As Cathrein points out (“Socialism,” p. 270), it will be necessary to consider “the numerous articles of food which are required even in the humblest family, the supplying of the kitchen with fuel and cooking utensils, the fitting up of the drawing-room and bedrooms with furniture and ornamentation, the lighting and heating, the stocking of the pantry, etc., besides the necessary repairs. There must be included the mending of clothes, furniture, etc.... The authorities will have to supply needle and thread to replace the missing shirt-button. All these items must be tabulated for the determination of the demand upon which the great system of production is to be based. And all this would have to be done not for one family alone, but for the millions of families which constitute a modern State and for everyone of their members.... Even a cursory glance at the immense department stores of our large cities with their thousands of different articles, will convince anyone of the great variety of modern requirements.

“Moreover, the social demand is not at all constant; it varies from month to month, from week to week, even from day to day. Many requirements cannot be foreseen in the least; suddenly and unexpectedly they make their presence felt. Weekly or even daily inquiries would become necessary, or at least there would be needed numerous offices where lists of requirements could be filed.

“However, it would not suffice to provide for single families. The needs of society at large, all the public requirements, would also have to be satisfied. In the first place would come the arrangements for transportation: streets and roads, bridges, railways, canals, vehicles of all kinds. The care of all this would be incumbent on the paternal State. What an amount of daily exertion to supply a large city with meat, milk, fruit, vegetables, etc. Private hotels would also be abolished. It would become the functions of public officials to provide shelter, food, and service for every comer, unless travelling is to be forbidden in the Socialist commonwealth. Then, again, the whole of the building business will be in the hands of the State. Public and private edifices, dwellings, schools, hospitals, insane asylums, storehouses, theatres, museums, public halls, post and telegraph offices, railroad stations, would have to be erected and kept in repair, or enlarged as necessity required. And these buildings could not be handed over to contractors as is generally done nowadays; the State alone could take care of drawing up the plans and specifications, of gathering the necessary materials and workmen, of directing and supervising the erection. If the State is supposed to do all this systematically, without squandering an immense amount of labor and materials, the extent and quality of the requirements in the entire commonwealth must be ascertained long beforehand by some responsible authority.

“What the different cities and town administrations are doing now, and as a rule through private contractors, in the matter of streets, public health, water supply, lighting, baths, etc., would fall to the care of the State. Physicians, surgeons, druggists, nurses, midwives, would have to be appointed, and it would be incumbent upon the State to provide for the professional education of a sufficient number of people for all these offices. The State would have to find ways and means to take care of education, of the press, literature, arts, theatres, museums, etc.... To this would have to be added the management of the farms, vineyards, vegetable gardens, cattle and stock raising, the forests and fisheries, mining, smelting, and other industrial processes. In all these departments, the requirements would have to be accurately ascertained before there would be any question of a systematic regulation of production.”

There are several important items that have been omitted, but it does not seem necessary to enumerate them. Enough has been shown to demonstrate that, to perform all this work and to compile such an overwhelming amount of statistical labor alone, a huge army of public officials will be required, and they must be public officials of such capability and integrity as not to be subject to the human weaknesses that are responsible for so many of the blunders in work of this kind—blunders that might prove fatal to the entire system of production and even threaten the very existence of the nation.

Do you think that human intelligence is equal to such a task? The soap-box orator may call your attention to the fact that this work is being done to-day. Yes, it is being done, but, as the Socialist so very often asserts, many of our worst evils are due to the fact that the work is being done so badly.

The Socialist also assures us that he will remedy all these evils, which means that Socialism will do the work much better than it is being performed at the present time. Do you think that this is possible? Do you believe that so gigantic a system of State machinery can be organized and made to operate without a hitch? Is it possible that a system of collective government composed of human units, all subject to human frailties, can perform what private enterprise, with its vast resources and its boundless ambition, has never been able to accomplish, especially when no hope of extra recompense stimulates these human units in the performance of their appointed tasks?

CHAPTER X
LABOR’S FULL PRODUCT

My dear Smith,

There is a good reason why the Socialists are unwilling to tell you just what their State will be, or how it will work. They themselves do not know.