Socialist Party, workers of the world unite

              SOCIALIST
LYCEUM COURSE

FIVE LECTURES

"How We Are Gouged" CHARLES EDWARD  RUSSELL
"Why Things Happen to Happen" WALTER J. MILLARD
"The War of the Classes" BEN WILSON
"The Trust Busters" JOHN W. SLAYTON
"Socialists at Work" LENA MORROW  LEWIS
DIRECTION    of
NATIONAL SOCIALIST LYCEUM BUREAU
CHICAGO
SOCIALIST VOTE OF THE WORLD
IN the table below, the figures are approximated where official records could not be had. Under the heading "1911" the vote given is that of the latest election. In most countries the Socialist strength has greatly increased since compiling these figures, especially in the United States.
Had you thought of Socialism as something to be disposed of in the dim and distant future? Were you leaving the issues it presents to be met by your grand-children?
Read these figures and wake up!
Socialism is here! It is standing up in solid ranks of militant voters and demanding attention.
It is the head and front of a world crisis.
It is a stupendous threat—a threat of millions of votes. Disregard it and the answer is—more millions of votes.
Today neither the emperor of Germany nor the president of France can plan a single important act without consideration of the Socialist vote, ever threatening to overwhelm the existing government.
How long before this will be the case in America? A sprinkle of towns elected Socialist officials in 1910, quite a shower of them in the spring elections of 1911, still more at the fall elections.
Socialism is growing. No matter whether you like it or not, you have it to meet. To meet it intelligently, you must understand it. Read our literature and attend this Lecture Course—"not to believe or disbe¬lieve, but to weigh and consider."
SOCIALIST LYCEUM COURSE
IT HAS BEEN the invariable history of great new developments in human thought, whether religious, philosophical, scientific or political, that they are preceded by clouds of rumor; that they are much talked of before they are much known about, and thus the popular mind is always filled with misconceptions of them until these are dispelled by more intimate contact.
Socialism shares the same fate. People hear about it, and read about it, and even write and talk about it with great vigor and many words, and still are far from understanding it. For this reason the National Socialist Party, working through the various state and local branches in America, has organized a Lyceum Course of five lectures by the best speakers in the party service. Each lecturer has taken a definite task, and his work is so related to the others that the whole series of five lectures constitutes a liberal education in Socialism.
That you are not a Socialist is the very reason why you should hear these lectures. They are expressly intended for people who do not fully understand Socialism.
That you know a little about Socialism and don't like it is the best reason why you should not miss a single number of this Lyceum Course. Socialism has plenty of people fighting it. But they waste a great deal of ammunition because they don't understand it.
Socialism is growing so fast that its friends must move themselves to keep abreast of its progress. It is coming to power so rapidly that its opponents cannot afford to waste a single argument on discarded theories or out-of-date ideas as to what Socialism stands for.
Friend or foe, you owe it to yourself to KNOW what we want, why we want it, and what methods we are using to get it.
                   A FREE LYCEUM TICKET
The Socialist Local of this City, in co-operation with the State and National organizations of the Socialist Party and with a large number of Socialist Publishers, has arranged that every person purchasing one dollar's worth of subscriptions to Socialist Periodicals or books shall receive free, as a premium, a SEASON TICKET for the course of five lectures. With a subscription of twenty-five cents will be given a single admission ticket, for one lecture. This offer holds good only for sub¬scriptions ordered through the local Socialist organization, and not to those sent direct to publishers. For list of available papers and books, see last page.
CONCERNING THE LECTURE TITLES
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE SUBJECTS—BY ARTHUR BROOKS BAKER
1-HOW WE ARE GOUGED
THE FIRST LECTURE starts with the assumption that you know you're gouged.
Everybody is aware that something is wrong. The politician who represents the "Interests" will give you many clues to follow. He'll tell you it's low tariff, or high tariff, or cheap money, or dear money, or hard times, or too much prosperity, or spots on the sun. He will ask you to remedy conditions by throwing out of office a certain set of public servants and putting in their places another set of public servants. You] have done this often—so often that you're getting tired of it—and still the patch-reformers insist that if you will just this once elect some new officials everything will be lovely.
The Socialist thinks our trouble is not bad men, but a bad system. The first lecturer will devote his time to showing you what is wrong with the present system of making and distributing goods, leaving it to those who will follow him to point out just how the Socialists propose to build up a better system.
Nearly everything we use is made by machinery. Experts tell us that the productiveness of human labor has more than doubled in the last twenty years. Has your share of prosperity doubled within that time?
You are gouged. You know it. Stung. You can feel it. The Socialist lecturer has a message for you about that gouging.  Hear it.
2-WHY THINGS HAPPEN TO HAPPEN
THERE IS such a thing as the seed of events. In a liberal sense it is true that "whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." And this is just as true of nations as of individuals. Events do not take form without a mold, nor substance without material. They do not come from nowhere and out of nothing. The lec¬ture title is put that way to make you think. Things don't just "happen to happen."
