fif_ques

FIFTEEN
QUESTIONS
ABOUT
SOCIALISM
By Daniel De Leon
Published by
Socialist Labor Party of America
www.slp.org
2005
FIFTEEN
QUESTIONS Asked by
THE PROVIDENCE, R I., “VISITOR”
Representing the
Roman Catholic Political Machine
Answered by
Daniel De Leon
Representing the
Socialist Labor Party
PRICE TWENTY CENTS
Published by
NATIONAL EXECUTIVZ COMMITTEE,
S3CIALIST LABOR PARTY
45 Rose Street, New York
1914
FIFTEEN
QUESTIONS
Asked by
THE PROVIDENCE, R I., “VISITOR”
Representing the
Roman Catholic Political Machine
Answered by
Daniel De Leon
Representing the
Socialist Labor Party
FIRIT EDITION
Published by
NATIONAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE,
SOCIALIST LABOR PARTY
45 Rose Street, New York
1914
PREFACE
The fifteen questions in this pamphlet were pro-

pounded by the Providence, R. I., “Visitor,” an Ultra-
montane, hence, political Roman Catholic weekly pub-
lication, in its issue of September 12, 1913, and were
headed with this recommendation :-
“The next time you hear a Socialist soap-box orator
you might interest him in the following list of questions.
Clip these questions and carry them with you.”
The Daily People, seeing that the “Visitor” voiced
the political and economic creed of Ultramontanism,
while it itself expressed the political and economic creed
of Socialism, and, holding furthermore, that, judging by
the signs of the times, the economic and political forces
of Capitalism in the land would gather to a head under
the political and economic banner of Ultramontanism,
while the economic and political forces of Labor WOUND
be marshalled under the political and economic banner
of Socialism for a final struggle between Capitalism and
Socialism, immediately took up the “Visitor’s” ques-
tions and answered them editorially, promising to invite
the “Visitor” to reciprocate by answering a set of fifteen
questions propounded to it. The questions answered by
the Daily People are here presented in more available
and lasting form.
NATIONAL EXECUTIVE COMMITEE,
SOCIALIST LABOR PARTY.
New York, N. Y., 1g14.
CONTENTS
PAGE
Preface ........................................ 5
Question
I. How D,etermine Worker’s Income?. ..... 9
II. Same Incomes for All?. ................ 13
III. Won’t Superior Ability Suffer? ........... 14
IV. Will Not Some Get Less than Full
Product? ........................... 22
V. Who Will Support “ Non - Productive

Hordes”? ............................ 25
VI. How Tell “True” Value of Worker’s Toil? 36

VII. What of Professor’s Pay and Brakeman’s 4”
VIII. Will Not Socialism R.equire More
Workers ? .......................... 5”
IX. Will Not Cost of Production Increase
with Reduced Hours?. .............. 5s
X. WilNzd;dyore Government Officials Be
............................ 64
XI. Can Enough Be Produced with Fewer
Hours ? ............................. 75
XII. Will Socialists Confiscate Capital?. ...... 84
XIII. How Reward the Inventor?. ............. IOO
XIV. Will the Industrious Divide with the
Lazy ? ............................. 10s
.XV. What Will Be Done with the Farm
Lands? ............................ 117
FIFTEEN QUESTIONS
QUESTION NOI. I.
“How will the Co-Frative Common~~~~alth deter-
mine the income of each worker?”
ANSWE’R:-
In order that the answer to the question be under-
stood, two things must first be grasped, and kept in
mind.
OIne is the factor which determines the worker’s in-
come today ; and that involves the worker’s status under
Capitalism.
The other thing is the worker’s changed status in
the Co-operative Commonwealth ; from which status
flows the factor which will then determine the worker’s
income.
How is the worker’s income determined today, under
Capitalism?
The income of the worker is his wages.
That which determines the wages of the worker to-
day is the supply and demand for Labor in the Labor
market.
If the supply is relatively large, the price of labor-
power, that is, wages, which means income, will be rela-
tively low. If the demand is relatively large, then the
income, that is, wages, will rise.
As the Law of Gravitation may be, and is, perturbed
9
IO FIFTEEN QUESTIONS
by a number of perturbing causes, so with the Law of
Wages ;-combinations of workers, on the one hand, may
counteract an excessive supply of Labor in the Labor
market, and keep wages up; on the other hand, capitalist
outrages, such as shanghaing, not to mention innumer-
able others, may counteract a small supply of Labor in
the Labor market, and keep wages down. In the long
run the perturbing causes cease to be perceptible factors,
and the Law of Supply and Demand re-asserts itself.
It follows that, under Capitalism, the status of ‘the
worker is not that of a human. His income being his
price, and his price being controlled by the identical law
that controls the prices of all other articles of merchan-
dise, under Capitalism the worker is a chattel. In so far
as he is a “worker” he is no better than cattle on the
hoof-all affectation to the contrary notwithstanding.
What, on the contrary, is the worker’s status in the
Co-operative Commonwealth?
“Co-operative Commonwealth” is a technical term ;
it is another name for the Socialist or Industrial Republic,
He who says “Co-operative Commonwealth” means,
must mean, a social system that its advocates maintain
flows from a previous, the present, the Capitalist regi-
men; a social system that its advocates maintain is made
compulsory upon society by the impossible conditions
which the Capitalist regimen brings to a head; finally, a
social system which its advocate& maintain that, seeing
it is at once the offspring of Capitalism and the redress
of Capitalist ills, saves and partakes of the gifts that
Capitalism has contributed to the race’s progress, and
lops off the ills with which Capitalism itself cancels its
FIFTEEN QUESTIONS II
own gifts. The issue of wages, or the worker’s income,

throws up one of the leading ills of Capitalism.
The Co-operative Commonwealth revolutionizes the
status of the worker. From being the merchandise he
now is, he is transformed into a human. The trans-
formation is effected by his pulling himself out and away
from the stalls in the market where today he stands
beside cattle, bales of hay and crates of crockery, and
taking his place as a citizen in full enjoyment of the
highest civic status of the race,
The means for the transformation is the collective -
ownership of all the necessaries for production, and their
operation for use, instead of their private ownership by
the Capitalist, and their uperation for sale and profits.
The worker’s collective ownership of that which,
being stripped of under Capitalism, turns him into a
wage-slave and chattel, determines his new status. The
revolutionized status, in turn, determines his income.
Whereas, under Capitalism, the very question whether
the worker shall at all have an income depends upon the
judgment, the will or the whim of the Capitalist,
whether the wheels of production shall move, or shall
lie idle,-in the Co-operative Commonwealth, where the
worker himseIf owns the necessaries for production, no
such precariousness of income can hang over his head.
Whereas, under Capitalism, a stoppage of production
-comes about when the capitalist fears that continued
production may congest the market, thereby forcing
profits down, and never comes about because there is no
need of his useful articles,-in the Co-operative Com-
monwealth, use and not salz and profits being the sole
12 FIFTEEN QUESTIONS
purpose of production, no such stoppage of production,

hence, of income, is conceivable.
Whereas, under Capitalism, improved methods of
production have an eye solely to an increase of profits,
and therefore are equivalent to throwing workers out of
work ,-in the Co-operative Commonwealth, use and not
sale and profits, popular wellbeing and not individual
richness, being the sole object in view, improved meth-
ods of production, instead of throwing workers out of
work, will throw out hours of work, and keep steady, if
they do not increase, the flow of income.
Consequently, and finally-
The &operative Commonwealth will not determine,
the Co-operative Commonwealth w!ill leave it to each
worker himself to determine his income ; and that income
will total up to his share in the product of the collective
labor of the Commonwealth, to the extent of his own
efforts, multiplied with the free natural opportunities
and with the social facilities (machinery, methods, etc.)
that the genius of society may make possible.
In other words-differently from the state of things
under Capitalism, where the worker’s fate is at the mercy
of the capitalist-in the Cooperative Commonwealth
the worker will himself determine, will himself be the
architect of his fate,
QUESTION N.0. II.
“Will each worker, skilled or unskilled, receive the
same income?”
ANSWER:-
The answer to this was virtually given in the pre-
ceding question.
Answering the preceding question-How will the
Co-operative Commonwealth determine the income of
each worker?-it was established that the income of each
worker woufd be determined by himself, inasmuch as
his income would “total up to his share in the product
of the collective labor of the Commonwealth, TO THE
EXTENT OF HIS OWN EFFORTS,” etc.
It follows that, so far as “income” is concerned, that
will depend, not upon the category of the -worker, or
work done,-w hether “skilled” or “unskilled”-but upon
the rate of effort that the worker will have contributed
towards the totality of the collective work done.
The income of the skilled worker, who loiters, will
be less than the income of his unskilled fellow-worker
who bestirs himself.
$$JESTION NO. III.
“If ail receive the same rate of compensation, wilI .
not such a system forever rob the superior workers of
a part of their superior ability?”
ANSWER:-
The question is grammatically defective. Surely the
questioner can not mean that there can be a system of
compensation that could rob a superior worker “of a
part of his superior ability.” Not unless a worker suf-
fers physical injury could his ability be impaired; “rob-
bed” it could not be. A worker may be robbed of the
whole fruit of his ability, yet his ability will remaia
intact. What the questioner means is “a part of the
fruit of his superior ability.” The question would then
read :
“If all receive the same rate of compensation, will
not such a system forever rob the superior worker of a
part of the fruit of his superior ability?’
The grammatical defect being eliminated, the ques-
tion will next have to be cleansed of an ethical defect.
It is un-ethical to assume an important fact, without
specifically asserting its correctness, and then to proceed
as if the alleged fact were an established one. Such a
method amounts to the surreptitious injection of prem-
ises. The method is a favorite one,with the Jesuit and
Ultramontane Fathers Escobar and Hurtado. Ethics
condemns the method; science will none of it.
The premises which the question assumes as granted
‘is that in the Co-operative Commonwealth all workers
I4
.
FIFTEEN QUESTIONS 15
receive the same rate of compensation. The assumption
is not weakened by being put conditionally. It amounts
to the surreptitious injection of premises for Rhich there
is no warrant.
Cleansed of this ethical defect, and its grammatical
error expunged, the question should be divided in two,
and read:
“Are the rates of compensation in the Co-operative
Commonwealth to be different for different workers, say,
for workers of superior ability and of inferior ability?
If the rates of compensation are to be different, what
will determine them?
“If all receive the same rate of compensation, will
not such a system forever rob the superior workers of a
part of the fruit of their superior ability?”
Seeing that the Co-operative Commonwealth is not
a mechanical contrivance, contrived to accomplish a cer-
tain result, but is an evolutionary social growth, the con-
ditions, at any rate the rough outlines ‘of conditions, if!
the Co-operative Commonwealth flow from sociologic
and economic facts. These facts being ascertained and
grasped, the conditions follo,w.
The sociologic and economic facts that bear upon the
question whether the rates of compensation in the Co-
operative Commonwealth will be different for workers
of superior and inferior ability, and, if so, what will de-
termine them, are these:
1st economic and sociologic fact.-Useful work falls
under two categories.
Useful work is either directly or indirectly productive
of material objects, conducive to physical wellbeing.
-For instance :-
The men at the bench, who turn out the several parts
that finally combine in a shoe, are directly productive.
The men engaged in the clerical work, requisite for
the operation of a boot and shoe plant, are indirectly
productive.
The two sets- “manual” work, so-called, and “cler-
ical” work, so-called,-combine in producing a material
object, necessary for physical wellbeing.
The second category under which useful work falls
is that of work that is productive, neither directly nor
indirectly, of material objects, but is conducive to mental
or moral expansion.
-For instance :-
The heart, which, pregnant with celestial fire, gives
birth to a poem that thrills the mind with lofty emotion;
the hand that to ecstacy wakes the living lyre ; the scien-
tist, whose combined imagination and trained powers
discover a secret of Nature ;-the work of these and all
such workers, tho’ it produce no material object, is con-
ducive to mental and moral elevation.
2nd economic and sociologic fact.-Tlro’ “man doth
not live by bread only,” neither can he live witholut
“bread.” Inestimable tho’ the useful work be that is
neither directly nor indirectly productive of material ob-
jects, the usefulness of such work is conditioned upon
material existence. “A living dog is better than a dead
:lion,” sayeth The Preacher.
3rd economic and sociologic fact.-As with the indi-
vidual, so with society. Material existence, hence, ma-
terial conditions, is the foundation of all else. Hence,
society concerns itself, first of all, with useful work that
either directly or indirectly ministers ‘to physical well-
being. That is the starting point for all else as ultimate
results.
4th economic and sociologic fact.-Useful work that
is productive of material objects consumes unequal
amounts of tissue in a given time. The amount of tissue
thus consumed by the worker in useful production deter-
mines the rate of his toil, and that rate determines the
rate of his contribution to the social store.
5th economic and sociologic fact.-As set forth in the
answer to Question No. I,, under the present, or capitalist
regimen, in which the necessaries for production are held
privately, and are operated for the sake of sale and profit,
the worker’s “income’- which means his total earn-
ings-is determined by the merchandise Law of Supply
and Demand. Seeing that improved machinery and
methods tend to throw labor out of work, they tend to
raise the supply of labor, and thereby to lower the price
of labor-power- which is the worker’s rate of compen-
sation. Thus the factor, which determines the rate of
the worker’s toil, has, under the capitalist regimen, no
regard for the factor which determines the rate of the
same worker’s contribution to tie social store.
It follows from the synthesis of these sociologic and
economic facts :-
1st. That in the Co-operative Commonwealth, where
the necessaries for production are collective property,
operated for use, the worker’s rate of compensation will
not be the same, but will depend upon -that which deter-
mines the individual worker’s rate of contribution to the
.
social store, to wit, the amount or rate of tissue that he

