The Socialist Menace To Constitutional Government

One is from without. It lies in the danger of the results of open warfare against this country, invasion by a foreign enemy and the subjection of our citizens and our institutions to the tyranny of a militarist autocracy. [] We have ultimately little to fear from the effects of any menace by a foreign enemy, whether such enemy shall at any time appear in the form of Mexican banditti, or of the yellow peril of the Orient, or of Spanish tyranny, or of the yet barbarous and inhuman militarism of the Hun. The threat of any such invasion from without makes all true American hearts throb in a unison of response to the call to arms and in consecration of our lives and property to the defense of our government and of civilization.

The most serious menace now threatening our free institutions is that of disruption and revolution from within. It is the menace of those forces which seeks to change our form of government by revolution, but by a revolution effected, not by open, armed revolt—a revolution, rather, of attitude of mind toward our free institutions and toward the protective features which are peculiar to our constitutional democracy.

It is as to one most grave manifestation of this revolutionary tendency that I shall speak today. I propose to discuss those changes in our institutions which are advocated, and in fact promoted, through the socially and politically revolutionary propaganda of "Socialism."

THE SOCIALIST MENACE TO CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT
By Rome G. Brown
Minneapolis, Minnesota

Address before the Louisiana State Bar Association at Alexandria, Louisiana, May 12, 1917.
Reprinted in the Journal in pursuance of vote taken at Saratoga Springs, N. Y., on September 6, 1917, upon motion of W. O. Hart, of Louisiana.

The American Bar Association Journal
Vol. 4, No. 1 (January, 1918)

There are two sorts of menace to the stability of our constitutional democracy.

One is from without. It lies in the danger of the results of open warfare against this country, invasion by a foreign enemy and the subjection of our citizens and our institutions to the tyranny of a militarist autocracy. To such dangers we have been too little alert. We approve the dignified, and at the same time forceful, declaration of the Congress, on the 6th of April, last, that all the resources of this country shall be used to maintain the rights of our sovereign democratic government, as against the encroachments of European militarism. That declaration of war was a defiant protest against ruthless and uncivilized aggression. It was an expression of the inherent spirit of Americanism which will, at all times and to the full extent necessary, defend itself from the invasion by foreign enemies, cither of our territory or of our rights as a free and independent nation of the world. We have ultimately little to fear from the effects of any menace by a foreign enemy, whether such enemy shall at any time appear in the form of Mexican banditti, or of the yellow peril of the Orient, or of Spanish tyranny, or of the yet barbarous and inhuman militarism of the Hun. The threat of any such invasion from without makes all true American hearts throb in a unison of response to the call to arms and in consecration of our lives and property to the defense of our government and of civilization.

Ours A Government Of Individualism.

The social and political theory upon which our government is based is the very opposite of that of Socialism. Socialism means a direct and pure democracy in government—a government by mob rule, a subjection of the individual citizen to the whim and caprice of temporary passion, a government without the intervention of courts or of representative, deliberative legislation. It means an obliteration of property rights and of individual liberties and rights, except as the citizen shall per se become a silent partner in the fruits, if there be any, of enterprises owned and managed by the state. Under Socialism, prosperity depends, not upon individual ambition, effort and thrift, but, rather, upon the displacement of competition and of the exercise of talent and of effort by the individual, by a subjection of individual talent and enterprise to the direct control of the state. Individual prosperity and property rights are to be submerged in state control. Likewise individual talent, incentive, effort and motive for effort and for thrift, and all their fruits—all are to be submerged in state control. Property rights and personal rights and liberties are to be lost under the paternalistic and tyrannical sovereign power of the Socialistic democracy.

Our Constitution was written as a manifestation of the world's greatest revolt, by a united people, against not only the tyranny of monarchy, but also against the tyranny of democracy. For the very reason that Socialism is radically democratic, it is even more susceptible of tyranny to the individual than any tyranny of monarchy.

