Read Ebook: Socialism As It Is A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement by Walling William English

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THE MEANING OF

"PRISON REFORM."

"Prison Reform" is a phrase of many meanings. It is used indifferently by the publicist who is seeking a correct definition of the function of punishment: by the utilitarian who doubts if the official system of administration is fulfilling its State purpose: by the humanitarian whose pity is stirred by the inevitable austerity of a system, inflexibly applied to all who suffer deprivation of liberty, and whose mechanical operation might, in their opinion, be relaxed relatively to the vastly different mental and physical states of all the categories of human beings coming, in one way or another, within the domain of the criminal law.

All agree that the System should be, as far as possible, 'Reformatory,' but many are tempted to overlook that it must be also, if punishment is to have any meaning, coercive, as restraining liberty; deterrent, as an example; and retributory, in the sense of enforcing a penalty for an offence. When Plato said that the object of punishment is to "make an offender good," he did not intentionally underestimate the 'retributory' theory of punishment. He only meant that, in the language of modern philosophy, we must respect the reversionary rights of humanity, and while inflicting punishment for an anti-social act, must not lose sight of the duty of restoring, if possible, the offender to society as a better man or woman. As stated by the Committee of 1894, we must not regard him or her as "a hopeless and worthless element of the community." It must be admitted that chastisement by pain appeals only to the lower nature, but it is effective in suggesting the consciousness of what the system of human rights means--the system which is maintained by a strong collective determination that it shall not be violated with impunity. This is commonly called 'retribution,' but it has nothing to do with vindictiveness or private vengeance. Society without such a collective determination to resent and punish anti-social acts would be a welter of anarchy and disorder. Let us not then be tempted in the goodness of our hearts, and in the strength of our human pity and sympathy, to overlook the necessary foundation of punishment, which is the assertion of the system of rights by pain or penalty--not pain in its physical sense, but pain that comes from degradation and the loss of self-respect.

There is some confusion in the everyday use of the phrases 'Prison Reform' and 'Penal Reform'. Formerly, 'Prison Reform' meant the structural reform of prisons, sanitation, order, cleanliness. To-day, it means the reform of the "prisoner" by improved methods of influence and treatment while in prison. 'Penal Reform' means strictly the reform of penal law, or of the system of punishment--a question of State policy, with which Parliament and the Judiciary are primarily concerned. These are, of course, greatly influenced by public sentiment and opinion. It is a difficult, complex, and subtle problem, for the solution of which we require legal knowledge, administrative experience, and a nice judgment of the temper of the community, and of the balance which should be kept between the just, and even stern, maintenance of the system of public rights and the rights of the individual human being, which must always be respected, even under chastisement. 'Prison Reform' is not a theory of punishment: it is an incident of it: it is a question how far we can assert the rights of the State without unnecessary, or excessive, or unprofitable moral and physical damage to the individual.

Of physical damage we need not speak, for it must, I think, be conceded that the medical care of prisoners in this country is as exact, and patient, and considerate, as can be secured by an able, humane, and untiring medical staff.

All are subject alike under general prison rules to the reforming influences of religion. The Chaplain, Priest, or Minister walks noiselessly among them all, gleaning wheat among the tares, and calling back those who will come to the bidding of the divine Imperatives, which if they have been imparted in youth, have, in many cases, almost faded from memory; and who can tell how often in the silent communings of the cell, the spark of life and regeneration may not light again at the voice of the patient, pleading Minister of God. It is not only by the call of the Chapel services, with the hymns and simple prayers, but by the regular visitation of each in their cells, that this spark latent, but not quite extinguished, may rekindle. Do not let us undervalue the quiet, patient, and unwearying task of those who minister spiritually to those in bondage in prison cells. The door is wide open to all creeds and denominations who seek to enter in; and not only to Ministers of religion, but to lay visitors and missionaries who find their prompting to this work by their desire to realize the holy precept "I was in prison and you visited me." Let us not forget the gentle and comforting influence of our Lady Visitors, and the thousands of forlorn and despairing women, young and old, who perhaps find, for the first time, the voice of sympathy and encouragement, which, like a ray of sunshine, lifts the gloom from off their souls.

