SOCIALISM AND THE AMERICAN SPIRIT.* Br the "American Spirit," Mr.
Gilman means the spirit which is not socialistic in the sense of the absorption of the indi- vidual in the aggregate. It is a many-sided and many-tongued spirit,—like American humour, characteristic of the people (we had almost said of the soil); ever leading the way to the new and untried, yet ever doubtful and hesitating in view of will-o'-the-wisp theories of government or social life, Had it been otherwise—had there been the personal freedom without the cool and almost audacious caution of the American character—the War of Independence might possibly have meant the birth of an earthly pandemonium. As it is, the caution has kept pace with the wild impulses of freedom. America could give birth to Mormonism ; but to be reared, the bantling had to be taken to the wilderness. The freedom which could look with curiosity, and even with complacency, on the strange birth, harked back from the fully-developed monstrosity. In the same way, the facts and laws of industrial life were tested. The Pilgrim Fathers and their early successors had carried to the West laws of labour which in some cases were found to be unsuitable to the new and practically boundless land. The 'English workman, for instance, believed in long apprenticeships and elaborate legal indentures binding a boy henceforth to one trade. "Once a stonemason, always a stonemason," was as certainly the law of life as "once a priest, always a priest." The American work- man, in effect, said to his English brother : "Don't you think that all this is, possibly, a mistake ?" And though the answer was often doubtful—the question being of the American, rather than of the Old English, spirit—the laws of industry were slowly but surely altered on both sides of the Atlantic. In like manner the laws of faith, of criticism, of social affairs, were dealt with. Englishmen were entirely at a loss what to do with a form of Socialism which meant deism, if not atheism. The Duke of Kent stood by the side of Robert Owen, but in vain. Socialism could find no standing-ground in England. The Americans did not see the subject from the English point of view. They wisely resolved to keep their religious faith and their industrial and other social projects distinctly apart. When English workmen of socialistic tendencies carried their labour and their faith to America, as to a land of perfect freedom, they often (we know curious cases in point), returned to England declaring that church and chapel "out yonder" were too strong for them,—were, in feet, stronger than anywhere else in the world. The Socialism of America was even then (say, fifty years ago) strong enough to secure for every social project a fair hearing, but the Individualism was, after all, the stronger. The cool audacity was all there; but it presented organised, and, as it were, embattled opinion,
* Socialism and the American Spirit. By Nicholas Paine Gilman, London : Macmillan and 00.
more difficult to combat than armed forces; and that opinion was on the side of what the Americans deented, and continue to deem, law and order.
Mr. Gilman shows somewhat of this warfare, and the persons engaged in it. Accepting Dr. Maine's definition of Socialism and Individualism* as, in the first instance, "the transformation of private and competing capital into a united collective capital," and in the second instance "as private and competing capitals, with a large measure of individual freedom from State control," he claims for the latter that it accords more truly than the former with the genius and character of the American people. Socialists of all opinions and shades of opinion arrive at the American ports of entry, and represent there the heated views and expressions of persons who find it hard to believe that the governed and the governing can anywhere be true friends. The "American spirit," with its strong and self-assertive individualism, has to face and remould much of this, be the process short or long. Thus Individualism, tending in one direction (to pure selfishness possibly, if carried far enough), and Socialism tending in another direction (to Communism, it may be, if its tenets are driven home), act and react on each other ; while "scientific Anarchy, the antithesis of State Socialism," carves out for itself a way all its own, maintaining "that all interference of the State with the individual is unadvieable, and that the State—in, the sense of Government —should be abolished." The America of to-day, Mr. Gilman says, is no more affected by scientific socialism than by thorough-going Individualism. The American with his strong individualism "would be untrue to himself were he not con- tinuously and persistently a social reformer," &e. For this Mr. Gilman claims the name of Opportunism. "Franklin," he says, "was an opportunist from first to last ; " and "Washington and Lincoln were both content to serve their own time," &c. This is the American Spirit as represented by Mr.Gilman,—the spirit of a "Higher Individualism," referring back its doubts and difficulties, as a last appeal, to the Socialism of the New Testament.
