SOCIALISM.

Ashburton Herald, Volume I, Issue 186, 17 October 1878, Page 2

SOCIALISM.

From the Sydney Morning Herald

The fact of the hour is that the new Socialist party is everywhere organising, and that it is growing with the luxuriant rapidity of Jonah’s gourd. In this great State of New York, Mr Dorsheimer, the Lieutenant-General of the State, has seen fit to call upon the leader of the city Socialists, actuated by a shrewd suspicion that ten or twelve members whom that party will undoubtedly elect to the next Legislature will hold the balance of power in the election of an United States senator. Of course he has been laughed at and abused by the Press for his pains, but he is possiblv none the less wise in his day and generation. New papers have been started to express the new views, and one of them boasts of a circulation of nearly 300,000 copies. It is only a weekly, and sells for a cent, and has no importance whatever as a purveyor of news—the business of publishing news being like every thing else in America a monopoly, and absolutely in the hands of a few men who formed the Associated Press Association; but it is none the less formidable as a controversial organ. "These are straws that show the drift of popular sentiment. Perhaps, as most educated and thoughtful men seem to hope, the whole movement will meet an untimely death, but we must wait till after the elections before we can at all tell where we really stand. It should be remembered that every great American party has sprung up with mushroom rapidity. In 1852, the Republican party was but a handful of Abolitionists; yet, in iB6O, they had taken possession of the entire Government. And, so far as a “ mere looker-on in Vienna ” can form an opinion, the Nationalists seem to exhibit singularly similar symptoms of vitality. In any case we are brought face to face with the same spectre that unceasingly haunts European society, and this very day the New York militia regiments are taking instruction in “ street firing,” just as are the regular troops of the Kaiser in Berlin.