The Trend Towards Socialism in Recent Law-Making

Introduction: It is an undeniable fact that civilized nations are drifting towards socialism. Whether we reach the goal of ideal and theoretic socialists at last, or stop short of socialism in its modern accepted meaning it is not the purpose of this work to investigate. Socialism is of recent origin. It was started less than seventy years ago in France. The progress that it has made is worthy of some attention. It has spread to all civilized nations and has won many earnest supporters in England, France Germany and the United States. A great deal of confusion results from the different meanings loosely attached to the word socialism. Socialists themselves are not uniform in their use of this term. Let us look for a moment at some of the authoritative definitions of socialism and see if possible what is meant by the term. Says Mr. Ely: socialism is that contemplated system of industrial society which proposes the abolition of private property in the great material instruments of production and the substitution therefor of collective property; and advocates the collective management of production, together with the distribution of social income, by society, and private property in the larger proportion of this social income. (See more in text