In addition to the carefully prescribed orders for the education up to a certain Standard of such prisoners as are shown after examination on reception to be in need of it, there are, too, other means by which "the spark of life and sympathy" can be kindled in prison. Of late years, great progress has been made in the systematic introduction of outside influences in the form of lectures and addresses on lay subjects, calculated to interest and inspire, and to afford matter for reflection, and to mitigate the evil of morbid introspection inseparable from long and monotonous seclusion. The value of such influences is manifested in a wonderful degree by the reference made to them in letters from prisoners to their homes and friends. In many cases, a new outlook on life begins. Men and women who have almost lost their humanity by habitual association with the lower conditions of life,--its cupidities, baseness, and greed--whose minds have never risen above the gratification of sensual desires and impulses, have a new vista of things opened to them. Such 'conversion' may arise quite unexpectedly and fortuitously from some simple story, from some appealing incident in world history, even from simple explanation of the wonders of nature or of science. During the war, the practice was instituted of giving a weekly account of the great events occurring on the battlefields of the world: of the heroic deeds that were done: of the noble sacrifices that were made. There was a unanimous agreement as to the moral value of these addresses; and it has recently been decided to continue the system of imparting news of the world to all prisoners by the same method of weekly addresses, Governors and Chaplains having a discretion as to the subjects they shall select, and the manner in which they shall deliver them. It has often been made a reproach against the Prison System that prisoners are cut off from all knowledge of outside events, and are thrust back again into the world like children pushed into a dark room, and obliged to grope and feel their way before they can stabilize themselves in the current of normal life. This is no longer the case.

It is another reproach against the system that prisoners are doomed to an unnatural existence by the so-called 'law of silence.' Since 1898, there has been no 'law of silence,' strictly so-called. Previously to that date, the order ran "The Governor shall enforce the observance of silence throughout the Prison." The Committee of 1894 said on this subject: "We think that the privilege of talking might be given after a certain period as a reward for good conduct on certain days for a limited time, and under reasonable supervision, to all long-sentence prisoners, local as well as convict, who have conducted themselves well, and who are not deemed unsuitable for the privilege. The present practice of imposing silence except for the purposes of labour and during the visits of officials and authorised persons, for a period it may be of 15 or 20 years, seems to us unnatural. We recognize that careful supervision would be necessary if this privilege is allowed, but we do not think that the disadvantages which might, perhaps, from time to time, occur would be at all equal to the good likely to result from a partial and judicious removal of this very unnatural restriction." The existing rule made under the Prison Act, 1898, is as follows:--

"Two great social organizations now confront each other in the United States--political democracy and the corporation. Both are yet new,--developments, in their present form, of the past two hundred years,--and the laws of neither are understood. The entire social and economic history of the world is now shaping itself around the struggle for dominance between them....

"The problem presented by this situation is the most difficult that any modern nation has faced; and the odds, up to the present time, have all been with the corporations. Property settles by economic law in strong hands; it has unlimited rewards for service, and the greatest power in the world--the power of food and drink, life and death--over mankind. Corporate property in the last twenty years has been welded into an instrument of almost infinite power, concentrated in the hands of a very few and very able men.

"Sooner or later the so far unchecked tendency toward monopoly in the United States must be met squarely by the American people....

"The problem of the relation of the State and the corporation is now the chief question of the world. In Europe the State is relatively much stronger; in America, the corporation. In Europe the movement towards Socialism--collective ownership and operation of the machinery of industry and transportation--is far on its way; in America we are moving to control the corporation by political instruments, such as State Boards and the Interstate Commerce Commission....

"And if corporate centralization of power continues unchecked, what is the next great popular agitation to be in this country? For State Socialism?"

