Page:Henry Mayers Hyndman and William Morris - A Summary of the Principles of Socialism (1884).djvu/59

 management is no reason why a handful of persons should draw vast revenues from a monopoly fraudulently seized from their countrymen; still less why the land in towns, and the minerals below the land in country should be held for the benefit of the few.

But Socialists have no factious prejudices, and are influenced by no jealousies of a clique. We call therefore also for the immediate management and ownership of the railways by the State, so that the inland communications of the country may be under the control of the people at large, and carried on for their benefit, regard being had to the full remuneration of the labour of all who are engaged in the work of transport. Here is no difficulty beyond the prejudice born of a flagitious monopoly, wrongfully granted by the landlord and capitalist House of Commons in favour of the capitalist class. Labour made the railways, and living labour is confiscated daily to pay interest to the labour of the dead. It would be far better and easier for the State as the organised representative of a thorough democratic community to manage the railways through the present paid officials than to leave them under the control of a coterie of political and social adventurers, who use their railways to serve their politics, and their politics to serve their railways.

As with railways so with shipping. There the whole economical forms are ready, in the same way, for immediate management by the State, and the transfer could be arranged almost without a hitch. With mines, factories, and workshops more direct interest by the workers engaged in them would be needed, but as education extends, and the habit of economical collective