For socialists these two problems may be said to be practically new.  So long as socialism based itself on the Marxian theory of production, the selection, and the subsequent conduct of the men who would compose the industrial state presented no appreciable difficulties.  For the state would, according to this theory, be in no sense the director of the labourers; it would merely be their humble servant.  It would be like an old woman who sat all day long in a barn, counting, sorting, and making up into equal shares the different products brought in to her by her sons, who worked out of her sight in a dozen different fields; or, to quote the words of one of my late socialistic correspondents, the functions of the industrial state would be “simply industrial-clerical.”  The industrial state would consist of clerks and shop-boys, the former of whom added up accounts, while the latter weighed, sorted, and handed out goods over a counter.  If the industrial state were to be nothing more than this, the selection of an adequate personnel would doubtless present no difficulties.  But as soon as the socialistic theory recognises that the industrial state, instead of being the mere receiver and dispenser of products produced by labour, would represent the intellectual forces by which every process of labour is directed, the problems of how the individuals who compose the state are to be chosen, and of how the continuous exertion of their highest faculties is to be secured, become the fundamental problems which socialists are called upon to consider.

If we assume that under the regime of socialism a nation could always secure, as the official directors of its labour, the men whose ability would enable them to direct it to the best advantage, and could force these men to exert their exceptional faculties to the utmost, the exaction of obedience to their orders from the common labouring citizens, let me say once more, would present no theoretical difficulty.  But the task of securing the requisite ability itself is of a wholly different kind.  Let us consider why.

Any one armed with an adequate implement of authority, whether the control of the means of subsistence or the power of inflicting punishment, can secure, within limits, from any ordinary man the punctual performance of any ordinary manual task, and the performance of it in a prescribed way; but he is able to do this for the following reasons only:  So far as ordinary labour is concerned, any one man, by simply observing another, can tell with approximate accuracy what the other man can do—­whether he can trundle a wheel-barrow, hit a nail on the head, file a casting, or lay brick on brick.  Further, the director of labour knows the precise nature of the result which he requires in each case that the individual labourer shall accomplish.  Hence he can exact from each labourer conformity to the injunctions laid on him, in respect both of the general character and the particular