not even insisting that such a slave-system as Mr. Webb contemplates is logically essential to the theory of intellectual socialism at all.  On the contrary, as may be seen from a letter addressed to myself by a member of a socialistic body at Chicago, many socialists, as to this matter, are opposed to Mr. Webb altogether.  Socialists, says my correspondent, speaking for himself and his associates, have no objection whatever to the system of “wagedom” as such; nor do they wish to see the direction of labour “enforced by the power of the law.”  They recognise, he says, quoting my own words, that production under socialism, just as under the present system, will be efficient in proportion as labour is directed by the best minds “which can enhance the productivity of an average pair of hands.”  They object to the wage-system only in so far as it is a means by “which the employing class can make a profit out of the labourers”; and the only change which in this respect socialists desire to introduce is to transfer the business of wage-paying from the private capitalist to the state—­the state which will have no “private interests to serve,” and consequently no temptation to appropriate any profits for itself.  Socialists, he continues, subject to this proviso, would leave the wage-system just as it is now.  The state would pay those who worked, and in accordance with the work they did; but the idle or refractory it would “leave to starve to death, if they so elected, unless somebody wished to keep them alive, as happens at the present time.”

The difference between socialists with regard to this question, however, does nothing in itself to discredit the socialistic theory as a whole.  It has merely the effect of providing us with two sets of witnesses instead of one to the truth of a common principle, which is recognised by both equally.  One set declares that the ability of the most competent men must direct the labours of the majority by means of an appeal to their fears; the other declares that the same result must be accomplished, as it is at the present time, by an appeal to their choice and prudence.  In either case it is admitted that the separate manual tasks performed by the majority of the citizens must be directed and co-ordinated by the most competent minds somehow; and that the process of direction must have some system at the back of it, by means of which the orders issued to each labourer can be enforced—­this system being either a continuation of that which is in existence now, or another which would to most people be in many ways more distasteful.

The socialists of to-day, in admitting that such is the case, have at last placed themselves in a line with the sober realities of life, and in doing so have assimilated their own analysis of production to the analysis set forth in the beginning of the present volume.