Page:Alexander Jonas - Reporter and Socialist (1885).djvu/46

 for honest and useful labor; it would be an enormous blessing for society.

I believe it would. There could be no Stock and Produce Exchanges then, under such a system?

Of course not; for, there wouldn't be any paper values—the means by which speculating nowadays is made possible.

Would that be all the advantage of the system?

Oh, no. The principal advantage would consist in doing away with the immense number of middlemen now hampering trade and commerce, and raising prices to an unreasonable extent. From the great centres of social production the merchandise would be sent directly to the great stores and emporiums where the public could buy them without paying tribute to the little profit-monger through whose hands everything goes nowadays until the consumer finally gets it. And nobody would be cheated, no difference in prices would exist, and no one would get any adulterated food of any kind. There would be no miserable dirty little stores, with miserable, dirty, poor people in them, who have to make a living upon the wretches that come to them with their pennies to buy dearer than the richest pay for the best the market affords.

But who fixes the price of all commodities?

We shall talk about that later.

Well then, as to railroads and telegraphs, the system of transportation and communication, I can easily see that it would be of advantage to society, to apply your system to these departments of the. public service; but to do it, the public and the administration ought to be one, and not, as it is to-day, antagonistic to each other, and the former only a means for the latter to fatten upon.

Though I understand what you mean, and being able to imagine what the future organization based upon your principles would be, I would like to ask a few more questions. I suppose—and it could not be otherwise according to what you have laid before me—that the land, houses, factories, machinery, mines, etc., the means of labor would under all circum-