When a treaty of peace is made between "Big Business" and the smaller capitalists under such leadership as La Follette's, we may be certain that it will not amount merely to a swallowing up of the small fish by the large. The struggle waged according to La Follette's principles is not a mere bid for political power and the spoils of office, but a real political warfare that can only end by recognition of the small capitalist's claims in business and politics--in so far as they relate, not to the restoration of competition, but to government ownership or control. As early as 1905, when governor of Wisconsin, La Follette said:--

"It must always be borne in mind that the contest between the State and the corporate powers is a lasting one.... It must always be remembered that their attitude throughout is one of hostility to this legislation, and that if their relation to the law after it is enacted is to be judged by the attitude towards the Interstate Commerce Law, it will be one of continued effort to destroy its efficiency and nullify its provision." Events have shown that he was right in his predictions, and his idea that the war against monopolies must last until they are deprived of their dominant position in politics is now widely accepted.

The leading demands of the small capitalists, in so far as they are independently organized in this new movement, are now for protection, as buyers, sellers, investors, borrowers, and taxpayers against the "trusts," railways, and banks. Formerly they invariably took up the cause of the capitalist competitors and would-be competitors of the "Interests"--and millionaires and corporations of the second magnitude were lined up politically with the small capitalists, as, for example, silver mine owners, manufacturers who wanted free raw material, cheaper food , and foreign markets at any price,--from pseudo-reciprocity to war,--importing merchants, competitors of the trusts, tobacco, beer, and liquor interests bent on decreasing their taxes, etc.

While Senator La Follette is the leading general of the new movement, either Ex-President Roosevelt or Governor Woodrow Wilson seems destined to become its leading diplomatist. While Senator La Follette declares for a fight to the finish, and shows that he knows how to lead and organize such a fight, Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Wilson are giving their attention largely to peace terms to be demanded of the enemy, and the diplomatic attitude to be assumed in the negotiations. Perhaps it is too early for such peaceful thoughts, and premature talk of this kind may eliminate these leaders as negotiators satisfactory to the small capitalists. Their interest for my present purpose is that they probably foreshadow the attitude that will finally be assumed when the large "Interests" see that they must make terms.

Mr. Wilson's language is at times so conciliatory as to create doubt whether or not he will stand with Senator La Follette and the Republican "Insurgents" for the whole of the small capitalist's program, but it leaves no doubt that, if he lives up to his declared principles, he must aim at the government regulation, not of "Big Business" merely, but of all business--as when he says that "business is no longer in any sense a private matter."

"Business must be looked upon, not as the exploitation of society, not as its use for private ends, but as its sober service; and private profit must be regarded as legitimate only when it is in fact a reward for what is veritably serviceable,--serviceable to interests which are not single but common, as far as they go; and politics must be the discovery of this common interest, in order that the service may be tested and exacted.

Business is no longer "to be looked upon" as the exploitation of society, private profits are to be "legitimatized" and private fortunes "made honorable"--in a word, the whole business world is to be regenerated and at the same time rehabilitated. This is to be accomplished, as Mr. Wilson explained, in a later speech , not by excluding the large capitalists from government, but by including the small, and this will undoubtedly be the final outcome. He said:--

But the "Interests" are not to be excluded from the new dispensation.

A second glance at these passages will show that Mr. Wilson speaks in the name rather of struggling small capitalists, business men "on the make," than of the nation as a whole. His diplomacy is largely aimed to move the "honest" large capitalists. These are assured that the only form of privilege that Mr. Wilson, representing the smaller business men, those "on the make," is attacking, is their freedom from political and government control. But the large capitalists need not fear such control, for they are assured that they themselves will be part of the new government. And as there is no fundamental "difference of interests," the new government will have no difficulty in representing large business as well as small.

No better example could be found of the foreshadowed treaty between the large interests and the whole body of capitalists, and their coming consolidation, than the central banking association project now before Congress. Originated by the "Interests" it was again and again moderated to avoid the hostility of the smaller capitalists, until progressives like Mr. Wilson are evidently getting ready to propose still further modifications that will make it entirely acceptable to the latter class. Already Mr. Aldrich has consented that the "State" banks, which represent chiefly the smaller capitalists, should be included in the Reserve Association, and that the President should appoint its governor and deputy governor. Doubtless Congress will insist on a still greater representation of the government on the central board.

