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Barbara Weinstock Lectures on The Morals of Trade

SOCIAL JUSTICE WITHOUT SOCIALISM.
By John Bates Clark.

THE CONFLICT BETWEEN PRIVATE MONOPOLY AND GOOD CITIZENSHIP.
By John Graham Brooks.

COMMERCIALISM AND JOURNALISM.
By Hamilton Holt.

THE BUSINESS CAREER IN ITS PUBLIC RELATIONS.
By Albert Shaw.




SOCIAL JUSTICE WITHOUT SOCIALISM



BY

JOHN BATES CLARK

PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL ECONOMY AT
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY



BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1914

COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY THE REGENTS OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

_Published April 1914_




BARBARA WEINSTOCK
LECTURES ON THE MORALS OF TRADE

This series will contain essays by representative scholars and men of
affairs dealing with the various phases of the moral law in its bearing
on business life under the new economic order, first delivered at the
University of California on the Weinstock foundation.




SOCIAL JUSTICE WITHOUT SOCIALISM


It is currently reported that the late King Edward once said, "We are
all Socialists, now": and if the term "Socialism" meant to-day what His
Majesty probably meant by it, many of us could truthfully make a
similar statement. Without any doubt, we could do so if we attached to
the term the meaning which it had when it was first invented. It came
into use in the thirties of the last century, and expressed a certain
disappointment over the result of political reform. The bill which gave
more men the right to vote did not give them higher wages. The
conditions of labor were deplorable before the Reform Bill was passed
and they continued to be so for some time afterwards. A merely
political change, therefore, was not all that was wanted, and it was
necessary to carry democracy into a social sphere in order to improve
the condition of the poorer classes. The term "Socialism," therefore,
was chosen to describe a play of forces that would act in this way on
society itself, and was an excellent term for describing this right and
just tendency. The name was quickly adopted by those with whose
practical plans most of us do not agree; but its original idea was
democracy carried into business, and at present that is the dominant
tendency of all successful parties. For six months we have been living
under what may be called "triumphant democracy," not because the
Democratic Party has beaten its rivals and come into control of the
Government, but for a much deeper reason, namely, that a democracy
carried into industrial life is the dominating principle of every
political body that can hope for success. Every party must show by its
action that it values the man more than the dollar. To this extent we
are all democrats and wish the Government to act for the people as well
as to be controlled by the people.

When we differ, it is in deciding on the means to carry out our common
purpose; and here we differ very widely. Some would use the power of
the State to correct and improve our system of industry, and these
constitute a party of reform. Others would abolish that system and
substitute something untried. For private capital they would put public
capital and for private management, public management--either in the
whole field of industry or in that great part of it where large capital
rules. These are Socialists in the modern and current sense of the
term.

One difference of view which was formerly very sharp is now scarcely
traceable. Every one knows that we must invoke the aid of the State in
order to make industry what it should be. The rule that would bid the
State keep its hands off the entire field of business, the extreme
_laissez-faire_ policy once dominant in literature and thought, now
finds few persons bold enough to advocate it or foolish enough to
believe in it. In a very chastened form, however, the spirit that would
put a reasonable limit on what the State shall be asked to do happily
does survive and is powerful. It seeks a golden mean between letting
the State do nothing and asking it to do everything. It is this plan of
action that I shall try to outline, and it will appear that even this
plan requires that the State should do very much. Under an inert
government the industrial system would suffer irreparably.

The thing first to be rescued is competition--meaning that healthful
rivalry between different producers which has always been the guaranty
of technical progress. That such progress has gone on with bewildering
rapidity since the invention of the steam