mines; simplification of legal procedure; secret ballot; payment of
election expenses. The United Labour Party is not strong. When Mr.
George stood for the Mayoralty of New York, he had 68,000 votes to his
opponent's 90,000; but he had on that occasion the assistance of the
Socialistic Labour Party, who are said by Mr. Ely to number about 25,000
in New York, and who certainly constituted a very considerable element
in the United Labour Party, for they were expelled at the Party
Convention only by a vote of 94 to 54. On the other hand, Mr. Ely's
estimate of the strength of the socialists is possibly too high, for
they ran a candidate for the Mayoralty of New York themselves in 1888, a
leading man of the party, one Jones, and he only secured 2,000 votes.
However that may be, the United Labour Party was certainly much weakened
by the loss of the socialists, and they were disabled entirely in the
following year by a division on the question of Free Trade and the
secession of Father McGlynn and the Protectionist members.
Nationalism is the name of a new movement, the fruit of the remarkable
and very popular novel of Mr. Edward Bellamy, "Looking Backward," which
may be said to be the latest description of Utopia as it now stands with
all the most modern improvements. Mr. Bellamy would have all industry
organized and conducted by the nation on the basis of a common
obligation of work and a general guarantee of livelihood, all men to get
exactly the same wages, and to do exactly the same quantity of work, due
allowance being made for differences in severity, and the State to
enlarge indefinitely its free public provision of the means of common
enjoyment and culture. Mr. Bellamy's charming pictures of the new
country naturally engendered a general wish to be there, and many little
societies have been established to hasten the hour; but as the movement
has not been more than a year in being, little account can yet be given
of its success. The Nationalists have quite recently issued an organ,
_The New Nation_, which announces its programme to be (1) the
nationalization of post, telegraphs, telephone, railways and coal mines;
(2) municipalization of gas and water supply, and the like; and (3) the
equalization of educational opportunities as between rich and poor, and
the promotion of all reforms tending towards humaner, more fraternal,
and more equal conditions. Nationalism out of Utopia, therefore, means
merely a little State-socialism.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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