Frances Willard.

Maoriland Worker, Volume 2, Issue 64, 31 May 1912, Page 14

Frances Willard.

| " WHY lAM A SOCIALIST."

Miss Willard was a pioneer of the invest organisation of women in tho world—the vVomen's Christian Temperance Union. In Iht life ot nearly 60 years alio was famous as a Christian, as an adve-cato of temperance and of social purity. At tho National Convention of tho W.C.T.U. a\ Buffalo, in 1397, alio declared for Socialism in the folk.winy speech:— "Look about you; the products of labor arc on every hand; you could not maintain for a moment a well-or-dered lifo without them ; every object

in your rum- : ", ?■•.<! discerning eyes, the nark m ingenious tools and the pressure of labor's hands. But is it not the cruellest injustice for the wealthy, whose lives are surrounded and embellished by labor's work, to havo a superabundance; of tho money which represents the aggregate of labor in any country while the laborer himnolf is kept so steadily at work that he has not tine to acquire the education and refinements of life that-would make him and his family agreeable companions to the rich and-cultured? Tho reason why I am a Socialist comes in just here. "I wouli take, not by force, but by the slow p-occss of lawful acquisition, through better legislation as the outcome of a wiser ballot in: tho. hands of men and wimen, the entire plant that wo call civilisation, all that has been achieved on this continent in the four hundred yt.irs since Colilinbus wended his way hither, and make it the common property of all the people, requiring all to work enough with their hands to give them the finest physical development, but not to become burdensome in any case, and permitting all to share alike the advantages of education and refinement. I believe this'to be perfectly practicable—indeed that any other method is simply a relic of barbarism. "I belicv > that competition is doomed. The trusts, whose single object is to abolish competition, havo proved that wo are Iwtter without than with it and thou onient corporations control the supply of any product they combine. What tho Socialist desires is that the corporation of humanity should control all production. Beloved comrades, this is the frictionl-oRs wav; it is the higher way; it eliminates the motives for a selfish life; it enacts into our everyday living the ethics of Christ's gospel. Nothing elso will do it; nothing else can bring the glad day of universal brotherhood. "Oh, that I were young attain, a,nd it would have my life! It is God's way out of the wilderness and into the promised land. It is the very marrow of Christ's gospel. It is Christianity applied."