expends in a given time.
2nd. That the method to ascertain the individual
worker’s rate of tissue expended in production must be
substantially that which fatedly works human degrada-
tion under the capitalist regimen, but under the Socialist
regimen must, as inevitably, have a contrary effect.
A simple illustration will make the point clear.
Say conductors and motormen are wanted on a new
traction line. Say that there are 200 cars to be equipped.
There will be wanted an equal number of each--zoo
motormen and 200 conductors.
What is the practical working of the economic and
sociologic facts under the capitalist regimen? The large
supply of undifferentiated labor will cause an excess of
applicants for both jobs, with the consequence that the
price of the applicants’ labor-power will be depressed.
Another effect will be that, in the very nature of things,
many more will apply for the function of conductor than
for that of motorman, with the further consequence tnat
the price of the conductors’ labor-power will suffer an
even severer depression. Craft Unionism, “labor laws”
requiring a certain length of residence from applicants,
together v&h other such’makeshifts and patchwork, may
temporarily counteract these effects; they can neither
,permanently check them, nor yet prevent their aggra-
vation.
Starting, on the contrary, under the regimen of the
,Co-operative Commonwealth, the same economic and
sociologic laws work differently. Given the instance of
200 conductors and 200 motormen being needed, the
supply of conductors, which will be indicated by the

number of applicants for conductors’ function, and the
supply of motormen, which will be indicated by the num-
ber of applicants for motormen’s function, will be an
exact index of the amount of tissue expended in each
function. Temperamental and other exceptional causes
being left aside, it will be found that the preference will
be generally given by the applicants to the pleasanter,
or easier, function, that is, to the function that consumes
less tissue. Say that, in the instance under consideration,
4oo workers apply for the function of conductor, while
only 50 apply for the function of motorman, it would
follow that I hour of a motorman’s function consumes
as much tissue as do 8 hours of a conductor’s. The rate
of tissue consumption being the index of the contribu-
tion to the social store, and the rate of contribution to
the social store being the index for the rate of compen-
sation, the motorman’s I hour would receive a compen-
sation equal to the conductor’s 8 hours. The huge ad-
vantage of leisure that the motorman’s function would
thus be found to enjoy, and the conductor’s function to
be deprived of, would have the effect of counterbalancing,
the discrepancy in the consumption of tissue. A deflec-
tion of applicants from the conductors’ to the motormen’s
function would set in. The effect of this effect would
be the equilibration of the relative hours of the two. The
action and re-action upon one another of these effects
and counter-effects will ultimately and unerringly adjust
the number of hours of the motorman’s function which,
all told, would be equivalent to the number of hours of
the conductor’s function. If, say, in the final adjustment
2 hours of the motorman’s function are equal to 4 of the

conduc&x’s, then the voucher for labor performed,-
that is, for contribution made to the social store,-paid
out to the motorman for 2 hours’ work will enable him
to draw from the social store as much wealth as the
voucher paid out to the conductor for 4 hours’ work;
and the voucher paid out to either will enable them to
draw from the social store as much of the wealth pro-
duced by the other workers as they, motormen and con-
ductors, respectively, contributed to the same store.
It will escape none but those whose powers of per-
ception are clouded by bourgeois class interests; or by
habits of thought; or by some other hindrance to recti-
tude of reasoning ;- it will escape none other that the
process for determining the worker’s rate of compensa-
tion in the Co-operative Commonwealth follows, as has
been indicated, the identical lines that are followed un-
der Capitalism, to wit, the Iine of supply and demand,
with, however, the difference that, whereas under Capi-
Yalism the process works evil, hence, injustice to the
worker, under Socialism the process works good, hence,
justice,-a justice that the abundance of wealth for all,
producible today, underscores the injustice that obtains
under Capitalism.
This latter and further feature of the subject, tho’
entitled to incidental mention at this place, belongs for
fuller consideration under Question NO. XI.
It having been shown that the rate of compensation
in the Co-operative Commonwealth will not be the same
for all workers, and the method for determining the rate
of compensation that the workers are entitled to in their
several functions having been set forth, the last portion

of the question under consideration-whether, if all re-
ceive the same rate of compensation, the superior worker
would not be robbed of a part of the fruit of his superior
ability-has nothing left to be answered,-except in SO
far as the fact is undeniable that hardly any two work-
ers, in the identical function, work with equal efficiency,
a fact the consideration of which belongs in the answer
to the next question.
QUESTIOiN NO: IV.
“And will not this conflict with the oft-repeated as-
sertion of Socialists that the workers will receive the full
product of their toil?”
ANSWER :-
It is evident that this question is grounded upon the
assumption that the answer to the question immediately
preceding would be that in the Co-operative Common-
wealth the “rate of compensation” was to be the same
in all occupations. Seeing the answer was “otherwise
and to the contrary” the present question would seem to
have been disposed of.
In a way, it is so; not so in another.
This question, as well as the preceding ones, and
several of the rest, betrays much looseness of thought,
with consequent looseness of expression. It is evident
the questioner jumbles together “occupational” work
and “individual” work. We shall not take advantage of
his confusion of thought. Having in the previous an-
swer considered the “rate of compensation” by occupn-
tion, we shall now consider the “rate of compensation”
by the individual worker.
The texture of the question justifies the belief that
in the questioner’s mind there floats, undefined, the im-
pression that individuals do not all produce the same
amount of wealth, hence, that, either the individual can
not possibly receive the “full product of his toil,” in case
all are remunerated alike; or the “oft-repeated assertion
22
of Socialists that the workers will receive the full pro-

duct of their toil” is hollow.
The “nut” that the question presents is no “nut” at
all. In so far as it be a “nut,” .the nut has been amply
cracked by economic science.
Grappling with the “nut” Marx says:
“In every industry, each individual worker, be he
Peter or Paul, differs from the average worker. These
individual differences, ‘errors’ as they are called in
mathematics, compensate one another, and vanish when-
ever a certain minimum of workmen are employed
together.”
As an evidence that this view is neither new, nor
revolutionary, but was a matter of common observation
and experience, Marx quotes the thorough-paced bour-
geois philosopher Edmund Burke, who records his ob-
servation and experience in the following express and
expressive terms :
“Unquestionably, there is a good deal of difference
between the value of one man’s labor and that of another
from strength, dexterity and honest application. But 1
am quite sure, from my best observations, that any given
five men will, in their total, afford a proportion of labor
equal to any other five within the periods of life which I
have stated; that is, among such five men there will be
one possessing all the qualifications of a good workman,
one bad, and the other three middling, and approximat-
ing to the first and the last. So that in so small a platoon
as that of even five, you will find the full complement of
all that five men can earn.”
In other words, even when those working together
are as few as five, all individual differences in the quan-

tity of the wealth produced by each vanishes, and con-
sequently, any given five workingmen, working together,
“will,” to quote Marx again, “in the same time do as
much work as any other five.”
The “nut” is involved in the subject known to politi-
cal economy as “Co-operation.”
Co-operation, or collective labor, brings out and es-
tablishes a political-economic fact from which flow two
principles-one of sociology, the other of logic-both of
which bear directly upon the question in hand,
The political-economic fact brought out and estab-
lished by Cooperation is that the joint product of co-
operating workers is larger than the sum of the products
of the same workers, if they worked separately, indi-
vidually, isolatedly. For instance: If five men worked
isolatedly at the same industry, and the sum, or, in the
language of Burke, the total, of their product amounted
to $5 worth, then, if the five workingmen co-operated,
or worked collectively, their joint product would total
up to $8. The co-operative labor of these five would
have yielded an excess of $3, over and above what the
total of their individual, or isolated, labor would have
amodnted to.
The point is luminously expressed by Marx:
“Just as the offensive power of a squadron of cavalry,
or the defensive power of a regiment of infantry is es-
sentially different from the sum of the offensive and
defensive powers of the individual cavalry or infantry
soldiers taken separately, so the sum total of the mechan-
ical forces exerted by isolated workmen dif?‘ers from the
social force that is developed when many hands take
part simultaneously in one and the same undivided
operation, such as raising a heavy weight, turning a
winch, or removing an obstacle. In such cases the effect
of the combined labor could either not be produced at
all by isolated individual labor, or it could only be pro-
duced at a great expenditure of time, or on a very
dwarfed scale.” And Marx ties up the several threads
of the economic fact which he recites with the observa-
tion that “not only have we here an increase in the pro-
ductive power of the individual, by means of co-opera-
tion, but the creation of a new power, namely, the col-
lective power of masses.”
The principle of sociology that flows from this poli-
tical-economic fact transpires in the answer to the ques-
tion that the political-economic fact raises:
“Which one of the co-operators is entitled to the
increased produce? If all, each according to the volume
of his particular product, how shall the apportionment
be made?”
Capitalism answers : “None of the co-operators is
entitled to the increased produce ; it belongs to the
Capitalist Class” ;-and Capitalism makes good the an-
swer by virtue of its placing the necessaries of produc-
tion in the private hands of the Capitalist Class.
Socialism answers : “Seeing that the increased pro-
duce was and could be brought forth by none of the
co-operators alone-whether the best, the worst, or the
middling; seeing that the increased produce is the yield
of ti ‘social force’ that is latent in co-operative, or col-
L lective, labor ;-seeing all that, the increased produce
belongs to all the co-operators, to none but them, to all