The Magna Charta, wrested from King John at Runnymede, was the great protest of the English-speaking world against the tyrannical invasion of the individual rights and liberties of the citizen. Its real force, however, in English jurisprudence, was never adequately felt, until, in the form of the Bill of Rights, it became a part of our Constitution, wherein the enforcement of the individual rights and liberties therein declared was vouchsafed by express limitations upon the legislative power. Our Constitution declared individual property rights and liberties and at the same time safeguarded their maintenance by the fundamental law which was made controlling upon all law-making power of the states and of the nation. Freedom from unauthorized search or imprisonment, freedom of religion, and, above all, the right to acquire and hold property, and the right of individual liberty in all social and business relations—the efficient protection of these individual rights was, more than anything else, the purpose, and the accomplishment, of our constitutional government.

Of course, where the right of private property exists there must be inequalities of fortune, varying as the diligence, skill, effort and thrift of the individual vary. The Socialist would level all inequalities of fortune, simply because he deems that such leveling would conduce to the welfare of the now less prosperous. He would accomplish that object by direct confiscation if feasible; otherwise by indirect means. He would ignore, and as soon as possible abolish, all constitutional guaranties by which private property rights are now protected.

In a recent case the United States Supreme Court said:

"No doubt, wherever the right of private property exists, there must and will be inequalities of fortune-; .... Since it is selfevident that, unless all things are held in common, some persons must have more property than others, it is from the nature of things impossible to uphold freedom of contract and the right of private property without at the same time recognizing as legitimate those inequalities of fortune that are the necessary result of the exercise of those rights. But the Fourteenth Amendment, in declaring that a state shall not 'deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law,' gives to each of these an equal sanction; it recognizes ' liberty ' and 'property' as co-existent human rights, and debars the states from any unwarranted interference with either.

"And since a state may not strike them down directly it is clear that it may not do so indirectly, as by declaring in effect, that the public good requires the removal of those inequalities that are but the normal and inevitable result of their exercise, and then invoking the police power in order'to remove the inequalities, without other object in view. The police power is broad, and not easily defined, but it cannot be given the wide scope that is here asserted for it, without in effect nullifying the constitutional guaranty." (Coppage vs. Kansas, 236 U. S. 1, 17-18)

The Revolutionary Aims Of Socialism.

We are not here directly concerned with the purely social, economic, or religious phases of Socialism. So far as this discussion is concerned, the labor-cost theory of value, propounded by Karl Marx as the basis of the Socialistic creed, is immaterial. It would be useless here to follow through the fallacious syllogisms, of which this Marxian theory of value is the first premise, to show the steps of reasoning, or of unreasoning, by which the Socialist pretends to draw the conclusion, that it is the right and the duty of every citizen to engage in open revolution against our present social and governmental system. Suffice it to say, that orthodox Socialism teaches that "value is determined by the socially necessary labor-time that is required to produce an article under the normal conditions of production and with the average degree of skill and intensity prevalent at the time "; that the working people, the "proletariat," produce everything, but that, under " the iron law of wages," their wages are kept at the bare cost of living; that the capitalists receive in the form of rent, interest and profits, the greater part of the values created by the proletariat, and that these surplus values, belonging of right to their producers—that is, the workers—have been and still are obtained and withheld from the workers through "' exploitation" and " robbery "; that capital is being concentrated into the hands of a few, the middle class being rapidly eliminated, and that soon there will be only two classes left, capitalists and laborers, the "robbers " and the " robbed "; that the laborers will become the more numerous class and will eventually seize, by the ballot—or by violence if necessary—all political power in the state and all property and industries and, through a common ownership and management of the means of productions, will establish an equitable distribution of values, and thereby abolish not only 'poverty itself, but all inequalities of fortune, which have been the result of the present property-right system. ("Orthodox Socialism," by James Edward Le Rossignol, pp. 9-12)

The objects, then, of Socialism, are a social revolution and a political revolution.

And how is such political revolution in this country to be brought about? Against what institutions of this government is the attack directed? In what manner is the proposed warfare upon our institutions to be conducted? These are some of the questions which touch the interests of any American citizen, whether he be lawyer or layman, if only he has the slightest regard for his oath to support this government and the Constitution upon which it is founded.

