Page:Henry Mayers Hyndman and William Morris - A Summary of the Principles of Socialism (1884).djvu/54

 endeavour is to compromise on favourable terms. But for us no compromise is possible which shall carry with it the continuance of the present misery.

Yet again we see the power of the State extending. It organises as well as orders, developes as well as restrains. This too in despite of huckster economy and huckster economists, whose principal professors are forced to eat their own words as administrators and to stultify their teaching as thinkers by sheer pressure of the course of events. At this hour the State is by far the largest employer of labour in the kingdom. The Post Office, the Telegraphs, the Parcels Post, the State Banks, the Arsenals, the Dockyards, the Clothing Establishments, the Army and Navy, are all managed by the State, and administered by State officials, who organise the labour below. The objection to the system is not inefficiency nor even extravagance, but the fact that those who labour are brought into competition with the lowest wages outside; and that the profits of their production or distribution are used by the State to reduce the taxation which has to be paid by the middle class.

But in this direction lies the best prospect for reform and re-organisation without bloodshed. The Railways, the Shipping Companies, the great Machine Factories, are even now ready to be handled by the State through their present officials, but under the direct control of the producing class (which will comprise the whole community) and without the endeavour to exact a profit at the expense of the overwork of the employés as is at present the case. Shareholders and factory lords have no more power, as assuredly they