“I do not follow that,” said the editor.  “The Cooperative Commonwealth is a universal automatic insurance company and savings bank for all its members.  Capital being the property of all, injury to it is shared by all and made up by all.  The bank is the universal government credit-account, the ledger in which every individual’s earnings and spendings ate balanced.  There is also a universal government bulletin, in which are listed and precisely described everything which the commonwealth has for sale.  As no one makes any profit by the sale, there is no longer any stimulus to extravagance, and no misrepresentation; no cheating, no adulteration or imitation, no bribery or ‘grafting.’”

“How is the price of an article determined?”

“The price is the labor it has cost to make and deliver it, and it is determined by the first principles of arithmetic.  The million workers in the nation’s wheat fields have worked a hundred days each, and the total product of the labor is a billion bushels, so the value of a bushel of wheat is the tenth part of a farm labor-day.  If we employ an arbitrary symbol, and pay, say, five dollars a day for farm work, then the cost of a bushel of wheat is fifty cents.”

“You say ‘for farm work,’” said Mr. Maynard.  “Then labor is not to be paid alike?”

“Manifestly not, since some work is easy and some hard, and we should have millions of rural mail carriers, and no coal miners.  Of course the wages may be left the same, and the hours varied; one or the other will have to be varied continually, according as a greater or less number of workers is needed in any particular industry.  That is precisely what is done at present, except that the transfer of the workers is accomplished blindly and imperfectly, by rumors and advertisements, instead of instantly and completely, by a universal government bulletin.”

“How about those occupations in which time is difficult to calculate?  What is the labor cost of a book?”

“Obviously it is the labor cost of the paper, printing, and binding of it—­about a fifth of its present cost.”

“And the author?”

“I have already said that the state could not control intellectual production.  The state might say that it had taken a year to write the book, and the author might say it had taken thirty.  Goethe said that every bon mot of his had cost a purse of gold.  What I outline here is a national, or rather international, system for the providing of the material needs of men.  Since a man has intellectual needs also, he will work longer, earn more, and provide for them to his own taste and in his own way.  I live on the same earth as the majority, I wear the same kind of shoes and sleep in the same kind of bed; but I do not think the same kind of thoughts, and I do not wish to pay for such thinkers as the majority selects.  I wish such things to be left to free effort, as at present.  If people want to listen