As in the case of most cults, or sects, representing any proposed change or reform, whether it be social, religious, or political, the means by which the changes proposed are to be effected are not only those which are openly advocated, but are also those which are taught and planned among the most orthodox of the initiated. Socialism, as other cults, has its exoteric, as well as its esoteric, aims and doctrines. And it is in the secret councils of the high priests of the cult, where the real ultimate purpose and intent of the movement are laid bare. The propaganda of Socialism is discreet. It systematically and studiously pretends to advocate a revolution which shall be peaceful in its nature, a revolution by the ballot; while the occasional drift into the open from its secret councils discloses the purpose and threat of open violence, and, eventually, of the catastrophe of a bloody, armed strife between the two classes into which it divides all men of the nation—those who have property and those who have not.

First, let us consider the publicly avowed objects which Socialism has set for itself to accomplish in this country.

What Socialism Openly Proposes.

The Socialist movement in America has expressed itself in the formation of a national political party; and the 1912 platform of that party asserted, as some of the items of its "program" of action, the following:

The government ownership and management of all means of transportation and communication, and of all large-scale industries. including the immediate acquirement by the government, either municipal, state or federal, of all grain elevators, stock yards, storage warehouses and other distributing agencies; all land should be taken over by the state either directly or by confiscatory taxation; the adoption of the initiative, referendum and recall (including judicial recall); the fixing of minimum wage scales in all employments; the abolition of the United States Senate and of the veto power of the President, and allowing a repeal of national laws only by act of Congress or by voters in a majority of the states; the abolition of all federal courts, except the Federal Supreme Court, and the election of all judges for short terms; the abolition of the power " usurped" (as they say) by the Supreme Court of the United States to pass upon the constitutionality of legislative acts; and the revision (presumably upon the Socialist basis) of the Constitution of the United States.

But these drastic changes are only steps to a greater change, for the platform states that all such measures of "relief"

"are but a preparation of the workers to seize the whole powers of government in order that they may thereby lay hold of the whole system of socialized industry and thus come to their rightful inheritance."

The Socialistic platform of 1916 re-affirms the same objects: demands, further, that the Federal Constitution shall be made amendable only by a majority vote of the people; and declares that it is the aim of the Socialists to re-organize the life of the nation upon the basis of Socialism. The Socialist platform of Minnesota for the year 1912 asserts that it

"Aims to establish the collective and public ownership of the means of production, transportation and distribution, the Democratic operation and management of such public enterprises and the remuneration of the workers by the full social value of the product of their labor."

And the same state platform for the year 1916 states as the "ultimate aim of Socialism ":

"The before mentioned measures are presented by the Socialist party for the immediate relief of the workers, but its main efforts are directed to the complete overthrow of the present capitalist order and the establishment of an industrial system based upon the collective ownership and Democratic management and control of the sources and machinery of wealth production."

The Socialist party of Minneapolis in its city platform for the year 1912, after specific changes proposed, asserted:

"We repeat that it must be distinctly understood that we advocate these remedial measures only as a means to advance the one great end of the co-operative commonwealth."

Socialism, therefore, from its political viewpoint, presents an entirely different aspect from that of the usual political party. The issue between the Democratic party and the Republican party is one of policy in the management of the existing government. It is neither the avowed purpose nor the intention of either of these two political factions to get control of the management of the government for the purpose of changing the form of government from that of a representative and constitutional democracy to an ultra- paternalistic and unconstitutional mob-rule government. The control sought by the Socialist party is avowedly for the precise purpose of wrecking the present form of government, and undoing forever all the work which has been accomplished by its founders and by its statesmen and jurists through the more than hundred years of its steady emergence as the greatest and most prosperous of the governments of the world's history.

Esoteric Socialism.

While appealing to the ballot as a means of peaceful overturning of our present form of government, the "ultimate aim of Socialism" is not alone a peaceful revolution by the ballot. When discretion shall permit, it plans resorting to violence. Even while pretending to deny the violent intentions of Socialism, the Socialist candidate for the presidency dismisses the subject of violent intentions on the part of the Socialist as unreasonable, but solely on the ground of the lack of "advisability," at the present time, of violence and because "the use of dynamite would turn the minds of people against them." He says: "Wherever there is a free ballot they believe in using it, to the exclusion of bombs and bullets." But, to one who, like the Socialist, repudiates the present power and function of the courts to protect individual rights and to prevent class distinctions in legislation, what shall determine the distinction between a ballot that is " free " and one which is not free?

