Part 15

As a theory, it has gone with Stahl’s “Phlogiston,” Cuvier’s “Cataclysms,” and Goethe’s “Theory of Colors” to the museum of history. The revolution in philosophy, which covers the nineteenth century and reaches back into the closing decades of the eighteenth, has met and overthrown it at every point. Today it lingers in the world of thought a reminiscence of a prior stage of social development, as the imperfect remnant of the “third eyelid” remains in our bodies a surviving rudiment, a legacy that links us with our extinct ancestors of the silurian age.

The greatest name ever thrown into the scales for Individualism and against Socialism is that of Herbert Spencer. He has the reputation of having been the greatest Individualist of all times.

Many people, including Socialists, who are not familiar with the works of Spencer wonder how it comes to pass that the great evolutionary philosopher could defend a theory so obsolete and anti-evolutionary as Individualism. With this problem solved, Individualism is practically disposed of--at least, its greatest prop is gone.

All careful students of the works of the “Synthetic” philosopher, eventually recognize the dual personality of Mr. Spencer; the “Dr. Jekyll” of evolution, and the “Mr. Hyde” of Individualism.

The last chapter dealt mainly with the former; this chapter will treat chiefly of the latter.

Mr. Spencer’s chief utterances against what he conceived to be Socialism and in favor of Individualism are to be found in a volume of four essays entitled, “The Man Versus the State.” In this book Mr. Spencer complains bitterly of the rapid extension of government interference in the England of his day. He declares these “Acts of Parliament” to be a greater and greater restriction of the individual rights of the citizen.

Here are a few of the Acts which Spencer denounced: An Act directing the Board of Trade to record the draught of sea-going vessels leaving port, and another to fix the number of life-boats and the life-saving appliances such vessels should carry. An Act making illegal a mine with a single shaft: The inspection of white lead works to compel the owners to provide overalls, respirators, baths, acidulated drinks, etc., for the workmen: Providing for the inspection of gas works: Making compulsory regulations for extinguishing fires in London; Taxing the locality for local drainage; That bake-houses should have a periodical lime washing, and a cleaning with soap and hot water at least once in six months; To secure decent lodgings for persons picking fruit and vegetables for public consumption; To provide free compulsory education and public schools; The Public Libraries Act; All the Factory Acts limiting child labor or enforcing the protection of dangerous machinery; The Preservation of Seabirds Act; The establishment of state telegraphy; Proposals to feed children; Government endowment of scientific research; etc.

All these measures, and many others of similar nature, excited the indignation of the greatest prophet of Individualism because, forsooth, they modified somebody’s right to do as he pleased about something. Luckily for England, Mr. Spencer and a handful of his individualist disciples stood alone, while the electorate carried these laws through their highest tribunals.

One can imagine the “joy of living” in an individualist arcadia fashioned after Mr. Spencer’s own heart. A working man would be able to take up the occupation of a sailor. He could embark on the rotten old tub of some greedy shipowner, insured for many times its value, loaded to the gunwales and sure to sink when it got out of sight of land to where the water was a little rougher than plate glass. Of course he would be living under a system of “voluntary co-operation” and “freedom of contract” and if he didn’t wish to go to sea he could stay at home and--starve. There would be very little work in port unloading ships, as so many of them would never return to be unloaded. When the insurance money was paid the shipowner could give a banquet and hold forth on the individual right of the sailor to get drowned in the interests of commerce without the government meddling about life boats and other expensive and nonsensical appliances.

If he preferred to work on “terra firma” he might get a job in a mine with only one shaft which in case of firedamp would be converted into a furnace. Then as there would be no way to get out, no socialistically inclined person would be able to dispute his individual right to stay in. If he preferred the white lead industry he might “get in” there, and there being no respirators, baths, or acidulated drinks he could be a physical wreck in a year and a corpse in two. Or he might try the gasworks and, there being no inspectors, there would be nothing to interfere with his individual right to be asphyxiated in an oven or roasted in a retort.

As wages would be small, unions not being individualist institutions, he might get a cheap room in the top of an hotel without fire escapes, in a town with no fire engines. He could live cheaply on bread from bakehouses that never knew lime washings and had not seen hot water or soap for over six months, and eat fruit and vegetables handled by people who were not troubled with decent, let alone sanitary, lodgings.

He would have the liberty to stay at manual labor as there would be no public schools or libraries to assist him to qualify for any profession such as, for instance, journalism. This would, no doubt, be a blessing in disguise, for if he became a writer, instead of following the brilliant example of Mr. Spencer, he might misuse his powers to the detriment of the race by advocating the limitation, or even the abolition, of child labor. If he married he might be at liberty to sew on his own buttons, his wife having left her fingers among the cogs of uncovered machinery.

Such would be the social heaven, operated on the principles of the “Manchester” school of politics, which mark the high-water of Individualism, and of which Herbert Spencer was the chief apostle.