share and share alike.”
The principle of logic, which flows from the political-
economic fact which Co-operation establishes, is one
that may lightly be confounded with Equity. Drawing,
however, sharp the line between Equity and Logic, and
leaving the equity aspect of the principle for when we
come to the fifteen questions with which we propose to
reciprocate the “Visitor,‘‘-logic, as demonstrated by
John Stuart Mill, establishes that, if 50 needs 2 with
which to be multiplied in order to produce 100, the 2-
however much smaller than the s-is as essential to
the final and desired result as the go-however much the
50 may be larger than the 2. Seeing that the co-opera-
tion of all the workers, whatever the differences among
them may be, is requisite to obtain the final and desired
volume of product, logic concludes that all the co-opera-
tors are at a par, and logic demands that they share alike
in the fruit of their joint toil.
The thought that underlies the question in hand, to
wit, the unquestionable fact of there being considerable
difference in the work of different individuals, is a
thought that concerns social conditions which exist no
longer. Society no longer is grounded upon individual
labor. Society is now grounded upon collective, or CO-
operative work. Indeed, the conflict that today convulses’
society is born of the contradiction that exists between
collective, that is, the present system of production, and
the private ownership of the means of production, that
is, the old tenure of property.
To indicate injustice or contradiction in the remuner-
l
ative methods that the Co-operative Commonwealth pro-

claims marks him who makes the indication guilty of
suggesting what is false, and also of ignorance, or, if not
ignorance, of a disposition to trifle:-
-He is guilty of suggesting what is false in that
false is the silent implication that Capitalism conscien-
tiously ascertains, and scrupulously apportions their
shares to the co-operators. Not only does the Capitalist
Class appropriate to itself, normally, the surplus wealth
that the individual worker yields over and above the
value of his individual labor-power, the Capitalist Class
aIso bags the whole of the increased produce which
flows from the collective work of the workers.
-He is also guilty of blameworthy ignorance in that
he knows not that society has left behind it the stage of
individual, and has entered and rests today upon the
stage of collective labor.
-Finally, if not ignorant, then he is guilty of pre-
suming to trifle with so weighty a subject as the Social
Question, in that he pothers about trifles of the nature
of what is called “errors” in mathematics.
“The oft-repeated assertion of Socialists that the
workers will receive the full product of their toil” is in
conflict with no principle of science; nor is the Socialist
at fisticuffs with himself,
QUESTION NO: V.
“If each worker should receive the ful1 product of his
toil who will support the vast horde of non-productive
workers?”
ANSljVER:-
The word “horde” evokes before our mind a thing of
evil. Our sense of the term is borne out by the only
passage from literature that the Standard Dictionary
cites in illustration of the word-the passage from
Everett-“ The magnificent temples of Egypt were de-
molished in the sixth century before our Saviour by the
hordes which Cambyses had collected from the steppes
of Central Asia.” Accordingly, the word “horde,” espe-
cially preceded by the word “vast,” is a repetition of the
offense committed in Question No. III.-the offense of
the surreptitious injecting of premises. The premise,
surreptitiously injected in this question, is that in the
Co-operative Commonwealth there will be a “vast
horde” of non-productive workers. Again, as happened
with Question No. III., the assumption in this instance
of an unwarranted premise compels the division of the
question into its component parts, so that it will read:
“Will not there be a vast horde of non-productive
workers in the Co-operative Commonwealth?’
“If there will be such, who will support that vast
horde, if each worker should receive the full product of
his toil?’
Before tackling the two propositions, a definition of
terms becomes imperative.
28
.
What is “productive,” and what “non-productive,”

and what “unproductive” work?
Upon this subject there is a vast amount of confusion
of thought. It will be necessary to dispel two mani-
festations of the confusion.
Take the following chain of closely connected links
of work:-
The work of the miner, who mines the coal ;
The work of the carter, who carts the coal from the
mouth of the mine to the station ;
The work of the railroaders, who convey the coal to
the centers of population;
The work of the servant, who carries the coal from
the cellar to its last destination where it is finally con-
sumed.
There are many other links of work necessary for
the continuity of the chain, some subsidiary, others lead-
ing. The few that are mentioned will suffice to illustrate
the point.
Of course, the work of the miner will be readily and
unanimously accepted as “productive.” Not so with the
work at the other links.
Discriminate analysis, however, establishes that, ap-
pearances notwithstanding, every single link of the chain
belongs in the ,category of “productive” work.
The coal is of no use at the mouth of the mine. Its
use-vaIue comes into play only on the spot of consump-
tion-the furnace, the cooking, or the heating stove.
Seeing that only then is the coal useful, every link of
work, necessary for the realization of the coal’s use-
value, is “productive” work.
This economic fact being established, the numerous

other links of work, without the performance of which
the use-value of the coal could not conduce to physical
wellbeing, will readily occur to the mind, without need
of their enumeration. The work done at each of these
links-whether it be “manual” or “clerical,” directly or
indirectly productive,-is “productive” work.
But these are not yet facts enough from which to
deduct the definition of “productive,” and less so of
“non-productive” and of “unproductive” work. In order
to marshal these further facts, the second manifestation
of the confusion of thought regarding “productive,”
“non-productive” and “unproductive” work must also be
dispelled.
The impression is quite common that “productive”
work is any work that brings into existence a material
object which did not exist before. In common parlance
the impression may pass. In social science it may not.
The work that brings into existence, for instance, a
Yale lock to block burglars, or a blackjack for the foot-
pad’s use, or flaming advertising placards, or a Krupp
cannon ,-all these species of work are, in a sense, “pro-
ductive” ; and he, whose mind has been sufficiently
clarified to realize that all the several links of work
needed for the fruition of the coal’s use-value also come
under the category of “productive” work, might by par-
ity of reasoning conclude that all the several links of
work, needed for the realization of the use-value of the
Yale lock, the blackjack, the flaming advertising plac-
ards, and the Krupp cannon, are likewise “productive.‘*
This is an error in social science.
The consideration of Yale locks, blackjacks, flaming

advertising placards, Krupp’s cannon, and of all other
products of kindred nature, together with the several
links of work that are necessary for the realization of
their use-values, belong for treatment under Question
No. XI. Suffice it here to distinguish that no such work
can be dignified with the appellation of productive, be-
cause all such work is either harmful to society, or is
rendered needful by harmful social conditions, which,
once removed, would render the product superfluous, and
relegate it to museums, alongside of the thumb-screw
and the rack of still darker ages. Such work is “unpro-
ductive.”
We now have the requisite facts from which to de-
duce the definition of “productive” and of “unproduc-
tive” work.
“F’roductive” work is that effort of the human brain
and brawn from which, directly or indirectly, flow ma-
terial objects that are conducive to physical wellbeing,
and the welfare of society.
“Unproductive” work is the exact opposite-the ma-
terial objects that it directly or indirectly brings into
existence are a waste, and wasteful of human energy.
Finally, there is “non-productive” work to describe
and define.
A few simple illustrations will serve.
The school teacher works; so does the detective; so
does the clergyman ; so does the soldier; SO does the
lighthouse keeper ; SO does the lawyer ;-and so on
through a long list.
While aI1 of these personages work, the work that
they perform has only one feature in common, to wit,
their work is productive of no material object, good, bad,
or indifferent. Beyond that common point, the different
kinds of work that these personages perform differ
widely.
They differ, first, in that they partake of the qualities.
that distinguish “productive” from “unproductive” that
is, -useful from harmful work:-the teacher and the
clergyman and the lighthouse keeper perform work that
is useful ; on the contrary, the detective, the soldier and
the lawyer perform work that is harmful, or that harm--
fdl social conditions render necessary.
The work of these personages differs, secondly, in
that the work of those who perform useful work differ-
entiates between work that is social and work that is
not :-the teacher and the lighthouse keeper perform
work that is social, the test whereof is that, however
remotely, they do co-operate in the collective work of
society: services that, by being specialized, enable the
directly and the indirectly “productive” workers to
bestow their undivided time upon their work; on the
contrary, the clergyman performs work that is non-
social, the test of which is that it in no wise co-operates
in the collective work of society: such services minister
to exclusive needs. in the instance of the clergyman’s
work, the person who temperamentally is incapable of
grasping the philosophy of Matthew VI. 6.-“But thou
when thou prayest, enter into thy closet and when thou
hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret ;
and thy Father which is in secret, shall reward thee
openly”- that person will need an intermediary between
himself and his Creator; others, and that the majority
of the population of this country, do not.
Accordingly, work, that is neither directly nor in-
directly productive of material objects, yet is useful, is
“non-productive.” Non-productive work that is not use-
ful falls, broadly, under the category of “unproductive”
work.
Thus work is either “productive,“- or it is “non-pro-
ductive,” or it is “unproductive,” the workers in the last
of which category are the equivalent of the French “use-
less mouths” -mouths that must be fed without their
returning any service.
Whether the term “non-productive” workers, as used
in the present question, actually means what the term
stands for; or whether it is used in a special and unde-
fined sense, as might seem from the context of Question
X., ,in which the terms recurs; or whether it is used in
the sense of “indirectly productive workers”; or whether
it stands for “unproductive workers”; we are unable to
determine. The general looseness of the “Visitor’sJ’
terminology justifies the belief that the ‘Visitor” does
not itself know.
However that may be, the expression “hordes of non-
productive workers” in connection with the Co-operative
Commonwealth is a contradiction in terms.
The opportunity for work, together with the certain-
ty of the worker’s enjoying the full fruit of his toil, that
the Cooperative Commonwealth guarantees to all;
man’s physical need of exercise, together with the fact
that, in point of hours and of conditions of work, work
will cease to be a curse and become pleasurable exercise;
.
the further fact that production-once emancipated from