In former days, what people didn't comprehend they blamed to fairies, and to chance. Now, we understand that events are not caused by fairies, but by natural forces; that they do not occur by chance, but in accordance with laws as sure in their operation as the law of gravity.
Some folks think the Socialists are just a lot of people who have had a beau¬tiful dream and are trying to make it reality without knowing how. That is the big mistake. Socialists are the only people who have made a science of human affairs. They know why things "happen to happen." Our lecturer will tell you about it in an entertaining way, using language that you can understand without the dictionary.
3-THE WAR OF THE CLASSES
MEMBERS of the same class frequently fight each other. Workmen fight each other for the jobs, authors and lawyers and doctors fight one another for pop¬ular confidence and patronage, business men fight for profits, and capitalists fight among themselves for possession of the "best" investments. That struggle we call "competition."   It is based on what people call "individualism."
But when workmen, organized and unorganized, unite against their employers for better working conditions, more light, safer machinery, higher wages, or for any purpose in which their interests as workers are identical; and when the employers of labor, organized and unorganized, unite to further their common interests as employers and resist these demands, then we have a Class War.
Some people object to the use of the word "class," but we cannot change the condition by giving it another name. Others object to the word "war," but when we contemplate the real facts—that thousands are killed by preventable accidents, thousands by preventable disease (and of these latter the majority are women and children); that millions in property are destroyed, millions of workdays wasted in idleness and in useless labor—if we don't call this war, what shall we call it?
4-THE TRUST BUSTERS
THE SPIRIT of the times is combination, and this, with the legal efforts to pre-vent it, will be discussed by the fourth lecturer. As noted under the previous title, people are driven to unite with those of their own occupation. In the case of the man who has only his work to sell, we find that he becomes personally identified with others of his kind in the Labor Union, Medical Society, Farmers' Union, etc. But in the case of business, and especially corporate business, the union is more com¬plete, and Small Business loses its identity entirely and becomes merged into Big Business. Combinations of Capital are often so welded together that they combine, under one management, a Monopoly of a certain commodity which is a popular necessity. For twenty years there has been a howling chorus demanding that the power of Monopoly to control prices be interfered with by law. Political plat¬forms have promised to smash the trusts, and spectacular "investigations" and court proceedings have contributed much entertainment. But not a single trust has been smashed, and the politicians whose fullness of promise is rivaled only by their empti¬ness of results, have come to be called "Trust Busters."
During all this waste of indignation the Socialists alone have stood solidly in favor of concentration of industry, insisting that it is a labor-saving device of incal¬culable value; and every objectionable feature may be removed simply by changing the trusts from private ownership for plunder to public ownership for service.
5-SOCIALISTS AT WORK
THE PEOPLE have learned, by hard experience, to suspect the good faith of all
political platforms. A great many voters agree that the Socialist platform is the best of all—in fact, that "it is so good you can't enforce it—it won't work."
Here, as everywhere, an ounce of fact is worth a ton of theory. In most places the Socialists have only talked about their program, and the people have not entrusted to them the powers of government. In other places they are already in control, or partly in control, and the work they do when elected to office is the standard by which they should be judged—not the work of any one Socialist official, but of Socialist officials in general.
You find them raising the general standard of existence by increasing the wages and improving the working conditions of the poorest government employees. You find them raising the general standard of health by giving especial attention to public hygiene among the great masses of the people, where destructive diseases have had their breeding places. You find them raising the standard of physical efficiency and education by preventing illegal employment of children and striving always (unfortunately against much opposition) to abolish child labor. You find them establishing old age pensions wherever they have the power, and supporting every measure for municipal and state ownership of monopolies.
The spirit is different, this esteem of men, women and children as something infinitely more valuable than franchises, or profits, or the tariff. It brings new results wherever Socialists are elected to office.
Under the title "Socialists at Work" the last lecturer will tell you what we have done and are doing, and why you will want to have a part in the work.
CHARLES EDWARD RUSSELL
TT WOULD be difficult, indeed, to offer to the readers of the popular magazines a name more familiar than that of Charles Edward Russell. Wherever a publisher has had the courage to attack the trusts, the "interests," big business in its big grafting methods, the services of Russell have been in demand. He is the foremost of that splendid phalanx of magazine writers who, while Socialists at heart, many of them, like Russell, party members, are required by capitalist publishers to keep the word "Socialism" well in the background of their writings.
But conditions have developed to the point where those who under¬stand them become Socialists, and only men of this type can write the sort of "copy" that rings true and that the magazine-reading public cares to read. It is only a question of time until these forceful writers will throw off the restraint which the editors now put upon them. In the preparatory stage of this period Charles Edward Russell has become famous, respected, trusted and popularly loved through his articles on "Soldiers of the Common Good," "The Foe of Democracy," "At the Throat of the Republic," "Where Did You Get It, Gentlemen?" etc.