Compare this attitude of mind with that of the Utopian Socialist, Robert Owen, over whom Spencer had the advantage of the lapse of a period of seventy years. In 1815 Owen convened a large number of cotton manufacturers at Glasgow, Scotland, to consider the state of the cotton trade which was then in great distress. To that conference he presented two proposals; one to help the masters, the other to benefit the workers. The first was that they should petition parliament for the repeal of the tariff on raw cotton; the second that they should request parliament to shorten the working hours, and otherwise improve the conditions of workers in the mills. The first proposal carried unanimously, but the one on which Owen’s heart was set, was not even seconded.

Knowing as he did the terrible condition of the English working class of that period, the callous brutality of these rapacious masters roused him to irony and defiance. He delivered an address to the conference which he had printed and spread broadcast in every corner of the country.

This is how the lion turned on the jackals:

“True indeed it is that the main pillar and prop of the political greatness and prosperity of our country is manufacture, which, as now carried on, is destructive of the health, morals, and social comfort of the mass of people engaged in it. It is only since the introduction of the cotton trade that children, at an age before they have acquired strength or mental instruction, have been forced into the cotton mills--those receptacles, in too many instances, for living, human skeletons, almost disrobed of intellect, where, as the business is often now conducted, they linger out a few years of miserable existence, acquiring every bad habit which they may disseminate throughout society. It is only since the introduction of this trade that children and even grown people were required to labor more than twelve hours in a day, not including the time allotted for meals. It is only since the introduction of this trade that the sole recreation of the laborer is to be found in the pothouse or ginshop, it is only since the introduction of this baneful trade that poverty, crime, and misery have made rapid and fearful strides throughout the community.

“Shall we then go unblushingly, and ask the legislators of our country to pass legislative acts to sanction and increase this trade--to sign the death warrants of the strength, morals, and happiness of our fellow-creatures, and not attempt to propose corrections for the evils which it creates? If such be your determination, I, for one, will not join in the application--no, I will, with all the faculties I possess, oppose every attempt made to extend the trade that, except in name, is more injurious to those employed in it than is the slavery of the poor negroes in the West Indies, for deeply as I am interested in the cotton manufacture, highly as I value the extended political power of my country, yet knowing as I do, from long experience both here and in England, the miseries which this trade, as it is now conducted, inflicts on those to whom it gives employment, I do not hesitate to say: Perish the cotton trade, perish even the political superiority of our country, if it depends on the cotton trade, rather than that they shall be upheld by the sacrifice of everything valuable in life.”

Compare these noble utterances of the great-souled utopian Socialist with the sneers at the most unfortunate element of the working class which disfigure the pages of “The Man Versus the State” and let the Individualist take whatever satisfaction he can get from the contrast.

But Spencer’s reactionary views did not stop with opposition to every attempt to alleviate the condition of the wealth producers of his day.

As an individualist, he would tolerate no “government interference” with the rights of individuals who wished to shoot sea-birds which they could not get, but which usually flew out to sea, and died floating, with a broken wing. Why should these lofty minded people be interfered with? Were they not the prototypes of our own Roosevelt, who is always ready to manifest his love of nature by killing everything in sight?

What a pity these individualists were not allowed to have the British telegraph system managed by a gang of financial pirates like the owners of the “Western Union” and the “Postal” of this country.

State repression of knowledge having proved such a bad thing in the middle ages, state encouragement of learning must of course, needs be equally bad in the nineteenth century. “Government endowment of research,” indeed! Not for the individualist champion. And yet England holds the world’s honors in biology, because of Darwin, whose opportunity came through the government exploration of “The Beagle,” and Huxley, who began his brilliant career with the government expedition of the “Rattlesnake.” As England led the world in the middle of the century so France had held first place during its first quarter, and that because the French government sent out scientific expeditions to the tropics, which, on their return loaded down the shelves of the “Jardin des Plantes” with specimens which made possible those greatest of her thinkers, Lamarck, Cuvier and Geoffrey St. Hilaire.

When the feeding of school children is thrown as a charge against Socialism, we are proud to plead guilty. It is our glory that the only cities in the world that have no starving children behind school benches are those cities such as Lille, Ivry, Montlucon, etc., with a Socialist majority in the town councils, which removed the disgrace.

Such then were the arguments of this flag bearer of Individualism, who has supplied the opponents of Socialism with objections these thirty years. His individualist philosophy is now so thoroughly discredited as to call for no answer were it not for the fact pointed out by Huxley, that erroneous ideas do not die just simply because they have been killed.

It is not necessary to wheel into position the heavy artillery of Marx to overthrow this house of cards. Spencer is a sufficient reply to Spencer.

Here is the great contradiction. Spencer, the great biologist, says the brain is to the animal what the Government is to a society. (1) The more effectively and completely the brain controls the members composing the animal body, the higher its place in the organic scale. (2) The less effectively and completely the Government controls the members of the body politic the better will be the society.

Sociological literature has failed to produce any individualist champion able to reconcile this astonishing contradiction. And so there it stands plainly before the eyes of Mr. Spencer’s readers.