Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 24.djvu/758

738 other trades. Even now, besides erecting its naval and military establishments, and building harbors, docks, breakwaters, etc., it does the work of ship-builder, cannon-founder, small-arms maker, manufacturer of ammunition, etc., etc.; and, when the railways have been appropriated "with or without compensation," as the Democratic Federationists say, it will have to become locomotive-engine builder, carriage-maker, tarpaulin and grease manufacturer, passenger-vessel owner, coal-miner, stone-quarrier, omnibus-proprietor, etc. Meanwhile its local lieutenants, the municipal governments, already in many places suppliers of water, gas-makers, owners and workers of tramways, proprietors of baths, will doubtless have undertaken various other businesses. And when the state, directly or by proxy, has thus come into possession of, or has established, numerous concerns for wholesale production and for wholesale distribution, there will be good precedents for extending its function to retail distribution: following such an example, say, as is offered by the French Government, which has long been a retail tobacconist.

Evidently, then, the changes made, the changes in progress, and the changes urged, are carrying us not only toward state-ownership of land and dwellings and means of communication, all to be administered and worked by state-agents, but toward state-usurpation of all industries; the private forms of which, disadvantaged more and more in competition with the state, which can arrange everything for its own convenience, will more and more die away just as many voluntary schools have, in presence of board-schools. And so will be brought about the desired ideal of the socialist.

And now when there has been reached this desired ideal, which "practical" politicians are helping socialists to reach, and which is so tempting on that bright side which socialists contemplate, what must be the accompanying shady side which they do not contemplate? It is a matter of common remark, often made when a marriage is impending, that those possessed by strong hopes habitually dwell on the promised pleasures and think nothing of the accompanying pains. A further exemplification of this truth is supplied by these political enthusiasts and fanatical revolutionists. Impressed with the miseries existing under our present social arrangements, and not regarding these miseries as caused by the ill-working of a human nature but partially adapted to the social state, they imagine them to be forthwith curable by this or that rearrangement. Yet, even did their plans succeed, it could only be by substituting one kind of evil for another. A little deliberate thought would show that under their proposed arrangements their liberties must be surrendered in proportion as their material welfares were cared for.

For no form of co-operation, small or great, can be carried on without regulation and an implied submission to the regulating