Again, the same Socialist spokesman says:

"While they are in a minority they are obeying the laws that the capitalists make, but when the Socialists become a majority, they will insist even with bullets that the capitalists obey the laws that the Socialists make." ("The Truth about Socialism," by Allan L. Benson, pp. 22-23)

And how is this change from ownership and control of private property to common ownership and management under state control to be accomplished? In their public platforms, as to measures of legislation to bring about this change, they make pretensions of provisions for compensation. Socialist representative Berger in the National House of Representatives introduced a measure for the taking over by the government of certain large business enterprises and making payment therefor by issuing 50-year, two per cent, government bonds for their value—such compensated value to be computed at their physical reproductioncost. But this compensation feature is only a gratuitous concession to the "robbers" who have acquired these properties, and, to the Socialist, is not based upon any principle of right either in law or in morals. It is like the " reward " offered to the thief for the return of stolen goods " and no question asked.'' The orthodox Socialist urges direct confiscation on the plea that the right of such confiscation is supported by a " higher law " than that which is represented by our constitutional safeguards. Benson says:

"One need quote only the law of self-preservation to prove that if any people shall ever become convinced that their lives depend upon the confiscation of the trusts, then such confiscation will be justified. When men reach a certain stage of hunger and wretchedness they pay scant attention to every law except the higher law which says they have a right to live.

"I believe that most Socialists 20 years ago were in favor of confiscation. The trend now is all toward compensation. Not that Socialists have changed their minds at all about the equities of the matter. They have not. But they are coming to see that compensation is the easier and quicker way." ("The Truth about Socialism," by Allan L. Benson; "Essentials of Socialism," by Ira B. Cross, pp. 102-103)

The Socialist View Of The Federal Constitution.

"Our Dishonest Constitution" is the term applied to our Federal Constitution by America's representative Socialist. In a book which has become a leading one of the Socialist propaganda of enmity to our present form of government, under the title "Facts about the 'Fathers,'" referring to the framers of the Constitution, he says:

"Some were grafters. Some were crooks. Some were of mediocre intelligence. Some of extraordinary intelligence. But all were capitalists or the attorneys of the capitalist class." (Chap. 2, "Our Dishonest Constitution," by Allan L. Benson)

Then from Washington, Hamilton and Madison on down through the entire list this muckraker pretends to detail the faults and failings of each with scandal of the most infamous kind ever sprung from the imaginings of the traducers of character. This book is but a reprint of the shameless contributions by this same writer in a monthly periodical of the year before. (Pearson's Magazine, August, 1913, et seq.)

In Pearson's Magazine, August, 1913, the term "Patriot Fathers" as applied to the framers of the Constitution was, by this same author, most indecently held up to ridicule. They are branded as "grafters'" who initiated and carried through a change in our system of government and framed and established a Constitution, upon a plan which "was never meant to bring about rule by the people," but which was adroitly put together and the adoption of which was surreptitiously and deceitfully secured by its framers—all for the sole purpose "to enhance the value of their own property holdings and to tighten and increase the shackles which theretofore existed upon the liberty of the common people." He holds up to the utmost contempt that instrument for which respect and support are made the essence of the oath of American citizenship. He vilifies the Constitution itself and defames its makers and the very motives of their work in its making, and teaches disloyalty to it and to the government, the stability of which depends upon the enforcement of that Constitution as its fundamental law.

I assert that when the leader of a faction, whether that faction be political or social, and whether it represents 600,000 professed adherents or only 600, becomes the spokesman for such doctrines as these, and whether or no it be in times of peace or in times of war, he has approached, even if he has not passed, the limit which marks the distinction between loyalty and treason. Can a man be viewed in any other wise than as an enemy, an outspoken enemy, of the government under which he lives, who asserts, as does this man Benson, when referring to the workingmen as "victims of the Constitution," that:

"The Constitution of the United States was made for them in the same sense that sheep shears are made for sheep. The gentlemen who made the Constitution had sheep to shear." (Pearson's Magazine, August, 1913, p. 151)

And again when he says:

