by JACK LONDON author of “the sea-wolf,” “call of the wild,” etc. THE REGENT PRESS NEW YORK Copyright, 1905, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY . Set up and electrotyped.  Published April, 1905.  Reprinted June, October, November, 1905; January, 1906; May, 1907; April, 1908; March, 19010; April, 1912. Printed and Bound by J. J. Little & Ives Company New York Contents: Preface The Class Struggle The Tramp The Scab The Question of the Maximum A Review Wanted: A New Land of Development How I Became a

When I was a youngster I was looked upon as a weird sort of creature, because, forsooth, I was a socialist.  Reporters from local papers interviewed me, and the interviews, when published, were pathological studies of a strange and abnormal specimen of man.  At that time (nine or ten years ago), because I made a stand in my native town for municipal ownership of public utilities, I was branded a “red-shirt,” a “dynamiter,” and an “anarchist”; and really decent fellows, who liked me very well, dr

Unfortunately or otherwise, people are prone to believe in the reality of the things they think ought to be so.  This comes of the cheery optimism which is innate with life itself; and, while it may sometimes be deplored, it must never be censured, for, as a rule, it is productive of more good than harm, and of about all the achievement there is in the world.  There are cases where this optimism has been disastrous, as with the people who lived in Pompeii during its last quivering days; or with

Mr. Francis O’Neil, General Superintendent of Police, Chicago, speaking of the tramp, says: “Despite the most stringent police regulations, a great city will have a certain number of homeless vagrants to shelter through the winter.”  “Despite,”—mark the word, a confession of organized helplessness as against unorganized necessity.  If police regulations are stringent and yet fail, then that which makes them fail, namely, the tramp, must have still more stringent reasons for succeeding.  This bei

In a competitive society, where men struggle with one another for food and shelter, what is more natural than that generosity, when it diminishes the food and shelter of men other than he who is generous, should be held an accursed thing?  Wise old saws to the contrary, he who takes from a man’s purse takes from his existence.  To strike at a man’s food and shelter is to strike at his life; and in a society organized on a tooth-and-nail basis, such an act, performed though it may be under the gu

For any social movement or development there must be a maximum limit beyond which it cannot proceed.  That civilization which does not advance must decline, and so, when the maximum of development has been reached in any given direction, society must either retrograde or change the direction of its advance.  There are many families of men that have failed, in the critical period of their economic evolution, to effect a change in direction, and were forced to fall back.  Vanquished at the moment

Two remarkable books are Ghent’s “Our Benevolent Feudalism” [7] and Brooks’s “The Social Unrest.” [8]   In these two books the opposite sides of the labor problem are expounded, each writer devoting himself with apprehension to the side he fears and views with disfavor.  It would appear that they have set themselves the task of collating, as a warning, the phenomena of two counter social forces.  Mr. Ghent, who is sympathetic with the socialist movement, follows with cynic fear every aggressive

Evolution is no longer a mere tentative hypothesis.  One by one, step by step, each division and subdivision of science has contributed its evidence, until now the case is complete and the verdict rendered.  While there is still discussion as to the method of evolution, none the less, as a process sufficient to explain all biological phenomena, all differentiations of life into widely diverse species, families, and even kingdoms, evolution is flatly accepted.  Likewise has been accepted its law

It is quite fair to say that I became a Socialist in a fashion somewhat similar to the way in which the Teutonic pagans became Christians—it was hammered into me.  Not only was I not looking for Socialism at the time of my conversion, but I was fighting it.  I was very young and callow, did not know much of anything, and though I had never even heard of a school called “Individualism,” I sang the pæan of the strong with all my heart. This was because I was strong myself.  By strong I mean that I