the trammels of being conducted for sale, and having
become for use ,-will yield an abundance for ah, as wiI1
appear in the course of the answers to subsequent ques-
tions *,-these are circumstances and economic facts that
inevitably will swell the ranks of the “productive”
workers ; reduce to a minimum the ranks of the exclu-
sively “non-productive” workers ; knock the bottom from
under the ranks of the “unproductive” workers ; and
empty the “reserve army of the unemployed,” workers
who are ready, but are not allowed the opportunity to
work, that cruelest of the essential conditions for the
capitafist regimen.
Accordingly, and now turning directly to the ques-
tion under consideration :-
As to whether there will be a vast horde of non-
productive workers in the Co-operative Commonwealth!
-if by “non-productive workers” is mistakenly meanti
“indirectly productive” workers: Yes, the number will
be vast; if by the term is meant what the term actually
means : No, the number will be reduced ; if by the term
is mistakenly meant “unproductive” workers: No, the
number will vanish like disease from a healed body.
As to who will support that vast horde?-if the “vast
horde” is supposed to consist of “unproductive” workers,
there will be none such to support; if the “vast horde”
is supposed to consist of “non-productive” or of “indi-
rectly productive” workers, they will support them- (
selves, as they do now, with the difference that, whereas
now they support themselves with a pittance of the fruit
of their work, the bulk of the fruit of their work being
FIFTEEN QUESTIONS 3.5
now plundered from them by the Capitalist Class under
the title of “profits,” in the Co-operative Commonwealth
they will support themselves with the full product of
their toil.
. ,
-. -
_, . .’ ‘.
“! i:”
_- ,-I, ._,
.
. . . .
QUESTICBN NO. VI.
“As the capabilities of the workers will differ under
Socialism, just as they now differ in our Socialistic pub-
lic school system, how and what way will it be possible
to determine the true value of each work&s toil?”
ANSWER:-
With the exception of one sentence, this question is
essentially a repetition of the five previous ones.
The sentence that marks the exception is: “Just as
they [the capabilities of the workers] now differ in our
Socialistic public school system.”
The sentence, really, is foreign to the subject. It is
a digression, intended for a tangle-foot.
Leaving the side-swipe, implied in the digression, for
when we shall come to the questions with which we pro-
pose to reciprocate, be it here observed in passing that
the difference in capabilities, observed “in our Socialistic
public school system,” is a disadvantage, or an advan-
tage, whatever you may please to call it, that the Ultra-
montane parochial school system likewise suffers from,
or is blest with, according as you may prefer. The dif-
ference in capabilities among pupils is a fact, the recog-
nition of which constitutes the single admirable feature
of the pedagogic system of the Jesuit Order. Recognizing
the fact of the difference in capabilities, the pedagogic
system of the Jesuit Order- seeks, at least in theory, to
promote the powers that are latent in the different cap-
abilities.
35
Does the digressive sentence about “our Socialistic
public school system” mean to imply that the difference
in capabilities, observed in our public school system, is
due to our public school system being Socialistic?-If
so, then, the sentence is just so much nonsense.
Or does the digressive sentence mean to indicate that
our public school system, although Socialistic, hence a
sample of what Socialism can do for the human race,
reveals the human race’s uneradicable feature of con-
sisting of units of different capabilities?-If so, then the
sentence is supremely infelicitious, coming from the
quarter that it does. It draws attention to the sociologic
fact that the capitalist regimen safeguards not even the
one good feature of the pedagogic system of the Jesuit
ader, but, on the contrary, rides rough-shod over the
same. Capitalist Society rolls the steam-roller of the
Capitalist Class ruthlessly over the Classes below, crush-
ing them into one amorphous pulp, and annihilating the
differences of individuality that flow from different cap-
abilities.
The tangle-foot of “our Socialistic public school sys-
tem” being laid aside, we may return, un-tangle-footed,
to the question proper.
As already stated, what is left of the question is the
substance of those that preceded it ; hence, is a repetition
of erroneous economic and sociologic views, already dis-
posed of, but now dished up in a new sauce-the sauce
of “value,” the “true value of each worker’s toil.”
Let us submit the new sauce to the alembic of politico-
economic science.
What can be the meaning of “the value of each

worker’s toil”?
The phrase is vaporous. Condensed, the vapor yields
the substantive question, What is the true value of the
product of each worker’s toil?
The question raises the political-economic question
of “value.”
Wealth consists of useful products.
Useful products are the fruit of labor.
The value of a useful product of labor is twofold-it
either is that quality of the product which indicates the
lparticular human want which it satisfies ; or it is that
quality which indicates the quantity of other useful
products which it is exchangeable with. The former
quality determines the product’s “use-value”; the latter
quality determines the product’s “exchange value.”
Wght here we may allow to evaporate from the alem-
bit the “use-value” quality of the worker’s product. Ob-
viously, the question can have no reference to that
“value” of the product of the worker’s toil. The “true
use-value of the product of each worker’s toil” obviously
is as different as the products themselves. The ques-
tion can refer only to the “exchange-value” of the
product.
Seeing that the exchange-value quality of the product
is that quality which indicates the quantity of other use-
ful products which the product is exchangeable with, it
is a conclusion of logic that the exchange-value of a
product must depend upon something that the product
has in common with all others, and the quantity of
which something determines the proportion of the

exchange.
The only thing that all products, whatever their use-
value may be, have in common is human labor-the
labor-power that was expended in their production, that
is crystallized or embodied in them, and that they are
the depositaries of.
But labor is a social magnitude. It always was since
organized society. It becomes more markedly so in the
measure of social progress. The mere fact of a given
product’s embodying a quantity of labor-power equal to
that embodied in another product does not establish the
equilibrium in their exchangeability. The yard of cloth,
produced today with the spindle and loom of three gen-
erations ago, embodies an amount of labor-power that
is enormously larger than that embodied: in a yard of
the same cloth turned out by a modern loom, the North-
rop loom, for instance. The amount of labor-power em-
bodied in the former yard of cloth may be equal to the
amount of labor-power embodied in all the 5,000 yards
turned out tiy the Northrop loom. Will, therefore, the
yard of cloth that was turned out by tbe old-style loom
be exchangeable for the 5,000 yards of the Northrop
loom ? “Far otherwise, and to the contrary.” That
yard of cloth is worth, is exchangeable with, no more
than any one of the 5,000 yards of cloth from the North-
rop loom. The excess of labor-power, expended upon
the yard of cloth turned out by the old appliances, is
labor-power wasted. It is labor-power wasted because
it was socially unnecessary. It was socially unnecessary
because society had evolved the superior appliances and
$0 FIFTEEN QUESTIONS
methods, whereby 5,000 yards of cloth could be turned

out with the same expenditure of labor-power that three
generations ago it took to turn out I yard.
Accordingly, the value (exchange-value) of a useful
product is that quality of the product which is deter-
mined by the amount of labor-power socially necessary
for its production.
Now, then, How and what way will it be possible to
determine the true value of each worker’s toil?
N. B. No. I-“ True value,” means value in exchange ;
value, for short. If that which is called “value” is not
“true,” then it is not “value” at all. “True value” is a
tautology.
N. B. No. 2--(‘ The value of each worker’s toil,” or
of “the product of each worker’s toil,” is a term inappli-
cable to modern methods of production. The term is a
surreptitious injection of the premise that old methods
of individual production still obtain. As elaborated in
the answer to Question No. IV., the wealth of modern
society is produced by co-operative labor. In co-opera-
tive labor no product, and no part of any product, is any
longer traceable to the individual worker. In co-opera-
tive labor the product is the fruit of joint efforts in which
inequalities vanish.
Now, again, IIow and what way will it be possible
to determine the value of each worker’s toil ?
The value of each worker’s toil will be determined
by the value of the product that flows from the workers’
co-operative toil ;
The value of the product of the workers co-operative
toil will depend upon the amount of labor-power socially

necessary for the production of the product.
The amount of labor-power socially necessary for
the production of the product of the workers’ co-opera-
tive toil will depend-as elaborated in the answer to
Question No. III.-upon the amount of tissue-consump-
tion that the production of the product may demand.
The amount of tissue-consumption that the produc-
tion of a product demands from the toiler will be deter-
mined-as also elaborated in the answer to Question
No. III.-by supply and demand.
Whereas, under Capitalism, contrary to the implica-
tion that the posture of the “Visitor’s” questions falsely
suggests, there is, as indicated in the course of previous
answers, no conscientious attempt to ascertain, and no
scrupulous effort to allot to each worker the share of
the product that belongs to him, in the Co-operative
Commonwealth, on the contrary, the laws of scientific
,political economy-operating untrammeled by private
interests and the system of production for sale-guide
the workers themselves to determine “the value of their
toil” _tol society.
.
~UESTIO’N N.O. VII.
“How much more should a college professar receive
than a railway brakeman?”
ANSWE,Ri:-
This question is admirable. It is admirable in that
it presents an excellent illustration of the degree to
which habits of thought can interfere with the under-
standing of the law, or principIe, which lies at the root
-of even the habit of thought itself. The question is,
inferentially, also an illustration of the sorrowful capers
that he cuts who denies the materialist conception of
history, that is, the material foundation and shaper of
principles, or ideals.
Of course, the “Visitor” is of the opinion that “high
remuneration for college professors and low remunera-
tion for railway brakemen” is itself a principle, a law
of nature. But what the “Visitor” believes does not
alter facts.
He who wouId form an estimate of the bourgeois,
from the iniquities and injustices that obtain under
Capitalism, would put the bourgeois down as a fiend
from Hell. Indeed, such is the Anarchist conception.
Violently tho’ our modern bourgeois would bristle at
the charge of their conception of Right and Wrong
being closely akin to, and differing from, the Anarchist
only as the obverse and reverse of the same medal dif-
fer, the charge is sound. The Anarchist starts with a
principle, or ideal, and seeks its realization without re-
gard to the material facts which determine the possi-

bility of the ideal or principle. The modern bourgeois
starts with the habit of a certain standard ; forgets, if
he ever knew, the material facts which. raised the stand-
ard ; and ends by believing that the standard itself is a
principle, or ideal, instead of its being, what it is in
fact, a practice fashioned upon and by the anvil and the
hammer of material necessity. The Anarch would, for
instance, start with the principle that the remuneration.
of the college professor and the railway brakeman
should be the same, without stopping to consider
whether the material social conditions will allow the
realization of the principle, or ideal; the bourgeois, as
we notice, starts with the idea that the present crass
‘difference between the remuneration of college profes-
sors and railway brakemen is a fundamental principle,
or standard, without any inkling of the material facts
that pounded the practice into the existing standard.
Drawmg from the psychologic facts thrown up by
history’ a conclusion exactly the opposite from that
drawn by those who impute constitutional, God-or-
‘dained, depravity to man, the Socialist concludes with
the Confucian sage that “as water naturally will run
down, but can be forced to flow up by artificial means,
man naturally aspires upward and nobly, but can be
forced by artificial means downward and ignobly.” The
bourgeois is no exception, much tho’ the imputing to
him of the virtue may surprise him.
It is ignoble to remunerate a human being, whose
work is necessary to society, whose necessary work,
moreover, is perilous, less bountifully than another
44’ FIFTEEN QUESTIONS
human being, whose work, however useful to society,
is beset with no danger to life or limb. How, then,
comes it that the reverse of the noble principle obtains
in bourgeois society ? Inquiry into the material founda-
tion of practice, and the shaper of principle, or ideal,
into practice, answers the question; and the issue being
.
grounded upon, hearkens back to, a vital page in Social
Science.
That page will be found condensed in the folIowing
passages from our address on “Woman Suffrage,” de-
livered at Cooper Union on May 8, Igog, under the aus-
pices of the Socialist Women of Greater New York:
“Given a society of, say, one hundred persons, in
which, work as they may, all they can produce is one
dollar’s worth apiece, while five dollars’ worth of wealth
is the minimum each would require for comfort-given
such a society, then its people are upon a level with
brute creation; compelled to devote their whole exist-
ence to the supplying of their animal needs; ever on
the brink of want; hence, dogged by the worst, the
most demoralizing of all specters-the specter of want;
and, of course, deprived of leisure-that boon without
which no room is left for mental and spiritual expan-
sion. In such a society there would be equality, but the
equality would be that of pauperism, wtth all the ills
that that implies. This is no imaginary prcture. It was
the actual condition of our savage ancestors-it is the
condition that the ripening of society into classes, with
the consequence of the Class Struggle, had the instinct-
ive purpose to pull us out oif.
“Of course, there was no ‘town meeting’ called to
consider the subject as a s#pecial order of business; there