"Common people don't fight well in war time for a government that they know is neither for them nor was ever intended for them. Nor do common people submit to continuous robbery in times of peace merely because«the robbery is committed according to the rules laid down by a government that they know was founded by the rich for the benefit of the rich. Therefore, the common people are taught to hold the Constitution in veneration. If a foreigner wishes to become a citizen of the United States he must swear, among other things, that he believes in the principles laid down in the Constitution. If the people of this country knew the real principles and purposes that underlie our Constitution, they would not permit a foreigner who believed in it to enter the country. They would regard him either as a fool or a fraud." (Pearson's Magazine. August, 1913, p. 149)

All this from the man who stood as the chosen national representative of the Socialist movement in this country during the political campaign of 1916. This is the author of whom Eugene V. Debs, also once Socialist candidate for President, has said:

"No one is better qualified to write a popular exposition of the Socialist philosophy and to make clear to the average reader the real meaning of Socialism."

But the reviling of the Constitution and of its makers is only a part of the Socialists' campaign to wreck this government and to bring about "the one great end of the co- operative commonwealth." The Declaration of Independence is subjected to their defamation. In a "patriotic edition" of the Socialist organ, Age of Reason, published at Dallas, Texas, in July, 1914, it is declared that the patriots of the Revolution, when they returned home from their battles

"found that the thieves of America had written this document to fool the workers with They were then compelled to go to this robber-creditor class (who had written the beautiful document above referred to) for supplies to make a crop. These liberty-loving thieves were also the lawmakers—the makers of the laws they had passed to imprison men for debt Could the demons of hell hatch a more damnable plot against the working class? .... Just a few men have the right to make the laws, hence they make the laws so that just a few men can own the property They framed this document so that it would arouse the ire of the working class and cause them to rise up and drive the British out of this country, and give to this bunch of American capitalists the right to make the laws so that they could take the place of the English capitalists and rob the working class."

In these manifestoes of Socialism the words "rob," "robbery," and "robber" are not used in any figurative sense, nor so intended. The Declaration of Independence and the Federal Constitution are traduced as instruments deliberately concocted to perpetuate fraud, robbery and oppression. A government which has its basis upon those instruments is held up to derision as a government of fraud and of robbery, a government of injustice, a government of exploitation of the weaker for the benefit of the stronger, a government of oppression, a government wicked in its formation, wicked in its administration, and wicked in all its promises for the future. Righteously and logically, according to orthodox Socialism, our government is only the deserving object of enmity and attack and overthrow by every citizen within its jurisdiction.

What more need be said to show the menace of the Socialist attitude toward our Federal Constitution?

The Encroachments Of Socialism.

The strength of the Socialist movement is by no means commensurate with the number of votes cast for a Socialist candidate, nor by the numbers claimed as adherents to the Socialist creed. It already has its representatives in the halls of Congress, in the state legislatures, as well as among mayors of cities, and in aldermanic councils. The immediate menace of Socialism to our form of government arises from the fact of the increasing tendency toward a Socialistic attitude of mind, in respect of our laws and institutions, by those who would disavow the name of " Socialist." It lies in the increasing tendency toward experimentation in legislation, in the tendency to try out this theory or that and to force the courts, under the stress of what is assumed to be a "preponderant public opinion," to make the constitutional limitations yield to the demands of temporary popular opinion under the guise of the extension of what is denominated the "police power " of the state and of the nation. By subtle steps the objects of Socialism are, in many ways, being slowly accomplished; and already, I venture to say, through the influence of such tendencies, actual encroachments upon our constitutional safeguards have been made, and others are threatened.

The menace of Socialism to our constitutional government is not merely theoretical, it is a practical, presently encroaching menace. Let us consider a few concrete examples of its manifestation.

The Judicial Recall An Instrument Of Socialism.

