(1) All industries could be organized and centralized.  A vast amount of human effort could be saved, and waste eliminated.  Business would no longer, as so often now, be hampered for lack of funds to carry out plans.  A special staff could be retained to invent and apply new ideas.  In short, just as the trusts now are much more efficient and economical than the small concerns they have superseded, so the completely organized industries of a socialistic regime would be, we are told, in a position to double human efficiency.  If the postal business were open to competition, there can be no doubt that we should be paying higher rates today for a much less efficient service.  If it were a private monopoly, some one would probably be getting enormous profits out of it profits which now go back into extending the service.  The labor saved by industrial unification would be available for a thousand other undertakings that cry to be carried out.

(2) All the industrial wrongs enumerated in the preceding chapter could, it is asserted, be remedied, and all problems adjusted, with comparatively little friction, because it would be to no one’s particular advantage to retard such betterment.  Those in control of every business, being upon a fixed salary, and having nothing to gain by squeezing laborers or public, would be amenable to a sense of pride in the honesty, cleanliness, and efficiency of their business, and the contentment of their employees.  If they were too lazy or stupid to respond to such motives, they could quickly be superseded in office by men who were more ambitious for the fair showing of their branch of the public service.

(3) Opportunity to rise to the control of a business would be open to every laborer in it.  The sons of rich men could no longer step easily into the soft berths, whether they were deserving or not.  Proved efficiency, plus popularity, would be the road to success.  With the higher wages paid to labor (made possible partly by the economic saving through organization, and partly by cutting out the private fortunes now made out of industry), every boy would be able to get a thorough vocational education, and be in a position to strive, if he is ambitious, for leadership.  Industrial power would be conferred, directly or indirectly, by popular vote; business would be recognized as a public affair, and nepotism and hereditary advantage banished from it as they have been from politics.

(4) The risk of bankruptcies, with all their attendant evils, would be done away with entirely.  Business would have a stability unknown to our present individualistic industry, and businessmen would be freed from that anxiety that drives so many today to a premature grave.

(5) All speculation in stocks would be likewise eliminated.  The necessary capital for any new undertaking would be provided by the industrial State, and the undeserved gains and losses of our present system of private investment would come to an end.