was no motion made, seconded, debated, and carried.
‘The race marches obedient to certain laws ; the more
backward it is the less of a hand does itself take in the
application of these laws. Qarly man marched uncon-
sciously in unconscious obedience to the laws that un-
derlie his progress, much as a river flows to its destiny.
Only when far advanced, with a fund of past experience
that gives him prescience, does man take evolution by
the hand, so to speak, and perform an active part in the
process.
“Early society, accordingly, faced unconsciously the
alternative
“either, equality-and then remain rooted in brutish
and brutifying poverty ;
“or, pull out of the rut-at the price of equality.
“Unconsciously, instinctively, society took the latter
a!ternative, instinctively, unconsciously, striking the
route of the valley of the Class Struggle.
“It is a plain arithmetical proposition that, given a
social stage where the one hundred persons composing
it, work as they may, can produce only one dollar’s
worth.of wealth on an average, five dollars’ worth being
the minimum for comfort-it is a plain arithmetical
proposition that under such material conditions, if only
as few as five members of the community secure to
‘themselves the amount of wealth necessary for freedom
from toil, with the resultant freedom from want and the
fear of want, and the leisure required for mental and
,spiritual expansion- it is a plain arithmetical propor’-
tion that the consequence must be intensified evi! cc:!-
#5 FIFTEEN QUESTIONS
ditions for the large majority. The Ninety-five will
then have to feed the Five. Each of the Ninety-five
being unable under the then conditions to produce more
than one dollar’s worth of wealth, it follows that out of
the ninety-five dollars’ worth producible by them will
have to come the twenty-five needed by the Five.
Thenceforth the Ninety-five can not even enjoy the pit-
tance of their own individual one dollar’s worth of the
fruit of their toil. Thenceforth their share would be
seventy dollars’ worth of wealth-less than their pro-
duct. In short, slavery arises.”
No more than slavery-whether in the form of
“chattel-slavery,” or in the form of “wage-slavery”-is
a device of hell-hounds, is the hell-houndish present
difference in the economic treatment bestowed upon
tollege professors and the economic treatment inflicted
upon railway brakemen a device of Satan. Society’s
economic, material necessity dictated originally the lat-
ter as it dictated the former. Material possibilities ren-
dered impossible material wellbeing for all, and curbed
the lofty sense of justice.
The bourgeois mental poise, which transpires from
the sneer that peeps through a question that counter-
poises the college professor with the railway brakeman,
is a close kin with the Communist-Anarch’s mental
poise of ethereal justice, which transpires from the Com-
munist-Anarch’s motto : “To each according to his
needs.”
To the Communist-Anarch the Socialist answers:
“Your ideal is lofty. It is lofty to desire to help the
less fortunate. That is not open to dispute. But lofti-
ness of ideal is not, socially, the determining factor in
‘its favor. The determining factor is the material pos-
sibility to reach the ideal. The father who has four
children, three strong and robust, one not so, would be
only too anxious to bestow upon his less favored off-
spring the additional support that its greater needs call
for. And he will do so-provided he is materially able
to. If, however, he has not enough even for the mini-
mum support of his stronger children, it will be physic-
ally impossible for him to deal with his weaker child
‘according to its needs.’ The father may stretch a point,
or ten points, but reach the requisite, hence, desired.
point he cannot. Not unless the father has enough
wherewith to attend to the minimum required by his
stronger children, and has enough left to see to his
weaker child, will the latter be provided ‘according to
its needs.’ It is the father’s material possibility that
constitutes the determining factor. Consequently, the
course to pursue is not to set up a standard of loftiness
as goal. That standard will rise of itself. It will rise,
as daylight bursts forth with the rising sun, from ma-
terial conditions favoring it. The course to pursue is to
grasp the economic development of society. Can the
economic development of society produce a sufficiency
of wealth to meet the needs of the less favored without
crippling all others, and thereby cripple social progress
itself? If the economic development of society is such
that it cannot-then the motto: ‘To each according to
his needs’ is idle. It is impossible of execution: those
who utter the motto are crying in the wilderness. If,
however, the economic development of society is such
qy . FIFTEEN QUESTIONS
that it can-then the course to pursue is to buckle down

to action, and re-organize society in such manner as to
bring its organization abreast of the lofty standard
which its own material possibilities themselves raise.
The moment, however, this course is pursued in our
generation, that moment the Communist-Anarch’s
standard justly and inevitably droops as obsolete. The
moment the economic development of society is grasped,
the face of the problem suf&rs material change. It is
no longer the case of a father with four children of un-
equal strength, and materially unable to meet even the
minimum requirements of the robuster children; it is
not even the case of a father with material ability to
meet the minimum requirements of his stronger child-
ren, and enough left to satisfy the greater needs of the
less favored; it is found to be the case of a father hold-
ing in his hands the possibility to bestow abundance
upon all. What need, then, of the Communist-Anarch’s
motto : ‘To each according to his needs’? The problem
regarding the less favored is eliminated. Co-operation
upon the gigantic scale, now possible, finds a place for
the ‘less favored,’ as the weak of sight, or otherwise
unfit for military duty in the field, find a place in other
branches of the German army. The actual cripples,
where cripples there be, present no social problem. Then
up rises the Socialist motto: ‘To each according to
his needs.’ ‘*
And, turning to the bourgeois who sneeringly con
trasts the railway brakeman with the college professor,
the Socialist makes answer:
“YOU slander the humanity within you. B:ut you
know not what you do. You are the victim of your
class habits of thought, strengthened by the ignorance
that your class interests breed. What you hold to be
:just, so just that you indulge in sneers, is not just at
all. It is an evil consequent upon the race’s early eco-
nomic weakness, which then rendered the injustice im-
perative. The laborer is worthy of his hire. He who
co-operates towards ultimate results is essential to the
result. As such he is entitled to an equal share in the
result, even leaving out of consideration the peril that
attaches to his function in the co-operative chain. The
economic impotence of the race in its infancy, coupled
with the sociologic law that drove the race to aim at
economic potency, obscured the principle of justice. But
we live at a stage when the race’s one-time economic
impotence has grown to giant potency; the sociologic
law that served as scaffolding to reach the present stage
is sociologically out of date. The justification, or even
the extenuation, of social injustice lies behind us. The
material possibilities of today plant the railway brake-
man a peer of the college professor in the co-operative
work of society. Man, turn to history. Read it with
discretion and discrimination, It bristles with evidence
of the compelling force of material necessity. In the
thirty-third edition of his work, ‘Woman Under Social-
ism,’ August Bebel sketches the devastated condition
of Germany after the religious war of Thirty Years-
whole territories and provinces lying waste; hundreds
of cities, thousands of villages partially, or wholly,
burnt down; the population sunk to a third, a fourth, a
fifth, even to an eighth and tenth part; the men carried
FIFTEEN QUESTIONS
off, and of women there b&g an excess ;-whereupon

the physical necessity arising of providing the de-
populated cities and villages as quickly as possible with
an increased number of people, the drastic measure was
resorted to of returning to polygamy. In proof of which
statement Bebel cites the resolution-adopted only two
years after the close of the war, on February 14, 1650,
by the Congress of Franconia, convened at Nuremberg,
in the Catholic Kingdom of Bavaria,-providing that
‘every male shall be allowed to marry two wives,’ and
even ordering that ‘priests and curates, if not or-
dained, and the canons of religious establishments, shall
marry.’ Soon as, or in the measure that, the material
necessity ceased, the polygamous laws were suspended,
and the Church’s relaxed political-disciplinary institu-
tion of celibacy regained its pristine rigidity. Inversely,
no longer compelled by economic stress to trample
upon his fellow co-operator, his economic needs being
easily, comfortably, healthily and abundantly suppliable,
the college professor in the Co-operative Common-
wealth will spurn as idiotic-the unjust craving Could
then be attributable only to mental weakness-wou!d
spurn as idiotic the base thought of wanting his deserts
‘weighed,’ let alone demanding a larger share of the
jointly produced hoard than the already bountiful one
which will be his, along with his fellow co-operators’ in
all other social functions. With pity for your bourgeois
mental and moral deformity, the Socialist organizes your
victims, and endeavors to redeem your fellows, to the
end of reorganizing society abreast of its material pos-
sibilities,”
Now, then, how much more should the college pro-
fessor receive than a railway brakeman?
Grounded upon the material possibilities of modern
society, together with the principles elaborated in the
answers to Questions No. I., II., III., IV., and V., the
income of a college professor in the Co-operative -Con+
monwealth will normally be no more and no less than
that of a railway brakeman. If any difference there
should be, the difference will arise from the socially
personal misconduct of either,
QUESTIO’N NO!. VIII.
“If we are to reduce the working time to four hours
per day under Socialism, as Socialists assert, will it not
require the services of two million more railway work-
ers $0 perform the same service that the I,~OO,OOO rail-
waymen now perform? And will not this cost the na-
tion over $I,OOO,OOO annually more than the present
cost for our transportation?”
ANSWER :-
The next question-Question No. IX.-is so much
of a piece with this one, being, in fact, but the extension
to all other industries of the misconceptions with regard
to the relation between hours of work and number of
employes, and of the confusion of thought with regard
to the cost of production, both of which underlie this
question, that we shall omit from this answer, reserv-
ing for the next, the consideration of the confusion of
thought regarding cost of production, and shall o,mit
from the next, and consider in this answer, the miscon-
ceptions regarding the relation between hours of work
and number of employes.
In pursuing this consideration we shall not allow
ourselves to be drawn aside by matter of such secondary
importance as the exact number of hours which Social-
ists are alleged to assert that the working time will be
reduced to ; or the actual present figures of the em-
ployes engaged in the railway, or any other industry;
nor yet, when we come to the matter of cost of pro-
52
duction, any precise attempted estimate of what the
cost will amount to.
The gist of the question is this:
Socialists maintain that the existing hours of work
are inhuman, and unnecessarily long; hence, the So-
cialist program must contemplate a greatly reduced
,working time. Will not a greatly reduced working time
entail a proportional increase in the number of workers,
and also a proportional increase in the cost of pro--
duction?
In the first place, the belief, that decreased hours
must necessarily be followed by an increased number of
employes, proceeds from the tacitly accepted premise
that the full number of present employes is needed for
conducting the industries. The premise is false.
-Not in the railway or transportation industry only,
in all other well developed industries there is a consider--
able number of employes, whose status is that of “un-
productive” workers, or “useless mouths,” as defined in
the answer to Question V. The “spotters,” who are
permanently employed along the lines, the “watchers,”
who are perpetually kept in the oflices or on the floors,
to keep alive, if necessary, to throw “the fear of the
Lord” into the hearts of employes and of customers,
are a type of this order of “workers,” or employes ;-
and their number is not ‘la few.”
-Furthermore, even in industries such as the trans-
portation industry, that have attained a high grade of
centralization and even trustification, much more SO with
industries that have not yet reached such a stage, cm-
petition is still alive. It is languid and sporadic among
the more concentrated ones ;. it is brisker in those that