In the magazines, Mr. Russell cannot say: "The only remedy for the conditions of graft I have described is Socialism, and I am a Socialist." On the platform the atmosphere is more free, and when you reflect that the full story of American graft has never been told, and that of all men Charles Edward Russell is best qualified to relate it with the keen analysis of the social scientist, you, Mr. American Public, will hardly neglect this opportunity of hearing him.
PRESS COMMENT
N. Y. Mail,—Mr. Russell is to be credited with having shown the American business man and practical workingman that there is "something doing" somewhere in the world toward relieving the abuses of the wage system.
N. Y. Journal. — Mr. Russell has rendered a public service in studying carefully and describing accurately, with facts in plenty, the system by which criminals and bosses that own them and the corporations that own the bosses govern in America.
N. Y. L,ife.—Mr. Russell is intensely serious, with a sincerity we believe born of experience, observation, sympathy and conviction—in his atti¬tude toward that which he has made his chief work in life. This may be summed up in a sen¬tence as expressing the desire to do what may lie within him toward promoting the true democracy and equalizing the inequalities of modern society.
New Zealand Times.—Mr. Russell's mission is to find out what is being done outside the United States to meet the great problem caused by the excessive accumulation of wealth in the hands of the few to the detriment of the great masses of the people.
Cleveland Plaindealer.—Mr. Russell tells us why we pay so much for our meat; the illegality of the methods which have put the beef trust in the saddle. He does not theorize. He doesn't shriek.    He gives facts and figures.
Wellington (N. Z.) Post.— Trusts, says Mr. Russell, are merely the aggravated symptoms of a world-disease—the tendency of wealth to drift to a few—the disease of excess and deficiency.
N. Y. Press.—If he live the span allotted to the average man Mr. Charles Edward Russell is likely to find himself regarded in this country as a political Messiah. Certainly there has been no other contribution to the literature of economics within the century that has given such an impetus to the popular movement for public control of natural monopolies as his series on "The Greatest Trust in the World" and "Soldiers of the Common
Good.".....This searcher, student and writer
has made the subject of political economy intelli¬gible to the great public.
Philadelphia Public Ledger.— Charles Ed¬ward Russell, ex-newspaper man of New York and Chicago, now a magazine editor and writer, made the principal speech, his subject being "The Un¬employed."
FIRST LECTURE-"How We are Gouged”
CHARLES EDWARD RUSSELL
WALTER J. MILLARD
"BEING a native of London, a resident of Cincinnati and a citizen of the world at large, Walter J. Millard brings to the consideration of any subject he discusses a scope of vision and breadth of understanding which guarantee the respectful attention of all fair-minded and earnest people. He has traveled much, observed widely, studied deeply, and his speeches on Socialism command the respect of opponents and the admir¬ation of Socialists.
As a lecturer on ethics, economics and politics, Mr. Millard has appeared in many of the large cities of America, and however caustic the criticism of old-party papers, the press in general recognizes his genius as a philosopher and speaker. He is peculiarly fitted by long study to handle the present subject and to give the audience a clear insight into those parts of Socialist philosophy which are usually the least understood.
Three years of training in the best industrial school of England, with several years of experience in mechanical pursuits, gives him a direct knowledge of the industrial process, the principles which govern it and the ethics based upon it. Through some years as a Socialist organizer and lecturer, Mr. Millard has become recognized as one of the ablest workers in the party movement, and in the middle west, where he is best known, his services are always in demand.
Hear Mr. Millard. He will give a careful presentation of some truths you need to know.
PRESS COMMENT
Indiana State Bulletin.—Everywhere that Walter J. Millard has spoken there are requests for return dates. So many dates have been asked for him that some will be disappointed, as he can¬not possibly fill all of them. The report from Laketon is an example of the reports that are be¬ing received by the State Office. Comrade Trickle writes : "He made the best speech I ever heard, and it was strictly along the lines of Socialism."
News-Signal, Middletown, Ohio. — It is good news to hear that the Round Table club in¬tends to hire a proper hall for the lecture of Mr. Millard here. Some folks in this city know him as a Socialist. All who have heard him speak— and last month he spoke in a meeting of the Round Table club—know him as a student of economics, but he is more than that, and more than a Social¬ist, though he might not admit that. He has been an earnest student of ethics, and he has things to say on conduct, which Matthew Arnold rightly said is three-fourths of human life, that are worth hearing by all. Middletown has no public speaker so fluent and suave as Walter Millard; and he is prone to be as mordant as he is mellifluous. It is good to hear Millard, and even those good men who cannot agree with his deductions of the facts in economics and politics are generally apt to say "thou almost persuadest me." He is as strong on the question of ethics, its evolution, its data and its hope, and this trinity—economics, politics, ethics—are matters in life for man's consideration and action. Everyone is talking Socialism since he went away. Only two individuals remarked that it was no good, and one of them still believes that the earth is flat.
Indianapolis Register.— Walter Millard took the cake, bringing cheer after cheer with his ready wit, biting sarcasm and earnest words of encouragement to the working class. His talk made a decided hit and will be long remembered by all who heard him. Pen and ink cannot convey the impression he made.