Page:James Ramsay MacDonald - The Socialist Movement.pdf/77

 Rh present-day society to handle stocks of commodities and distribute them that when nature happens to be in a generous mood and supplies rich harvests, distress as often follows as prosperity. In 1905 American newspapers announced that, owing to a big crop, cotton would have to be burned in the South to prevent serious loss to the growers. And so long as each producer works for himself alone, with his advertisements, his travellers, his agents, so long will there be chaos, unemployment, poverty.

And to make matters worse on their dramatic side at any rate, all this unemployment takes place when wealth is most heaped up and waiting for consumers. When the shoemaker is shoeless on the street, capital is cheapest, leather is cheapest, and boots are filling the warehouses.

Conditions are all the worse on account of a circumstance upon which, on other grounds, we greatly pride ourselves. We are taught that we are free, that no one controls our goings-out and our comings-in; and when Socialists speak of the present as a system of wage-slavery, we get angry. This freedom, however, has a fly in its amber. The man who is the property of another man is of value to that man and is not allowed by him to die of want or to become so degraded as to be useless. A man owning horses has far more cause for taking care of them than he has for taking care of the men whom he employs to work the horses. If one man dies or becomes useless, there are always plenty