The Unpopular Review

The Unpopular Review

Project Gutenberg's The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3, by
Various This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and
with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3
Author: Various
Release Date: May 22, 2005 [EBook #15876]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
UNPOPULAR REVIEW ***

Produced by Bill Tozier, Barbara Tozier and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team.

THE UNPOPULAR REVIEW
VOL. II, NO. 3
JULY-SEPTEMBER, 1914
Published Quarterly at 35 West 32d Street, New York, by
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

CONTENTS
Unsocial Investments A.S. Johnson A Stubborn Relic of Feudalism The
Editor An Experiment in Syndicalism Hugh H. Lusk Labor: "True
Demand" and Immigrant Supply Arthur J. Todd The Way to Flatland

Fabian Franklin The Disfranchisement of Property David McGregor
Means Railway Junctions Clayton Hamilton Minor Uses of the
Middling Rich F.J. Mather, Jr. Lecturing at Chautauqua Clayton
Hamilton Academic Leadership Paul Elmer More Hypnotism,
Telepathy, and Dreams The Editor The Muses on the Hearth Mrs F.G.
Allinson The Land of the Sleepless Watchdog David Starr Jordan En
Casserole Special to our Readers--Philosophy in Fly Time--Setting
Bounds to Laughter (A.S. Johnson)--A Post-Graduate School for
Academic Donors (F.J. Mather, Jr.)--A Suggestion Regarding
Vacations--Advertisement--Simplified Spelling

UNSOCIAL INVESTMENTS
The "new social conscience" is essentially a class phenomenon. While
it pretends to the rôle of inner monitor and guide to conduct for all
mankind, it interprets good and evil in class terms. It manifests a
special solicitude for the welfare of one social group, and a mute
hostility toward another. Labor is its Esau, Capital its Jacob. Let strife
arise between workingmen and their employers, and you will see the
new social conscience aligning itself with the former, accepting at face
value all the claims of labor, reiterating all labor's formulæ. The
suggestion that judgment should be suspended until the facts at issue
are established is repudiated as the prompting of a secret sin. For, to
paraphrase a recent utterance of the Survey, one of the foremost organs
of the new conscience, is it not true that the workers are fighting for
their livings, while the employers are fighting only for their profits? It
would appear, then, that there can be no question as to the side to which
justice inclines. A living is more sacred than a profit.
It is virtually never true, however, that the workers are fighting for their
"living." Contrary to Marx's exploded "iron law" they probably had that
and more before the trouble began. But of course we would not wish to
restrict them to a living, if they can produce more, and want all who
can't produce that much to be provided with it--and something more at
the expense of others.
It may be urged that the employer's profits also represent the livings of
a number of human beings; but this passes nowadays for a reactionary
view. "We stand for man as against the dollar." If you say that the
"dollar" is metonymy for "the man possessed of a dollar," with rights to

defend, and reasonable expectations to be realized, you convict yourself
of reaction. "These gentry" (I quote from the May _Atlantic_) "suppose
themselves to be discussing the rights of man, when all they are
discussing is the rights of stockholders." The true view, the progressive
view, is obviously that the possessors of the dollar, the recipients of
profits and dividends, are excluded from the communion of humanity.
Labor is mankind.
The present instance is of course not the only instance in human history
of the substitution of class criteria of judgment for social criteria. Such
manifestations of class conscience are doubtless justified in the large
economy of human affairs; an individual must often claim all in order
to gain anything, and the same may be true of a class. Besides, the
ultimate arbitration of the claims of the classes is not a matter for the
rational judgment. What is subject to rational analysis, however, are the
methods of gaining its ends proposed by the new social conscience. Of
these methods one of wide acceptance is that of fixing odium upon
certain property interests, with a view to depriving them immediately
of the respect still granted to property interests in general, and
ultimately of the protection of the laws. It is with the rationality of what
may be called the excommunication and outlawing of special property
interests, that the present paper is concerned.
In passing, it is worth noting that the same ethical spirit that insists
upon fixing the responsibility for social ills upon particular property
interests--or