Page:Alexander Jonas - Reporter and Socialist (1885).djvu/54

 cially all inventions tending to improve mechanical appliances—and to these you are referring, I think—are already made to order, so to speak at the present time. In the future the Public Department of Inventions will undoubtedly organize a branch of service whose exclusive object it will be to invent mechanical improvements of all kinds. It is evident that these professional inventors will receive the highest wages, like the best workers in any other branch. And special rewards will be paid for every new invention of great importance. An invention, for instance, by which the hours of labor of all workers would be reduced considerably might be rewarded by paying to the inventor a pension for the rest of his life; and all other inventions might be rewarded in proportion. You will admit that to arrange such matters would meet with little difficulty under a system of social co-operation. And, before all other things, the future system will have the advantage that the individual discoverer and inventor will get the reward, and not some idle, good-for-nothing parasite.

I am satisfied that such an arrangement would solve this problem. And yet, the question of improving machinery reminds me of another objection. You have already stated that in consequence of the introduction of machinery a large number of workers becomes superfluous, and that under the new system more "hands" would be made idle than even to-day. How would you overcome that obstacle?

That difficulty exists within our present social state of affairs only; it could not exist under the system proposed by the socialists. To-day, of course, every new and improved machine becomes a curse to so many workers whom it throws out of work. In the new society, the people who become superfluous in one branch are employed to produce other commodities and luxuries, or their becoming superfluous causes a reduction of the hours of labor for all other workers.

I don't quite understand what you mean.

Let us suppose the United States and Canada to be united into one communistic commonwealth. It would form a world by itself and its inhabitants would be able to raise and produce whatever human beings may need and desire for their