At first Socialists were utopians, then they became revolutionists. This was natural. Socialism was born in an air of revolution--the political revolutions of the bourgeois, and the infinitely greater industrial revolution. The tides of change and passion were rocking the foundations of state and industry. The evils in early industrialism were abhorrent. Small children and their mothers were forced into factories, pauperism was thriving, the ugly machine-fed towns were replacing the quaint and cheerful villages, rulers were forgetting their duties in their greed for gain, and the state was persecuting men for their political and economic opinions. Every face was turned against the preachers of the new order, and they naturally thought that the change could be brought about only by violence and revolution. Louis Blanc said "a social revolution ought to be tried: "Firstly, because the present social system is too full of iniquity, misery, and turpitude to exist much longer. "Secondly, because there is no one who is not interested, whatever his position, rank, and fortune, in the inauguration of a new social system. "Thirdly, and lastly, because this revolution, so necessary, is possible, even easy to accomplish peacefully."[12] These are the naïve words of a young man of thirty-seven, the youngest member of the ill-fated revolutionary government of France in 1848. Not every one thought that the revolution could be peacefully accomplished, and, it must be admitted, few seemed to care. In their "Communist Manifesto," the most noted of all Socialist broadsides, Marx and Engels know of no peaceful revolution. They close with these virile words: "The communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have the world to win. Workingmen of all countries, unite!" These words are often quoted even in these placid days of evolution that have replaced the red days of violence. The workingmen of all countries are uniting, as we shall see, not for bloody revolution nor for the violence of passion, but for the promulgation of peace. To-day the silent coercion of multitudes is taking the place of the eruptive methods of the '40's and the '70's. As to the ultimate form of organized society, there is nothing but confusion to be found in the mass of literature that has grown up around the subject. The earliest writers were cocksure of themselves; the latest ones bridge over the question with wide-arching generalities. I have asked many of their leaders to give me some hint as to what form their Society of To-morrow will take. Every one dodged. "No one can tell. It will be humanitarian and co-operative." If one could be assured of this!