The ultimate object of Socialism being to abolish private property rights, it naturally centers its first attack upon those functions of our present governmental system which were established for the very purpose to protect individual rights and liberty and to safeguard them from encroachment by legislative whim. The function of the courts, established under the Federal Constitution, to invalidate legislation which is confiscatory of property rights, and therefore repugnant to constitutional limitations, is first sought to be undermined by.depriving judges of the independence necessary to the exercise of the judicial function. So the Socialists were the first to advocate the judicial recall, and that measure stands today as a plank in the Socialist party platform. The recent movement in this country for the judicial recall, whether in the form of recall of judges or recall of judicial decisions, is Socialistic, and in this movement many men, including some members of the Bench and the Bar, have become the allies of Socialism, although many of them would pretend to repudiate such alliance. Progress in this movement has been halted, through enlightenment of the voters as to the dangers to our institutions of the adoption of judicial recall measures. It is, however, significant of the menace of Socialism to our institutions that, beginning with Oregon, in 1908, the recall of judges was written into the constitutions of California in 1911, Colorado in 1912, Arizona in 1912, Nevada in 1912, and Kansas in 1914; and that in Colorado the same constitutional amendment provides for the recall of judicial decisions. Moreover, in many other states the judicial recall has been proposed for constitutional amendment and has been introduced in the state legislatures and received substantial, and in some instances nearly successful, support. In Arkansas, a constitutional amendment for the recall of judges, which was initiated by the people, was passed at the 1912 election, but was invalidated by the State Supreme Court on the ground that it had not been properly submitted to the people. While now apparently discredited, through increased understanding of its real significance, the judicial recall is still advocated by the Socialists and their allies as an instrument for striking at the very foundations of our government. To the Socialists it is the first feasible step for destruction of our present system of government. The Socialist organ, Appeal to Reason, referring to the judicial recall, has said:

"It is the means whereby the people will be enabled to inaugurate Socialism, and after that is done they may secure democracy in industry."

Socialism Would Eliminate All Judicial Functions.

The advocacy of the judicial recall is a measure calculated indirectly to eliminate the judicial function. But the Socialists and their allies make a more direct attack upon the established functions of our judicial departments, state and national. They seek to eliminate that function of the judiciary, the exercise of which constitutes the keystone of constitutional safeguards to life, liberty and property of the individual. They regard the only power which is established to enforce constitutional limitations as a power " usurped " by the courts themselves, in derogation of the rights of citizens; for they recognize the fact that it is this so-called " usurped " power by the exercise of which the individual rights of property and of liberty, vouchsafed by our constitutional government, are safeguarded, and that so long as this power is exercised by a free and independent judiciary the establishment of a new and different system of government, based upon the common ownership of everything, is impossible. ("The Usurped Power of the Courts," by Allan L. Benson, Pearson Pub. Co., 1911) The judicial function of declaring invalid any statute which contravenes constitutional safeguards to individual rights of property and liberty is, so long as it continues, a barrier to the establishment of a government of Socialism. The attack upon this function made by the Socialists is of two kinds.

They would have the judiciary itself, including the United States Supreme Court, reverse the decision of Chief Justice Marshall in the case of Marbury vs. Madison (Marbury vs. Madison, 1 Cranch 137.) and in all the subsequent cases based upon that decision, and, by judicial construction, leave the express constitutional limitations as mere scraps of paper announcing rules of conduct which are to be honored or dishonored at the whim or caprice of a voting majority at any time or in any locality. For the determination of the question of constitutionality of any statute, they would substitute, in the place of the careful judgment of a tribunal of triers experienced and learned in the law, the arbitrary and capricious pre-judgment of comparatively incapable arbiters declared at a mass meeting or at a referendum election.

Doubting the voluntary surrender by the courts of this established function, the Socialists advocate the express denial by constitutional amendment of the power of the courts to invalidate legislation as repugnant to constitutional limitations. An active propaganda in promotion of such change is now carried on throughout the country; and it is participated in by avowed Socialists and by others who are, either directly or indirectly, the allies of Socialism.

Within three years an ex-President of the United States, in speaking to the people of South America, referred to the power now exercised by our courts to enforce constitutional safeguards as a power which was "arrogated" to, and "usurped" by, the courts themselves. He stated at the same time that the courts of this country had for more than 30 years exercised their powers "with inexcusable and reckless wantonness on behalf of privilege " and against the interests of the people.

