COMMUNISM (anM. So far as America is concerned the theory and practice of C. have made little progress. Socialism has been tried, and with some degree of suc cess; but community of property and of interest has been emphatically rejected. In a land where all men are free, where all roads to prosperity and office are open to all men, where there is no caste, and, since the extinction of slavery, no degree of citizenship (except as relates to Indians and Chinese), there is little opportunity for those who would organize public robbery because one man has more acres or more dollars than another. Indeed, nearly all that has been heard in the United States in favor, or even on the subject of C., has been forced upon the public ear by discontented spirits from abroad. It is waste of time to prate about tyranny and kings where every man wears a crown. But since half a dozen screaming and worthless grasshoppers will make more noise in a clover field than ten thousand industrious and honest bees, we must perforce consider their noise and its purport. The very corner-stone and starting-point of the communists is the overthrow of the institution of private property, "that primary and fundamental institution on which, unless in some exceptional and very limited cases, the economical arrangements of society have always rested." Naturally the opinion that a cont munist is one who has no property to lose, and who therefore advocates a general re-distri bution of wealth, is widespread and popular. Such movements against property have taken place in almost every country and in nearly every age. They have originated with men as far apart in time and intellect as Plato and Robert Owen, and with men as different in social surroundings as sir Thomas More, St. Simon, and father Rapp. The mention A, of these names goes far to refute the popular idea that communists are always needy ° adventurers, seeking to possess themselves of the property of others. Among the modern leaders of C. who have actually reduced to practice the theoretical schemes of Plato's Republic and sir Thomas pore's Utopia, have been some who have devoted great wealth and rare organizing faculty to the realization of their plans for the reconstruc tion of society. It has been estimated that during his life Robert Owen devoted as much as $300,000 of his own private fortune to the promotion of communistic schemes. He had a wonderful faculty for business, and to him the accumulation of money was natu ral and easy. The great pecuniary sacrifices made by him in the cause of C. showed that he at least was animated by motives the direct opposite of the selfishness and sloth generally attributed to the advocates of the system. Much the same remarks, so far as pecuniary interest is concerned, might apply to St. Simon of France, and to John Humphrey Noyes, the head of the Oneida community, in New York. In many countries the men foremost in thought and action have been more or less attracted by communis tic schemes. These schemes have been so various in scope, and the amount of detail with which they arc described by their authors is so considerable, that it is difficult to get at the underlying principle common to them all. It must be remembered that the philosophic C. of Plato and More has been adopted to the wants of actual daily life by rough German peasants and Lancashire cotton-weavers; and though, of course, the actual has differed much from the ideal commune, yet their resemblance is. under the circumstances, very much more striking than their divergence. In Plato's Republic the dissatisfaction is not limited to merely economical conditions. In his examination of the body politic there is hardly any part which he can pronounce healthy. He would alter the life of citizens of his state from the moment of birth. Children would be taken away from their parents and nurtured under the supervision of the state. The old nursery tales, "the blasphemous nonsense with which mothers fool the manhood out of their children," are to be suppressed. Dramatic and imitative poetry are not to be
allowed. Education, marriage, the number of births, and the occupation of the citizens, are to be controlled by the guardians or the heads of the state. Perfect equality of con ditions and careers is to be preserved. The women are to have similar training with the men, and no career and no ambition is to be forbidden to them. The inequalities and rivalries between rich and poor are to cease, because all will be provided for by the state. Other cities are divided against themselves. "Any ordinary city, however small, is in fact two cities, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich, at war with one another," but this ideal state is to be a perfect unit; although its citizens are divi ded into classes according to their capacity and ability, there is none of the exclusive ness of birth, and no inequality is to break the accord which binds all the citizens, both male and female, into one harmonious whole. The marvelous comprehensiveness of the scheme for the government of this ideal state makes it belong as much to the mod ern as to the ancient world. Many of the social problems to which Plato draws atten tion are yet unsolved, and sonic are in process of solution in the direction indicated by him. He is not appalled by the immensity of the task which he has sketched out for himself and his followers. He admits that there arc difficulties to be overcome, but he says "Nothing great is easy." He refuses to be satisfied with half measures and patch work reforms. " Enough I my friend!" he exclaims: "But what is enough when any thing is wanting?" These sentences indicate the spirit in which philosophical as distinguished from practical communists, from the time of Plato until to-day, have undertaken to reconstruct human society. Sir Thomas More's Utopia has many of the characteristics of the Republic. There is in it the same wonderful power of shaking off the prejudices of the place and time in which it was written. The government of 'Utopia is described as founded on popular election; community of goods prevailed; the magistrates distributed the instruments of production among the inhabitants, and the wealth which resulted from their industry was shared by all. The use of money and all outward ostentation of wealth were forbidden. All meals were taken in common, and they were rendered attractive by the accompaniment of sweet strains of music, while the air was filled with the scent of the most delicate perfumes. More's ideal state differs in one important respect from Plato's. There was no community of wives in Utopia. Thus a oneness of the family relation and fidelity to the marriage contract were recognized by More as indispensable to the well-being of modern society. Plato, notwithstanding all the extraordinary originality with which he advocated the emanci pation of woman, was not able to free himself from the theory and practice of regarding the wife as part and parcel of the property of her husband. The fact, therefore, that he advocated community of property led him also to advocate community of wives. He speaks of the " possession and use of women and children," and proceeds to show how this possession and use must be regulated in his ideal state. Monogamy was to him mere exclusive possession on the part of one man of a piece of property which ought to be for the benefit of the public. The fact that lie showed no capacity to think of wives otherwise than as the property of their husbands only makes it the more remarkable that he claimed for women absolute equality of training and careers. The circumstance that communists have so frequently wrecked their projects by attacking marriage and advo cating promiscuous intercourse between the sexes may probably be traced to the notion which regards a wife as being a mere item among the goods and chattels of her husband.