by him should as quickly as possible pass out of his control into that of an official who could render it more efficient than he.  And under the existing system this, as we have seen already, is precisely what sooner or later would be brought about automatically.  The inefficient director, in proportion to his relative inefficiency, loses his customers, and can direct labour no longer, or is obliged to direct it on a very much reduced scale.  But if each director of labour owed, as he would do under socialism, his means of directing it, not to the results of his individual efficiency, but to a single common source—­namely, to the collective capital of the country or the forcible authority of the law—­there is nothing in the fact that one constructor of ships wastes labour in constructing them which another constructor would have saved, to prevent him from continuing in his post, or even to insure that he will vacate it in favour of an abler man, whether an official rival or otherwise, as soon as such a man is available.

There is also this further fact to be noted.  Although we are assuming that the socialistic directors of labour will exert their talents to the utmost without requiring the stimulus of a proportionate reward in money, we must necessarily assume that they will value their posts for some reason or other just as much as they would do were the largest emoluments attached to them.  Consequently we may, condescending to vulgar language, say, as a certainty, that they will do their very best to stick to them.  All these official persons, as contrasted with the labouring public, will occupy positions of similar and desirable privilege; and while their latent rivalry among themselves will be hampered in the manner just indicated, they will none of them be inclined to welcome any further rivalry from without.  If the least efficient of our two naval constructors could not be forced by the fact of his relative inefficiency to hand over all or any portion of his authority to the other, and would certainly not be likely to do so of his own free will, it is still less likely that either would be willing to make such a sacrifice in favour of a man outside the privileged ranks, who desired an opportunity of demonstrating his practical superiority to both.

Under a system, in short, like that which we are now contemplating, the ability of the ablest directors might, in each branch of industry, raise the efficiency of the labour directed by themselves to as high a pitch as that to which it could be raised by the competition of to-day.  But the successes of the ablest men would have no tendency to self-extension.  The ablest men would do better than the less able, but would have no tendency to displace them; and the ablest and the least able members of the industrial oligarchy alike would instinctively oppose, and would also be in a position to check, the practical development of any competition from without.