A chief justice of a state supreme court has become a leading muckraker of our constitutional system and a rank supporter of this "usurpation " theory. He speaks and writes in the terms of Socialism, both in his views as to the motives of the makers of our Constitution as well as his views in regard to its subsequent enforcement. Its origin and enforcement are, he says, the work of "exploiters," intended and operating as an instrument of oppression and injustice. He characterizes the decisions of the Federal Supreme Court as "perversions of the law" and the reasoning of those decisions as instances of "sardonic irony" and of "adding insult to injury." ("Government by Judges," address by Chief Justice Walter Clark, of the North Carolina Supreme Court, at Cooper Union, New York City, January 27, 1914; also, "Some Myths of the Law," by same author. Michigan Law Review, November, 1914)

The menace of this Socialist attack upon our judicial system is not merely potential or theoretical. Its influence has already been so extended that means of enlightenment as to the dangers of this Socialist fallacy have been organized by the Bar associations of the nation and of the states. A propaganda of education as to our constitutional government has for six years been carried on by the American Bar Association through its Committee to Oppose Judicial Recall. For over three years a special committee of the New York State Bar Association " Upon the duty of courts to refuse to execute statutes in contravention of the fundamental law," under the efficient chairmanship of Henry A. Forster, of the New York City Bar, has rendered valiant service in the same cause. (See First, Second and Third Reports of this committee, presented at the annual meetings of the New York State Bar Association in January, 1915, 1916 and 1917)

Back of every attempt to weaken or eliminate the judicial function, or to diminish the independence of the judiciary, the Socialist agitator is always found most active. So the Socialist supports the proposition, which has been made part of the Ohio Constitution and is sought to be applied in all national and state courts of review, to compel either a unanimous, or more than a majority, opinion of an appellate court to declare a statute invalid on the ground of its repugnance to constitutional provisions. For the same reason it has become a plank in the Socialist political platform that all judgeships be made elective, and that, too, only for short terms. Ultimately they would eliminate the judicial function; but, until that object is accomplished, they would resort to every possible step leading to the weakening of the judicial power.

Socialistic Industrial Measures.

While not constituting direct attacks upon our constitutional government, there are certain industrial measures which have been grafted upon our state constitutions and legislation, the source and object of which are purely Socialistic. They are Socialistic encroachments, by legislative or judicial extension of the police power, to the extent that in many instances there is effected an arbitrary confiscation of individual rights of liberty and of property.

A fair example of such legislation is that of the statutory minimum wage in private employment. Such statutes are based upon the Socialistic, Utopian theory that each individual has a "generic right" to receive, through legislation, all the means necessary for a comfortable living, and this too, independent of capacity, efficiency, or return in any way by the individual to the source of supply. The minimum wage statute in private employment forbids the employer or employee to make any valid contract for labor except for at least a minimum wage based upon the necessary cost of living according to a standard arbitrarily fixed by some commission or by statute. Of course, the excess over what the capacity or efficiency of the employee returns in work-worth to the employer, is a forced contribution to the purely individual needs of the worker—needs which do not arise out of, and have no relation to, the fact of employment or to the occupation in question. The forced contribution of such excess is, of course, a taking of property. Moreover, the denial of the right of the worker to make a labor contract for what he is worth tends to render him jobless and without means to himself or to his family of any wage. Such statutory contribution by the employer is in fact a compulsory division of his property between himself and those who happen to be upon his payroll. It is all based upon the Socialist theory of division of property between those who have and those who have not. Nevertheless, such statutes have been passed, in one form and another, in Massachusetts, Nebraska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Minnesota, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wisconsin. The Oregon statute was upheld by the Oregon State Supreme Court and the judgment therein recently affirmed by the United States Supreme Court by a divided court. Of eight judges qualified to sit in the case, four were in favor of such extension of the police power, and four were against. ("Stettler vs. O'Hara, et al., and Simpson vs. O'Hara, et al. (Oregon Minimum Wage Cases), affirmed by United States Supreme Court by divided court, April 9, 1917) Such affirmance, only by reason of a divided court, leaves undecided the federal questions involved. This result is significant, because it shows the danger of the slow, but steady, encroachment upon our constitutional limitations due to the influence of the Socialist propaganda. No thoughtful lawyer of 20 years or more ago, or even 10 years ago, would have imagined that such legislation had any chance of escaping the condemnation of any national or state court wherein its validity was questioned on the ground of its being repugnant to the Fourteenth Amendment.

