The Man Farthest Down: A Record of Observation and Study in EuropeWashington, Booker T.
History
The Man Farthest Down: A Record of Observation and Study in Europe
Washington, Booker T.
Poor -- Europe; Working class -- Europe
Few people, I venture to say, have any definite notion to what
extent the most remote parts of Europe, from which the majority of
our immigrants now come, have been penetrated by the ideas and the
sentiments of the Socialistic party. There are, for example, some
five or six different branches of the party in Bohemia. Socialism, I
learn, has made its way even into such countries as Roumania, Servia,
Bulgaria, and Dalmatia, where perhaps three fourths of the population
are engaged in agriculture.
There are, however, as I discovered, various kinds and types of
Socialism. I think I saw during my journey across Europe as many
different kinds of Socialists as I did kinds of Jews, which is saying
a good deal. In Denmark and Italy, for example, I met men of the very
highest type who were members of the Socialist party. In Copenhagen
I was entertained by the editors of the Socialistic paper, _The
Politiken_, which is perhaps the most ably edited and influential paper
in Denmark. In Italy many of the most patriotic as well as the most
brilliant men in the country, writers, students, and teachers, are
members of the Socialist party.
In Poland, on the other hand, I met other Socialists who had taken an
active part in the revolution in Russia and who, for aught I know, were
members of that group of desperate men who are said even now to be
plotting from Cracow, Austria, a new revolutionary movement among the
agricultural classes in Russia.
In short, I found that where the masses of the people are oppressed,
where the people at the bottom are being crushed by those who are
above them, there Socialism means revolution. On the other hand, where
governments have shown a liberal spirit, and especially where the
Socialists have had an opportunity to participate in the Government, or
have been able, by means of the coöperative societies I have described,
to do constructive work for the benefit of the masses, they have
ceased to be revolutionists, have no longer sought to overturn the
Government, but have patriotically striven to strengthen the existing
order by freeing it from those defects that were dangerous to its
existence.
In saying this, I do not mean to imply that I in any way favour the
Socialistic programme of reform. I live in the Southern States, a
part of the country which, more than any other part of the civilized
world, still believes that the best government is the government that
governs least; the government that you can wear like an old coat,
without feeling it. More than that, I believe that the best and only
fundamental way of bringing about reform is not by revolution, not
through political machinery that tries to control and direct the
individual from the outside, but by education, which gets at the
individual from within; in short, fits him for life but leaves him free.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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