The Savannah Tribune

Interests in Common
Socialists Advocate Certain Reforms Which
Individualists Also Advocate.
By William Jennings Bryan.

Much of the strength developed by socialism is due to the
fact that socialists advocate certain reforms which individualists
also advocate. Take, for illustration, the public ownership
of waterworks. It is safe to say that a large majority
of the people living in cities of any considerable size
favor their public ownership—individualists because it is
practically impossible to have more than one water system
in a city, and socialists on the general ground that the government
should own all the means of production and distribution.
The sentiment in favor of municipal lighting plants is not yet so
strong, and the sentiment in favor of public telephones and public street car
lines is still less pronounced; but the same general principles apply to them,
and individualists, without accepting the creed of socialism, can advocate the
extension of municipal ownership to these utilities.
Then, too, some of the strength of socialism is due to its condemnation
of abuses which, while existing under individualism, are not at all necessary
to individualism—abuses which the individualists are as anxious as the socialists
to remedy. It is not only consistent with individualism, but is a
necessary implication of it, that the competing parties should be placed upon
substantially equal footing: for competition is not worthy of that name if
one party is able arbitrarily to fix the terms of the agreement, leaving the
other with no choice but to submit to the terms prescribed. Individualists,
for instance, can consistently advocate usury laws which fix the rate of interest
to be charged, these laws being justified on the ground that the borrower
and the lender do not stand upon an equal footing. Where the money-
lender is left free to take advantage of the necessities of the borrower, the
so-called freedom of contract is really freedom to extort. Upon the same
ground, society can justify legislation against child labor and legislation limiting
the hours of adult labor. One can believe in competition and still favor
such limitations and restrictions as will make the competition real and effective.
To advocate individualism it is no more necessary to excuse the
abuses to which competition may lead than it is to defend the burning of a
city because fire is essential to human comfort, or to praise a tempest because
air is necessary to human life.—The Century.