Summary
A Review of World-Wide Conditions as they Exist To-Day
Offering an Entirely New Suggestion for the Remedy of the Evils they Exhibit
With Illustrations and Index
By
Melvin L. Severy
Author of “Fleu-de-Lis,””The Darrow Enigma,””The Mystery of June 13th,” etc.
A man protesting against error is on the way towards uniting himself with all men that believe in truth.
—Carlyle
References
“SOCIAL REDEMPTION
Another Plan for the Rescue of the Human Race.
Melvin L. Severy, whose name appears on the title-page of ‘Gillette’s Social Redemption,’ defines the work – an octavo of 782 pages – as ‘a review of world-wide conditions as they exist today, offering an entirely new suggestion for the remedy of the evils they suggest.’
Said conditions are all wrong, of course; many writers and speakers are quoted to prove the whole world and particularly the United States is going to the dogs at an alarming rate.
For the sake of peace we will admit that Mr. Roosevelt is a bear-hunter and the Philippines a nuisance; that the police disperse meetings under the red flag and the postal department will not deliver mail to parties suspected of conducting a fraudulent business. We will acknowledge that these and kindred ‘conditions prove the government is demoralized and the president in the way of becoming a czar.’ And after 742 pages of precept and horrible example, we will see what Mr. Gillette is going to do about it.
We find, in the end, that by the Gillette system, everybody is to get Justice. The wealth of the world is to be distributed so gently that the rich man will not realized that he is parted from his ducats. It’s to be done ‘as the dead leaf of last year is silently pushed from the bough by this year’s young bud.’ There is to be a sort of elective system by which every man will be able to choose the work which he likes best, and do as much or little of it as he chooses, being paid according to the labor performed. Just how, under this plan, the equality of wealth is to be maintained we don’t quite comprehend; in fact there are several points not made clear to our apprehension, but doubtless these – including the means by which ‘a conscience-quickened and morally revivified regime is to be brought about’ – will be duly explained in the next volume with which Mr. Gillette threatens us. (Boston: Herbert B. Turner & Co.)”
– Detroit Free Press, Detroit, Michigan, 15 Jun 1907