So, in other ways, the police power of regulation has been extended beyond the limits of mere regulation. It has been extended to placing the state in the control, and even in monopolistic control, of business enterprises which theretofore had been considered proper only for private management. The business of insurance seems now on the way to passing from a private enterprise to an exclusively state or governmental enterprise. State insurance laws, casualty and otherwise, have been passed and put in force in several states. The statute of the State of Washington, providing for compulsory monopolistic casualty insurance through purely state management, was recently sustained by the United States Supreme Court. (Mountain Timber Co. vs. State of Washington (decided March 7, 1917))

The State of North Dakota is now, and has been for two years, practically in the control of a Socialist organization known as the farmers "Non-Partisan League." Many of its measures. Socialistic in their nature, have been carried through the state legislature, and a new Socialist state constitution has been proposed, and was nearly passed in the last legislature, whereby state Socialism was to be established, under which the state or any political subdivision thereof should have the right " to engage in any occupation or business for public purposes." The object was in the first instance to take over to the state all elevator systems, flour mills, "and other things of a like nature." Besides provisions for initiative, referendum and recall, including judicial recall, there was also proposed the constitutional provision that:

"No act, law, bill, measure or resolution, or part thereof, adopted by vote of the people shall be held unconstitutional, or come within the veto power of the Governor, or be amended or repealed, except by the vote of the people."

Other encroachments made through the influences of Socialism upon our institutions are manifest in many ways. Of course, it is not necessarily an objection to a measure that it is also favored by the Socialist. From a constitutional viewpoint, many measures which are by their opponents viewed as Socialist attacks upon our constitutional government, present questions fairly open to debate. I have mentioned a few which, to me personally, seem to evidence actual encroachments upon our form of government. The Socialists work through their own organization and members, and also through those who, from time to time or at one place or another, can be made allies in the accomplishment of some Socialist object. The orthodox Socialist denies that he is allied with the more radical or anarchist member of the I. W. W. Nevertheless, members of both these organizations are found at different places and times, working hand in hand. And various labor organizations, state and national, while repudiating both Socialism and anarchism, are here and there discovered working shoulder to shoulder with both the Socialist and I. W. W. organizations to put through and compel the enforcement of legislation which is purely Socialistic in its nature and is intended as a step to the final overthrow of our present form of government. These combined forces were ever present during the last state legislature in Minnesota, and incessantly active in the formulation and introduction of countless measures intended as steps to the establish'ment of the Socialistic order.

Again, it was the menacing monster of Socialism, stripped of its mask of peace, showing its brutal teeth and its iron hand fully armed in preparation for violence and bloodshed, which, in September last, held the threat of an organized and prepared industrial revolution over the heads of the 64th Congress and intimidated our national legislature into the passage, either against judgment or without opportunity for deliberate judgment, of the so-called " Adamson Law," by which the demands of a certain class of workers, which they had refused to submit to arbitration, were arbitrarily imposed upon the railroad employers. It matters not that the Adamson Law has since been held not unconstitutional. This incident of setting a time limit for action by the national legislature, by an organized mob clamoring with threats of violence at the very doors of the Congress, is most significant of the methods of legislation which are to be practiced when the new era of Socialism shall be established and when no constitutional limitations shall even pretend to stand between the mob and the property owner, and when the courts, even if they still exist in form, shall have been shorn of their judicial functions.

Manifestations of the progress of Socialism, encroaching already upon the individual rights of property and of liberty, are becoming more and more apparent. Socialism has already made long strides toward the accomplishment of its ultimate object, and each success, whether effected by subtle invasion or by open defiance and threat, adds to the boldness and persistence of the activities of its adherents. The instruments of its propaganda are spread broadcast, breathing enmity to our free institutions and to our constitutions, teaching the doctrine of class hatred and inciting all the elements of unrest to prepare for the final revolution by violence, which is the ultimate goal of every Socialist.

Under the euphemistic term of the "Co-operative Commonwealth " of Socialism are hidden those organized and active forces of internal disruption and revolution which are today the greatest menace to our constitutional government.

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