some are extended, others after a time are aban doned, perhaps to be tried again by a later hopeful genera tion of men. It does not seem possible for human society to stand still or to remain unchanged in respect to the many features which go to make up the present order. In some ways things grow better, in other ways worse. Moreover, this process of change is no longer so unconscious, and human society is not now so passive in the hands of fate, as in the past. Democratic society has become self-conscious and aspires to shape its own destiny. Can it be wise enough to know and will it be virtuous enough to do, that which will lead to an ideal social state? In any case it is making the attempt which must spell the continued progress or the eventual downfall of human civilization.