Mr. Wilson emphasizes the need of action in this direction in the name of "economic freedom," which can only mean equal financial facilities and the indirect loan of the government's credit to all capitalists, through means of a government under their common control:--

Undoubtedly this is a great question; the establishment of a political control over credit will mean a political and financial revolution. For it will establish the power of the government over our whole economic system and will lead rapidly to a common political and economic organization of all classes of capitalists for the control of the government, to a compromise between the group of capitalists that now rules the business world and that far larger group which is bound to rule the government. The financial magnates have seen this truth, and, as Mr. Paul Warburg said to the American Association , "Wall Street, like many an absolute ruler in recent years, finds it more conducive to safety and contentment to forego some of its prerogatives ... and to turn an oligarchy into a constitutional democratic federation ."

Mr. Roosevelt has announced a policy with regard to monopolies that foreshadows even more distinctly than anything Mr. Woodrow Wilson has said the solution of the differences between large and small capitalists. He urges that a government commission should undertake "supervision, regulation, and control of these great corporations" even to the point of controlling "monopoly prices" and that this control should "indirectly or directly extend to dealing with all questions connected with their treatment of their employees, including the wages, the hours of labor, and the like."

It is true that the private monopolies, as Mr. Bryan pointed out , "will soon be in national politics more actively than now, for they will feel it necessary to control Colonel Roosevelt's suggested commission, and to do that they must control the election of those who appoint the commission."

But the private monopolies will soon be more actively in politics no matter what remedy is offered, even government ownership. The small capitalist investors, shippers, and consumers of trust products can only protect themselves by securing control of the government, or at least sharing it on equal terms with the large capitalists.

The reason that Mr. Roosevelt's proposal was hailed with equal enthusiasm by the more far-sighted capitalists, whether radical or conservative, small or large, was that they have an approximately equal hope of controlling the government, or sharing in its control. The unbiased observer can well conclude that they are likely to divide this control between them--and, indeed, that the complete victory of either party is economically and politically unthinkable. Already banks, railways, industrial "trusts," mining and lumber interests, are being forced to follow a policy satisfactory to small capitalist investors, borrowers, customers, furnishers of raw material, and taxpayers--while small capitalist competitors are being forced to abandon their effort to use the government to restore competition and destroy the "trusts."

In the reorganization of capitalism, the non-capitalists, the wage and salary earning class are not to be consulted. Taken together with those among the professional and salaried class who are small investors or expect to become independent producers, the small capitalists constitute a majority of the electorate , or at least hold the political balance of power. It is capitalist interests alone that really count in present-day politics, and it is for capitalists alone that government control would be instituted.

Viewed in this light the statements of Mr. Woodrow Wilson that "business is no longer in any proper sense a private matter," or that "our program, from which we cannot be turned aside, is, that we are going to take possession of the control of our own economic life," and the similar statements of Mr. Roosevelt, are not so Socialistic as they seem. What their use by the leading "conservative-progressive" statesmen of both parties means is that a partnership of capital and government is at hand.

FOOTNOTES:

Governor Woodrow Wilson, Speech of April 13, 1911.

THE POLITICS OF THE NEW CAPITALISM

We are told that the political issue as viewed by American radicals is, "Shall property rule, or shall the people rule?" and that the radicals may be forced entirely over to the Socialist position, as the Republicans were forced to the position of the Abolitionists when Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Mr. Ray Stannard Baker notes also that capital is continually the aggressor, as were the slaveholders, and that the conflict is likely to grow more and more acute, since "no one imagines that these powerful men of money will give up their advantage lightly" any more than the old slaveholders did.

Another "insurgent" publicist says that the aim of radicalism in the United States is "the regulation and control of capital" and that the American people have made up their minds that "capital, the product of the many, is to be operated fundamentally for the benefit of the many." It is one of those upheavals, he believes, which come along once in a century or so, dethrone privilege, organize the world along different lines, take the persons "at the apex of the human pyramid" from their high seats and "iron out the pyramid into a plane."