are less concentrated; and it is intense in- those indus-
tries, the nature of which is less aidful to the concen-
trating process. Competition there still is in all. The
consequence is a veritable horde, a vast horde of em-
ployes, who, tho’ “indirectly productive,” as the term is
technically defined also in the answer to Question No.
V., fill a status that is hard to distinguish from that of
the “unproductive” workers. Tho’ not engaged in OCCU-
pations that are actualiy harmful, their activities are
due to harmful social conditions. To this category of
workers belong, for instance, the clerks, bookkeepers,
cashiers, accountants, salesmen and saleswomen, floor-
walkers, “pages,” liveried and unliveried, inspectors,
superintendents, along with their numerous assistants
in competing stores, factories and mills, on railroad,
telephone and telegraph lines. TO this category of
workers belong also the drivers, together with their
long train of human appendages, of competing deliveries
who cross one another in and from all directions. Bone
of the bone and flesh of the flesh of this category of
workers are the swarms of drummers, traveling agents
and canvassers for rival concerns. Etc.; etc.; etc.; etc.
.The output of wealth that engages the energres of
the above-described two categories of workers-the
downright “unproductive” and the semi-“unproductive,”
in so far as the number of these is necessarily greatly
in excess of the number that concentrated production
would require ,-needs not for its production the myriad
human energies that its production now consumes.
Concentration and properly organized industry could,
even under the capitalist regimen, and without
the reduction of the hours of work, yield
as much without the employment of the present.
swarm of, “useless mouths.” Consequently, the hours
of work, needed for the present output, could be greatly
reduced without the reduction compelling the employ-
ment of more workers than the total now employed under
Capitalism. The at present “useless mouths” could be
absorbed by the reduced hours. The fact of a vast
horde of employes whose “work” could be well missed,
but whom still unripe Capitalism needs temporarily, is
an effective denial of the supposedly logical conclusion
that decreased hours must necessarily be followed by an
increased number of employes.
In the second place, the belief, that decreased hours
must necessarily be followed by an increased number
of employes, proceeds from a disregard of the amp1.e
teachings of experience as to what improved mechan-
&al appliances and methods can do with regard to the
number of employes previously needed.
-The history of the Eight-Hour Movement in this
country illumines the subject with respect to improved
mechanical appliances.
Two were the arguments which the Movement ad-
vanced in its behalf.
The first argument was that a reduction of hours
would be beneficent to the workers. It would afford
them greater leisure to recuperate, and for mental ex-
pansion. This argument, although the reality made
serious breaches into it,-the “International Typo-
graphical Journal,“ for instance, stated that the mor-
taiity in its trade had increased appallingly coincident

with the intensified labor demanded by the type-setting
machine, despite the S-hour day,-does not directly con-
cern the subject in hand, and may be passed.
The second argument was that reduced hours would
absorb the unemployed. The argument was presented
in mathematical form, this wise:
If an employer employs ~,ocm men at IO hours a day,
it means that he needs IO,OCO hours of work. If, then,
he can work his men only 8 hours, he could get only
8,000 hours out of them, that is, 2,000 hours less than
he needs. Seeing he needs IO,OOO hours, he will have to
employ 250 more men ; and thus the evil of out-of-work
is relieved.
The practical result was not merely a severe breach
into the argument: it smashed the argument to pieces.
The smashing was done by improved mechanical ap-
pliances and improved methods.
To present the result also in mathematical form, im-
proved mechanical appliances enabled the employer of
1,000 men, at IO hours a day, to get out of them, under
the g-hour day, the equivalent of, not IO,OOO hours, but
of I@a3. The consequence was that, instead of need-
ing more men to make up for the deficiency that sup-
posedly was to arise, the employer could actually dis-
charge 333 of his men and yet turn out as much product
as before; or, if willing to turn out the equivalent of
I~,OOO hours, the improved mechanical appliances en-
abled him to do so with the same I,OCO of before, at 8
hours a day. In the latter event the army of the unem-
ployed was relieved by not one man ; in the former, the
army of the unemployed was increased by 333 fresh
recruits. The total number of employes has increased
since the g-hour day, but not through it. It increased
through the expansion of the country.
-With regard to improved methods of production,
these repeated and aggravated the result brought about
by improved mechanical appliances. Keenly cutting
into profits through its wastefulness, the competitive
warfare between capitalists is rendered still more dis-
astrous through the g-hour day. The consequence is an
acceleration of the tendency of combination, with the
further consequence of “economies.” O,ne of these
“economies” consists in a reduced pay-roll, not through
lower wages, but through fewer employes: the clerical
force of one office can run the business of two, often
without any, generally with very little increase in the
former personnel, while the “dismantled” plants, as the
expressive term runs, loudly tell of directly productive
workers set afloat-all of these incidents being incident
to the reduction of hours.
Accordingly, reduced hours of work is not synonym-
ous with an increased number of employes. While de-
creased hours may require an increase of workers, the
reverse is as likely a phenomenon.
The facts herein exposed have direct bearing upon
“cost” in the Co-operative Commonwealth-the subject
that will be considered under the next question,
QUESTION NO. IX.
“And if we reduce the working time in all other in-
dustries to a four-hour basis will it not cost twice as
much to produce everything?”
ANSWER :-
It is psychologically impossible for the bourgeois to
-think of “increased cost” without a shiver. The term
covers him with goose flesh. The reason therefor will
transpire from a simple example.
Take manufacturer John Jones, for instance, who
employs the 1,000 men in the illustration given in the
answer to the preceding question, works them IO
hours a day, pays them an annual wage of $400 apiece,
and himself pockets $4oo,ooo profits. Assuming the
hours of work to be reduced to 8, and leaving out of
consideration, for the present, the capacity of improved
machinery to counteract the reduction of hours, as ex-
plained in the previous answer, John Jones will then
have to employ 250 more men ; his pay-roll will rise by
$~oo,coo; and his profits will sink to $3oo,oo0. The lower
the hours are reduced, all the higher will his pay-roll
rise, and all the lower will his profits sink. If the hours
are reduced to 5, other things remaining unchanged, the
pay-roll will absorb all the profits, and- our Mr. Jones
would be put out of business. Taking, now, into con-
sideration the capabilities of improved machinery, and
.assuming that the same will enable the identical 1,000
men to produce in an g-hour day the equivalent of
15,ooo hours with inferior mechanical appliances, the
manufacturer’s condition would have been improved.
With a pay-roll no higher than before, his profits will
have risen 50 per cent. They will be $6oo,ooo. But the
capacity of improved machinery ‘to make up and more
for displaced hours has its limits. If hours are further
reduced from 8 to 4, other things remaining equal, the
manufacturer will have to employ twice as many men,
2,oco; his pay-roll would be raised to $Soo,ooo; and his
profits reduced to one-third, from $6oo,ooo to $~OO,OOO.
Nor yet is this all.
Our manufacturer John Jones does not thrive merely
from the existence of the proletariat whom he regularly
exploits, and with whom the necessity to live is the
guarantee of his reign. The prosperity of his reign
hinges upon the existence of an even more wretched
layer of the proletariat. The figures presented by the
“Visitor,)f and showing that the vacancies created by
reduced hours would be filled by additional workers,
implies the existence of a proletariat sufficient in num-
bers and ready to fill the vacancies. The implication is
true; and the truth thereof is a crack inadvertently dealt
by the “Visitor” itself over the head of the saintly
capitalist regimen. The truthful implication is the sub-
stantiation of one of the worst counts in the Socialist
indictment against Capitalism. That count is what
Socialism designates as the “Reserve Army of the Un-
employed.” As Marx put it-Capitalism cannot start
without there is a mass of humanity unable to live
without it sells itself into wage-slavery; and it can not
expand without there is a superabundance of these, a
superabundance large enough to keep wages down, and
large enough, besides and above all, to keep on hand a
reserve army of potential exploitees upon whom to
.draw whenever a favorable fluctuation of trade demands
an increased output. In other words, Capitalism is
cornerstoned upon continuous starvation wages for its
continuous exploitees, and periodically actual starvation
for its periodical exploitees, when not needed. Accord-
ingly, the systematic lomwering of hours would further-
more tend to reduce and eventually wipe out the Reserve
Army of the Unemployed, and thereby to deprive Master
John Jones of both the lever whereby to keep wages
down, and the ready-at-hand human material upon
which to draw periodically at periodically recurring
seasons of industrial briskness.
Such stands the case under Capitalism. Reduced
hours spell, in the end, heavily reduced profits, if not
bankruptcy.
Why?
Because the profits of the employer represent the
surplus wealth produced by the employes; in other
words, profits represent the amount of wealth that the
employes yield over and above their wages; in still
other words, profits are plunder, with the workers as
the plundered.
O’f course, Capitalism denies the economic estimate.
In order to substantiate the denial, Capitalism has in-
vented a variety of theories-the theory of profits being
“wages of abstinence,” despite the glaring fact that
J‘abstinence” is the virtue most conspicuous by its ab-
sense in the Capitalist Class; the theory of profits being
“‘wages of superintendence,” despite the fact that from
top to bottom production is in the hands of, and is car-
ried on by the Working Class; the theory of profits
being “remuneration for risk,” despite the deserved
ridicule that Ruskin heaped upon the theory, and the
tragic fact that the risk of false imprisonment, of limb,
of life, even of wages themselves, is the “portion of
Labor” ; the theory of profits being “wages of manage-
ment,” despite the fact, abundantly uncovered by Con-
gressional and other investigations, that all that the
members of the Capitalist Class “manage” is conspira-
cies how to over-reach one another, and how to circum-
vent and cheat the law.* But the denial of the facts
concerning profits, and the fables invented to give a
color to the denial, affect the truth, and the Socialist
Movement planted upon the truth, no more than the
sacerdotal denials, along with the myths in support of
the denials, of Columbus’s astronomic and geographic
principles, succeeded in preventing Coltimbus’s triumph.
*In the course of an address, delivered by Ft. W. Babson, the