The definitions given by Mr. Gilman of Socialism, Indi- vidualism, &c., sufficiently serve their purpose without being exact or, perhaps, even critically satisfactory. We believe with him that there are senses in which the Americans are intensely conservative, the opponents of what Englishmen term Radicalism. If experiments are to be tried with the foundation-stones of a nation, the Americans prefer that the nation should be some other,—not theirs. No ridicule or ter- rorism would lead them to consider complacently the subject of breaking up the American Union. Mr. Gilman adopts, as entirely of this spirit— "The old Amerikin ides, To make a man a man, an' let him be."
—and so do nearly all of the old stock of the founders of the United States. No theorist must interfere with that well- rounded Individuality ; and no theorist must infringe the sacredness of the "Flag." We pass over some pregnant remarks of Mr. Gilman's on "Nationalism in the United States," on "The Industrial Future," on "Industrial Part- nership" (the subject of one of the author's earlier books), &c. In many cases the "American Spirit" finds new names for old ideas. In some eases (as in that of education), the Socialist seems to be allowed to claim more than belongs to him. Allow him all his claims, and we must grant him a large share in the foundation of our systems of national education. Dr. Bell and Joseph Lancaster, however, were not Socialists, but simply Christian men who created new facts to which they gave simple, everyday names. Taking the subject from another point of view, Dr. Birkbeck, Sir James Macintosh, John Howard, Lord Brougham, Lord Shaftesbury, and even Wesley and George Fox, were all Socialists, though no men ever lived who were less likely to merge their individuality in any mass of persons or ideas. Penny banks, mechanics' institutions, and evening improvement classes were hardly less socialistic than are free libraries, national compulsory education, and co-operative labour. In this order of Socialism, Mr. W. E. Forster, Mr. G. J. Holyoake, and Robert Owen might bare stood together as representing the same faith of social progress. The Mechanics' Institution is dead in many places—absorbed in the Free Library, or is left behind by the more ardent spirits of the Christian Insti-
* 7'he Quintessence of Socialism.
tute ; but it was a great fact fifty years ago. Even" Christian Socialism," a term with which we were once so familiar in connec- tion with the names of Mr. Maurice, Mr. Kingsley, and Mr. Thomas Hughes, is now only an oratorical term for an eminently practical form of Christianity which fills the entire field of vision. Socialism may grow into Christianity, but Christianity is more than Socialism. The reader will see from these remarks bow wide is the scope of Mr. Gilman's book. He attaches more importance than we would care to attach to these terms. We do not say that he claims co-operation in labour, free libraries, the shortening of the hours of labour, and other similar great changes in social life as belonging to Socialism. He does not ; but his remarks at times seem to allow the claim. The Socialist (using the term in its strict sense) had no more to do with national education than he had to do with that great social power, the locomotive steam-engine. Let us be thankful that we can now discuss these subjects freely both in America and England. If the men of fifty years ago could see and hear some such discussion, they would perhaps see, as we cannot, that the fifty years have been years of real social progress. One pleasant part of this book has reference to the alleged, and, we believe, real Optimism of the American people.
"The American," Mr. Gilman says, "is constitutionally an Optimist. He naturally inclines to take a cheerful view of the most desperate situation, morally or politically He has unbounded faith in the country and the people (with a very large The day after election is the one day of the year in which there is the largest exhibition of good-humour. The de- feated party cheerfully accepts the situation, and resigns itself to its position in the minority until the next election, when it is hoped that the popular verdict will be different."
This peculiarity of character, we cannot doubt, is an im- portant factor in estimating the forces for and against the more dangerous forms of Socialism. Where there are dis- content, suffering, or abject poverty, there men and (worse) women become dangerous as elements of disorder, ready to be inflamed. Fortunately for America, her people not only find that it is possible out of the most unpromising material to produce law-abiding citizens, but also that the people themselves are disposed to wait till this trans- formation is completed, simply holding the key-positions till frenzies of the hour have passed away. The danger, as the Americans well know, is not with the honest advocates of Socialism on public grounds, but with persons who would use a professedly unselfish creed for purely selfish purposes. These the Optimism to which Mr. Gilman refers does much -to check and restrain. Whether or not the Americans will be able, without civil war, to escape the entanglements which -their freedom and their fine position among nations have created for them, remains to be seen. Their difficulties are stupendous, and the temptations to haste and immature action are on every hand; but the brightest examples of the history of America enjoin dispassionate forbearance, and these are the examples to which a true American recurs in times of real perplexity.
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