If the aim of the "progressives" is the overthrow of "the rule of property" as Mr. Baker claims--if, in the words of Mr. White again, "America is joining the world movement towards equal opportunity for all men in our modern civilization," then indeed the greatest political and economic struggle of history, the final conflict between capitalism and Socialism, is at hand.

Similarly the essential or practical difference between the "Socialism" of Mr. Roosevelt's editorial associate, Dr. Lyman Abbott, who acknowledges that classes exist and says that capitalism must be abolished, and the Socialism of the international movement is this, that Dr. Abbott expects to work, on the whole, with the capitalists who are to be done away with, while Socialists expect to work against them.

"The real and radical remedy for the evils of capitalism is the organization of the industrial system in which the laborers or tool users will themselves become the capitalists or tool owners; in which, therefore, the class distinction which exists under capitalism will be abolished."

"The influence of the interests, which means the power of the trusts, or organized industry and commerce, will go forward steadily without interruption.

"Just as steadily as early military feudalism advanced and grew, UNTIL THE PEOPLE AT LAST CONTROLLED IT AND OWNED IT, JUST SO STEADILY WILL TO-DAY'S INDUSTRIAL FEUDALISM advance and grow without interruption UNTIL THE PEOPLE CONTROL IT and own it.

"The trusts are destined to be infinitely more powerful than now, infinitely more ably organized.

"And that will be a good thing in the long run for the people. The trusts are the people's great teachers, proving that destructive, selfish, unbrotherly competition is unnecessary.

"They are proving that the genius of man can free a nation or a world. They are saying to the people: 'You work under our ORDERS. One power can own and manage industry.'

"It is hard for individual ambition just now. But in time THE PEOPLE WILL LEARN THE LESSON AND WILL SAY TO THE TRUST OWNERS:--

"'THANK YOU VERY MUCH. WE HAVE LEARNED THE LESSON. WE SEE THAT IT IS POSSIBLE FOR ONE POWER TO OWN AND CONTROL ALL INDUSTRY, ALL MANUFACTURES, ALL COMMERCE, AND WE, THE PEOPLE, WILL BE THAT ONE POWER.'

"Just as the individual feudal lords organized their little armies in France, and just as the French people themselves have all the armies in one--UNDER THE PEOPLE'S POWER--so the industries organized NOW by the barons of industrial feudalism, one by one, will be taken and put together by the people, UNDER THE PEOPLE'S OWNERSHIP."

Yet non-Socialist reformers persist in claiming that they represent all classes with the exception of a handful of monopolists, the bought, and the ignorant; and many assert flatly that their movement is altruistic, which can only mean that they intend to bestow such benefits as they think proper on some social class that they expect to remain powerless to help itself. Here, then, in the attitude of non-Socialist reformers towards various social classes, we begin to see the inner structure of their movement. They do not propose to attack any "vested interests" except those of the financial magnates, and they expect the lower classes to remain politically impotent, which they as democrats, know means that these classes are only going to receive such secondary consideration as the interests of the other classes require.

Whether the radical of to-day, the "State Socialist," favors political democracy or not, depends on whether these "passive beneficiaries" of the new "altruistic" system are in a majority. If they are not in a majority, certain political objects may be gained by allowing them all to vote, by removing undemocratic constitutional restrictions, and by introducing direct legislation, the recall, and similar measures. If they are a majority, it is generally agreed that it is unsafe to allow them an equal voice in government, as they almost universally fail to rest satisfied with the benefits they secure from collectivist capitalism and press on immediately to a far more radical policy.

So in agricultural communities like New Zealand, Australia, and some of our Western States, where there is a prosperous property-holding majority, the most complete political democracy has come to prevail. Judging everything by local conditions, the progressive small capitalists of our West sometimes even favor the extension of this democracy to the nation and the whole world, as when the Wisconsin legislature proposes direct legislation and the recall in our national government. But they are being warned against this "extremist" stand by conservative progressive leaders of the industrial sections like Ex-President Roosevelt or Governor Woodrow Wilson.

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