noted statistician, to the members of the EXiciency Society in con-
ference at the Biltmore Hotel, New York, on January 26, 1914, the
speaker said:
%filciency experts should devote more time to developing
the efficiency of the heads of great corporations, and let the em-
pioyes rest once in a while.
“If an efficiency engineer is honest, he will recommend in
most cases the firing of the president, the employment of a
new treasurer, and the choosing of a new board of directors.
“I believe that the,greatest ineillciency is in’ the boards of di-
rectors of our various corporations. Most of these men, are, in-
different and attend meetings only for their fees. if they attend
at all. Moreover, many of them hold their positions simply be-
cause of inherited property and are utterly unfitted for their
work.*
Just because of the economic facts, which cause the
“cost” involved in reduced hours under Capitalism to
spell reduced profits and even bankruptcy, in the Co-
operative Commonwealth, on the contrary, the argu-
ment of “cost” is downright idiotic-as idiotic as the
complaint of the murderer in the story that if the rope
which was tightening around his neck tightened much
more it would choke him to death.
The estimate of John Stuart Mill, with the Marxian
amendment, is to the effect that it is doubtful whether
improved mechanical appliances had reduced the hours
of work of a single workingman. Work has remained in-
tense; the benefit of mechanical improvements has ac-
crued to the Capitalist Class in the shape of ever huger
profits-how huge, the frequent “melons” that corpora-
tion directorates cut for stockholders serve to give an
inkling of. The plea against reduced hours, upon the
strength of “cost,” is a plea for the capitalist only. A
systematic reduction of hours, in even step and measure
with improved machinery and methods, would cost the
capitalist his profits, under whatever name he makes
them, whether under the name of rent, or under the
name of interest, or under the name of dividends, or
what not. Hence the plea is one that presupposes
capitalist conditions. Where no capitalists are, neither
can there be any “costs” incurred by shorter hours.
Finally, and now taking both the preceding, Ques-
tion No. VIII., and the present, Question No. IX., by
the throat-the only reduction of hours that will be
“costly” to the Nation would be a reduction in excess
of what improved and improving machinery and meth-
oas would warrant. Only that reduction would, or
could, be “costly,” because it would lower the store of
wealth. The reductions made in even measure with
improved mechanical appliances and methods would
transfer the “melons,” now cut for capitalists, to those
who produced them, the usefully engaged population of
the land,-and a d-hour day, as will appear more in de-
tail when Question No. XI. will be considered, will fur-
nish 3 veritable garden of “melons.”
QUESTION NO. X.
“Then how about the non-productive workers-i. e.,
the strictly government officials? Will it not require
the service of a million boards of arbitration and two or
three million bookkeepers to keep track of the hours,
income, skill, etc., etc., of each worker in order to deter-
mine whether the Socialist nation is robbing somebody
or paying too much to somebody? And who but the
workers, the real producers, will pay all these bills?”
ANSWEiR:-
This question is a “bull.” Not that the previous ones,
or the ones to follow, are free of “bull” earmarks. This
one, however, is pronouncedly so. It is all “bull.”
Passing by the recurrence of the misuse of the term
“non-productive workers,” a term that was defined and
rectified in the answer to Question No. V.; passing by
the suggestion regarding the “two or three million book-
keepers,” etc., a suggestion that has been parried and
met in the answers to Questions VIII. and IX.; further-
more, passing by the suspicion regarding “the Socialist
nation robbing somebody,” a suspicion that the an-
swers to most of the previous questions have disposed
of by anticipation; finally, passing by the affectation of
zeal to protect the workers from paying swollen bills,
an affectation from under which the answers to several
of the questions preceding this one knocked the bottom ;
-passing by, for the present all these side issues, al-
ready considered in some way or other, what there is
64
left of this Qluestion NO. X., is the concept, silently as-
serted, and taken for granted, that the Socialist govern-
ment is bourgeois government run by Socialists. The
concept transpires from the sentence “the strictly gov-
ernment officials.” The concept is radically wrong. It
brings up the question of the “Political State” and the
“Industrial Republic,” or of political and industrial
government.
Whether Government be protectionist or free trade,
absolute or constitutionally monarchic, theocratic and
feudally oligarchic or bourgeois republican,-however
marked the differences may be in the governmental
principles of these various regimens, all have one char-
acteristic in common: while they are all based upon
some method of production, production is independent
of them. That fact marks them all members of the same
governmental family, the Political State,-a govern-
mental system that is no part of, takes no hand in, and
has other functions than the functions of produrtion.
To the bourgeois, his professors, his politicians, his
press and his pulpiteers, the governmentarl system of
the Political State always was. The notion is one of
the many that bourgeois and Anarchists share in com-
mon, proceed from as a premise, and bank upon as a
foundation, the bourgeois, however, arriving at the con-
clusion that such governmental system is ideally good
and for all time, the Anarchist that it, hence, all govern-
ment, is wrong, bad, and utterly rejectable. Fact is, the
governmental system of the Political State-political
government, for short, -is of comparatively recent date
in the annals of the human race.
c
What the “State,” or the “Political State,” is and
what the development of “Government” has been, con-
stitute a broad subject in social science. The subject is
essential to the appreciation of the “bull” which the
question under consideration perpetrates, hence, also
to the grasping of the answer. We shall give the gist
of the subject by quoting a passage from our address,
“Reform or Revolution,” delivered under the auspices
of the People’s Union, at Well’s Memorial Hall, Boston;
Mass., January 26, I&$:
“How many of you have not seen upon the shelves
of our 1Xraries books that treat upon the ‘History of
the State’; upon the ‘Limitations of the State’; upon
‘What the State Should Do and What It Should Not
Do’; upon ‘Legitimate Functions of the State,’ and SO
on into infinity ? Nevertheless, there is not one among
all of these, the products, as they all are, of the vulgar
and superficial character of capitalist thought, that5
fathoms the question, or actually defines the ‘State.
Not until we reach the great works of the American
Morgan, of Marx and Engels, and of other Socialist
philosophers, is the matter handled with that scientific
lucidity that proceeds from the facts, leads to sound con-
clusions, and breaks the way to practical work. Not
until you know and understand the history of the ‘State’
and of ‘Government’ will you understand one of the
cardinal principles upon which Socialist organization
rests, and will you be in a condition to organize success-
fully.
“We are told that ‘Government’ has always been as
it is to-day, and always will be. This is the first funda-
FIFTEEN QUESTIONSv 67
mental error of what Karl Marx justly calls capitalistic
vulgarity of thought.
“When man started on his career, after having got
beyond the state of the savage, he realized that co-opera-
tion was a necessity to him. He understood that to-
gether with others he could face his enemies in a better
way than alone; he could hunt, fish, fight more success-
fully. Following the instructions of the great writer
Morgan-the only great and original American writer
upon this.question-we look to the Indian communities,
the Indian settlements, as a type of the social system
that our ancestors, all of them, without exception, went
through at some time.
“The Indian lived in the community condition. The
Indian lived under a system of common property. As
Franklin described it in a sketch of the history and al-
leged sacredness of private property, there was no such:
thing as private property among the Indians. Tfw
co-operated, worked together, and they had a Central
Directing Authority among them. In the Indian com-
munities we find that Central Directing Authority con-
sisting of the ‘Sachems.’ It makes no difference how
that Central Directing Authority was elected: there it
was. But note this: its function was to direct the CO-
operative or collective efforts of the communities, and,
in so doing, it shared actively in the pro’ductive work of
the communities. Without its work, the work of the
communities would not have been ‘done.
“When, in the further development of society, the
tools of production grew atid ‘developed-grew and
developed beyond the point reached by the Indian;
when the art of smelting iron ore was discovered; when
thereby that leading social cataclysm, wrapped in the
mists of ages, yet discernible, took place that rent for-
mer communal society in twain seemingly along the line
of sex, the males being able, the females unable, to
wield the tool of production-then society was cast into
a new mold; the former community, with its democratic
equality of rights and duties, vanishes, and a new social
system turns up, divided into two sections, the one able,
the other unable, to work at production. The line that
separated these two sections, being seemingly at first
the line of sex, could, in the very nature of things, not
yet be sharp or deep. Yet, notwithstanding, in the very
shaping of these two sections--one able, the other un-
able, to feed itself-we have the first premonition of
the classes, of class distinctions, of the division of society
into the independent and the dependent, into master and
slaves, ruler and ruled.
“Simultaneously, with this revolution, we find the
first changes in the nature of the Central Directing Au-
thority, of that body whose original function was to
share in, by directing, production. Just so Soon as
economic equality is destroyed, and the economic classes
crop up in society, the functions of the Central Directing
Authority gradually begin to change, until finally,
when, after a long range of years, moving slowly at
first, and then with the present hurricane velocity under
capitalism proper, the tool has developed further, and
further, and still further, and has reached its present
fabulous perfection and magnitude; when, through its
private ownership the tool has wrought a revolution
within a revolution by dividing society, no longer seem-
ingly along the line of sex, but strictly alo,ng the line of
ownership or non-ownership of the land on and the tool
with which to work; when the privately owned, mam-
moth tool of today has reduced more than fifty-two per
cent. of our population to the state of being utterly un-
able to feed without first selling themselves into wage
slavery, while it, at the same time, saps the ground from
under about thirty-nine per cent. of our people, the
middle class, whose puny tools, small capital, render
them certain victims of competition with the large capi-
talists, and makes them desperate; when the economic
law that asserts itself under the system of private
ownership of the tool has concentrated these private
owners into about eight per cent. of the nation’s inhabit-
ants, has thereby enabled this small capitalist class to
live without toil, and to compel the majority, the class
of the proletariat, to toil without living; when, finally,
it has come to the pass in which our country now finds
itself, that, as was stated in Congress, ninety-four per
cent. of the taxes are spent in “protecting property”-
the property of the trivially small capitalist class-and
not in protecting life; when, in short, the privately
owned tool has wrought this work, and the classes-the
idle rich and the working poor-are in full bloom-then
the Central Directing Authority of old stands trans-
formed; its pristine functions of aiding in, by directing,
production have been supplanted by the functions of
holding down the dependent, the slave, the ruled, i. e.,
the working class, Then, and not before, lo, the State,
the modem State, the capitalist State! Then, lo, the
Government, the modern Government, the capitalist
Government--equipped mainly, if not solely, with the
means of suppression, of oppression, of tyranny!
“In sight of these manifestations of the modern
State, the Anarchist-the rose-water and the dirty-
water variety alike-shouts : ‘Away with all central
directing authority; see what it does; it can only do
mischief; it always did mischief !’ But Socialism is not
Anarchy. Socialism does not, like the chicken in the
fable, just out of the shell, start with the knowledge of
that day. Socialism rejects the premises and the con-
clusions of Anarchy upon the State and upon Govern-
ment. What Socialism says is: ‘Away with the eco-
nomic system that alters the beneficent functions of the
Central Directing Authority from an aid of production
into a means of oppression.’ And it proceeds to shovp
that, when the instruments of production shall be owned,
no longer by the minority, but shall be restored to the
Commonwealth ; that when, as a result of this, no longer
the majority or any portion of the people shall be in
poverty, and classes, class distinctions and class rule
shall, as they necessarily must, have vanished, that then
the Central Directing Authority will lose all its repres-
sive functions, and is bound to reassume the functions
it had in the old communities of our ancestors, become
again a necessary aid, and assist in production.
“The Socialist, in the brilliant simile of Karl Marx,
sees that a lone fiddler in his room needs no director;
he can rap himself to order, with his fiddle to his shoul-
der, and start his dancing tune, and stop whenever he
likes. But just as soon as you have an orchestra, you
--
_-
FIFTEEN QUESTIONS 7%
must also have an orchestra director-a central directing
authority. If you don’t you may have a Salvation Army
pow-wow, you may have a Louisiana negro breakdown;
you may have an orthodox Jewish synagogue, where
every man sings in whatever key he likes, but you won’t
have harmony-impossible.
“It needs this central directing authority of the or-
chestra master to rap all the players to order at a given
moment; to point out when they shall begin; when to
have these play louder, when to have those play softer;
when to put in this instrument, when to silence that;
to regulate the time of all and preserve the accord. The
orchestra director is not an oppressor, nor is his baton
an insignia of tyranny; he is not there to bully any-
body ; he is as necessary or important as any or all of
the members of the orchestra.
“Our system of production is in the nature of an
orchestra. No one man, no one town, no one State, can
be said any longer to be independent of the other; the
whole people of the United States, every individual
therein, is dependent and interdependent upon all the
others. The nature of the machinery of production;
the subdivision of labor, which aids cooperation, and
which co-operation fosters, and which is necessary to
the plentifulness of production that civilization requires,
compel a harmonious working together of all depart-
ments of labor, and thence compel the establishment of
a Central Directing Authority, of an OJrchestral Direc-
tor, so to speak, of the orchestra of the Co-operative
Co,mmonwealth.
“Such is the State or Government that the Socialist
revolution carries in its womb.”
Accordingly, to speak of “strictly government offi-
cials,” in connection with the Co-operative Common-
wealth, is to perpetrate a robustious “bull” sociologic:
-there will be none such in the bourgeois, or moderu
sense of “government.” With the downfall of the Poli-
tical State, or of “political government,” the personnel
of the same vanishes, leaving not a rack behind.
Again, the broad hint at, and even assertion of, a
largely increased number of administrative public offi-
cials in the Co-operative Commonwealth is an equally
robustious “bull,” but a “bull” of a different breed, a
“bull” arithmetic *.-it must take an exceptionally dull
bourgeois to fail to realize, or an exceptionally insolent
“barker” for the bourgeois regimen to realize and yet
deny the fact that the administrative officials whom the
‘Capitalist Class employs in the running of the indus-
tries are virtually public officials, seeing that industry
has become a public function; it takes an additionally
dull bourgeois to fail to realize, or an additionally in-
solent “barker” for the bourgeois regimen, to realize and
yet deny that, as indicated in the answer to Question
Il-o. VIII., vast hordes of these virtually public officials
are “useless mouths” whom the competitive warfare of
Capitalism breeds; it will take a still duller bourgeois
to fail to realize, or a still more insolent “barker” for
the bourgeois regimen to realize and yet deny that the
circumstance of these larger masses of public officials
not being technically public officers only adds to the
evil the brand of “taxation without representation”-
their wages, or salaries, are in the nature of a tax levied

