CHAPTER VII.
“You have given me your ideas and objections in regard to the present state of affairs”, I commenced my next conversation with Mr. Forest, “you have expressed, occasionally, your conviction that the organization of society at the end of the last century needed reformation. Will you, now, kindly state how you would have reformed the evils of my time?”
Mr. Forest smiled. “I do not pretend to be a reformer who can perfect mankind or even all human institutions. Please do not forget that we are all cooking with water. What many people style the social question is insolvable. The variety established by nature will always be felt. You can never create conformity. We will always have smart and stupid, industrious and lazy people. The clever women and men will not submit to an equal distribution of the product of labor, nor feel satisfied under such a state of legal robbery. And if the results of labor are distributed according to the ability of the workers the people earning less than others will always grumble. It is, therefore, impossible to make all men content with their lot, no matter how you may distribute the earnings of the working force. But the fact that it is impossible to make everybody absolutely happy does not release us from the obligation to use our best efforts toward improving the lot of mankind”.
“I understand your position. But let me hear what reforms you would have inaugurated or proposed, if you had lived at the close of the last century”.
“The society of your day suffered chiefly”, said Mr. Forest, “from unsystematized production, the monopolies that made possible the amassing of immense fortunes at the expense of the people, and the want of intelligence on the part of the workers who would either submit to these extortions or strike, instead of forming mutual producing associations. Another great evil was the injustice of your taxation. In all the fields of human activity the workers produced values without a clear knowledge of what was really required. There was, generally, such a surplus of the products of farming that the farmers had to sell everything so cheap that they could hardly earn a living. Some factories worked day and night until the markets were overstocked with goods. Then these goods were sold at any price obtainable, sometimes below cost. Numerous bankruptcies followed, the factories had to stop their work, and the manufacturers as well as the working women and men had to suffer from a term of idleness until the surplus of goods was exhausted. Then a feverish activity commenced again”.
“How would you have remedied this evil?” I asked.
“A national bureau of statistics should have ascertained both the average yearly consumption and the capacity of the different trades and their plants for the production of the necessities of life”.
“Should the government have given to each trade an order for the work to be done during the year?” I queried, “and how should the trades have divided such an order among the members so that all would be satisfied?”
“The National Government should simply have ascertained the amount of the yearly consumption of the various articles, the capacity of the respective trades for furnishing such articles, and should then have left the regulation of production to the members of each trade. Such an arrangement would have given each trade a clear idea of its task. The chosen representatives of each trade could have subdivided the work. A heavy overproduction would easily have been prevented, while competition both among the factories and the individual members would have been maintained, thus securing the best kind of work, while under the present system of production we are suffering from a want both of quantity and quality”.
“But if any trade should have produced more goods than needed”, I objected.