SOCIALISM DECLINED.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 56, 7 March 1914, Page 10

SOCIALISM DECLINED.

Vincent AsEor, the millionaire, has no present intention of becoming 'a Socialist. Astor in a long letter in reply to a letter of Upton Sinclair urging him to join the Socialists, not only expresses his determination not to be a Socialist, but goes into some of his reasons for believing that the Socialist solution of present day evils is fallacious and impracticable. Sinclair's argument was that there are 10,000,000 destitute people in the United States to-day, and that Aster's best chance to relieve the suffering of humanity was by becoming a Socialist. Astor's reply, in part, says: — "Replying, I write to say that I am fortunately associated with various organisations which are interested in the study of sociological questions. In one of these there are many of the leading otticers of the American Federation of Labour and the chiefs of railway brotherhoods, whose lives and energies are devoted to study and to the solution of social and industrial problems to which your letter refers. "As a result of my association with the representative labour men referred to, 1 am fully convinced that the eerious evils which have attended our industrial development can be and will be in time eradicated without overturning the fundamental basis upon which our Government and social fabric is founded."