upon the wealth produced by the Working Class, and
yet the Working Class is without representation in the
sanctums where the tax is ordered. Leaving tiside this
last and aggravating feature of the situation, it would
finally, take a sublimely dull bourgeois to fail to realize,
or a sublimely insolent “barker” for the bourgeois
regimen to realize and yet pretend that the number of
these virtually public officials-excessive under compe-
titive Capitalism, and reduced under Capitalism only in
the measure that it clears the field of competition-
would be multiplied in the Co-operative Commonwealth,
where the occasion for such wastefulness of forces can
not be.
So far from the Co-operative Commonwealth multi-
plying and needing a large number of public officials,
the exact opposite is inevitable. On the one hand, the
complete wiping out of the Political State with its
“political government” leaves no place for the mass of
public employes whom “political government” requires,
and of whom, alone, even exclusive of its most typical
branches, the Army and Navy, it is estimated that the
proportion was I to every 1,300 of the population in 1816,
and has since risen so gigantically as now to be I to
every 242 of the population; on the other hand the eli-
mination of the competitive warfare necessarily elimin-
ates a vast number of the virtually public olfficials that
are actually “useless mouths.”
In his epoch-marking work, “cooking Backward,”
Edward Bellamy summed up the situation under Capi-
talism with the terse sentence: “We go to war as an
organized body, and we go to work like a mob.” The
summary at once portrays the situation in the Co-opera-
tive Commonwealth. If war be necessary, due to an
aggression from without, similar to that of the combined
Crowns of continental Europe against the rising
French Republic and which Carlyle characterized as
the combination of Cimerian Darkness, the war methods
of the Co-operative Commonwealth will not put its
groductive methods to shame. The Co-operative Com-
monwealth will not go to work as a mob. Every mem-
ber thereof of “military age,” in the only way that civil-
ized conditions will know, the War against Want, will
be directly or indirectly productive. As to who will
pay the workers, we need but repeat the closing words
of the answer to Question No. IV.:
“They will support [pay] themselves, as they do
now; with the difference that, whereas now they sup-
port themselves with a pittance of the fruit of their
work, the bulk of the fruit of their work being now
plundered from them by the Capitalist Class under the
title of ‘profits,’ in the Co-operative Commonwealth they
will support [pay] themselves with the full product of
j their toil.”
,
QUESTION NO. XI.
“If we are able to produce less than $700 net wealth
per worker per year, as the last census shows, and with
the best machinery and the best organization to aid us,
with an eight hour work day; how are we to produce
two or three thousand dollars per year per worker, as
the Socialists assert, with a four-hour work day and a
great increase in non-productive labor which Socialism
will impose?”
ANSWER:-
The feature of this question is a large number of
assertions of things that are not so.
It is not so that “we are able to produce less than
.$7oo net wealth per worker per year.”
It is not so that “the last Census shows” anything of
the kind.
It is not so that we are aided by “the best machin-
ery.”
It is not so that we are aided with the “best organi-
zation.”
It is not so that Socialists assert that rwe shall pro-
kluce “two or three thousand dollars per year per
worker.”
It is not so that “Socialism will impose” a “great
increase in non-productive labor.”
The key-stone in this arch of Not-Soness is the third
assertion, to the effect that we are aided with the best
75
machinery and organization. We shall first knock out

that.
The empire city of the land offers a spectacle that
is itself a treatise. New Yorkers, upon whom the sight
:dawned gradually, are not generally startled; visitors
Ifrom younger and smaller centers of population are. It
,is the sight of the street cars run by horses, notwith-
standing the tracks are crossed, re-crossed- and criss- _
crossed by numerous electric underground trolleys, and
.that overhead rumble the electric-motored elevated
trains. How comes it that, in these days of electricity
in transportation, the old horse-power still prevails 011
,some lines, and in the leading city of the land, at that?
Capitalist production is production for sale; that is,
,production, not for use, but for profit-profit, of course,
for the capitalist. This is the starting fact of Capital-
ism, and the fact sways and controls every thought, and
move, and fibre of the capitalist.
Profits are that amount of wealth that the capitalist’s
plant, labor included, yields over and above what, in
.slovenly parlance, is called his “cost of production,” or
what, in technical language, is termed the value of the
,material that is consumed in the product, the labor-
power included.
An item in the “cost of production” is the wear and
.tear of the plant in which the capitalist made his invest-
ment. If the capitalist discards an older plant and in-
vests in a better before the first investment has been
exhausted, then he is the loser to the extent of the dif-
lference between the value of the wear and tear that
already has gone into his output, and the value of the
wear and tear that yet remains latent in his investment.
Obviously, it is a matter of keen interest with the cap-
italist to extract the last penng’s worth possible from
his first investment.
The mental process has a number of serious conse-
.quences, most of which have none, or only indirect bear-
ing upon the matter in hand-as, for instance, the cap-
italist’s nerve-racking hurry to get as much wear and
tear as possible out of his plant before improved machin-
‘cry, invested in by his competitors, compel him to drop
his plant before he has drawn out all that he invested
in it, or be smoked out of the competitive field into bank-
ruptcy. A direct bearing upon the subject in hand is
the consequence of the capitalist’s “hanging on” to his
plant so long as possible, whenever he at all can do SO.
The longer he does, before the plant is exhausted, all the
more completely is he re-imbursed for his investment.
This economic-psychologic process is glaringly illus-
,%rated by Ithe still surviving horse-cars-rickety con-
cerns that should have been dumped upon the junk
jheap long ago, and antique nags, whose march to Fresh
Pond, L. I., there to be converted into “guaranteed Bo-
logna sausage,” is being postponed.
These horse-cars give a “tip” of what is happening
#in other quarters of production.
Notwithstanding the nigh to phenomenal newest
machinery that is in operation in many industries, the
inferior machinery which they have displaced has not
Ibeen cast away. Sold cheaply, such inferior appliances
are still in operation, and yield a profit-at the cost of
co
/a FIFTEEN QUESTIONS
the increased output that up-to-date machinery could
turn out.
Furthermore, valuable inventions are locked up in
the safes of our financigrs. These inventions are dreaded.
They are dreaded for two reasons.
One reason has already been indicated. If put into
practice now, the invention would render older machin-
ery obsqlete, and this, being displaced, much of the
original investment would remain unrecovered. The
huge value of, and stili higher prices fetched by modern
machinery, together with the equipment that this de-
mands, renders displacement a matter of serious con-
sideration to the profits-greedy, hence, loss-dreading
capitalist. Though inferior to what could be had, if the
invention were put into operation, the inferior machinery
is preserved-again at the cost of the larger output that
could otherwise be had.
The second reason why these inventions are dreaded
is that they would increase the output to the extent of
lowering the price, and thereby “smashing” profits.
The facts are exactly the opposite of those alleged
in the question. Neither is the best possible machinery
now employed, nor is the best available machinery in
operation to the extent that it should be. The speech de-
livered by the Secretary of Commerce, William COX
Redfield, before the National Association of Employing
Lithographers, in session at Washington, D. C., on May
14, 19-13, and commented upon in The Daily Feople in
an article entitled “Surely No Trust-Buster,” recognized
and condemned the fact of inferior machinery being
<greatly in use. He recognized and condemned the fact
so bluntly that Washington despatches reported the
Secretary’s audience to have been “flabbergasted.”
The key-stone of the arch of Not-Soness being down,
down are, along with it, the other stones of the arch.
We can now inspect the debris collectively and separ-
ately.
Whether the net wealth be $700, or $500, or $1,000
is immaterial. True it is that the wealth actually pro-
duced to-day falls short of the amount required to
afford comfort, let alone abundance to all the workers
,of the land. That is the fact of importance; and the
truth thereof is even more signal if the water, that
capitalist chicanery causes the capitalist to inflate his
wealth with, is wrung out of the Census figures. But
that is one thing, and a very different thing it is to say
that the pittance per worker, actually produced today,
is all that is at all producible, and that the Census proves
the allegation. ‘Q .sn ‘t e “otherwise and to the contrary”
as Artemus Ward would say.
Production being carried on for profit, “prices” is the
first consideration with Capitalism. Now, then, prices
depend upon supply and demand. A large supply, a
supply in excess of the demand-or, rather, in excess of
the money capacity of the masses to demand,-spells
lower prices, with the sequel of decreased profits. In
order to prevent the to capitalists “dire calamity,” coffee
in tens of thousands of bags is ordered burnt in Brazil
by the coffee syndicate seated in London ; peaches are
periodically dumped into the Raritan; shiploads of
bananas are thrown overboard in New York harbor; and
so on. Even wheat has been similarly treated. It was
this spectacle, observed by him in the harbor of Mar:
seilles, that first aroused the indignation of Fourier
against the existing social system, and first turned his
thoughts to Communism, as Socialism was then called.”
Nor is this all. The wealth thus destroyed, although
it certainly does not figure in the net wealth of the Cen-
sus, was wealth produced. Its destruction partakes of
the criminality of infanticide. Vastly larger, immeasur-
ably larger, is the volume of wealth that is strangled off
before birth. How vast the amount of wealth that,
though possible of birth to bless man, yet remains un-
born in this country alone, was inadvertently admitted
in a recent document of first rank. The Republican
platform of I@, written in a moment of unguarded ex-
uberance by the then President, issued from the White
House, and accepted by the Republican national con-
vention at Chicago, truthfully declared :
“We have a vast domain of 3,ooo,ooo square miles,
literally bursting with latent treasure, still waiting the
magic of capital and industry to be converted to the
practical uses of mankind.”
The mechanical appliances are there and more are
ready to be fashioned; yet much of them remains idle,
and the additional appliances, ready to be fashioned,
remain unfashioned for fear of “a market.”
*The January 20, 1914, Bulletin, issued by the Office of In-

formation, U. S. Dep’t of Agricu,lture, contains this passage:
“No other civilized country wastes foodstuffs as we waste
tbem. If all the crops that the farmers raise were utilized: all
the meat animals that are killed eaten; all the fish that come
into the nets marketed, hundreds of thousands who are now
hungry would be well fed.” etc., etc.
Nor yet is this all. Even the small $700 net wealth
per worker is, in reality, smaller than the figures would
indicate. Even after the water, with which the capitalist
inflates his wealth, is wrung out, a still closer inspection
of what remains reveals the fact that much of that
wealth does not really belong under the category of
“wealth,” being harmful. The Yale locks and similar
cunning devices ; the burglar-proof safes, burglar alarms
and the like ; the implements of war ; the adulterants ;
the trashy mass of advertising that draws upon and de-
bauches art ;-these are but a few samples of a kind of
“wealth,” the mass of which is gigantic, and as harmful
as it is gigantic. The story is told of a Connecticut
Yankee, who, having come at home to the end of his
tether in the wooden nutmeg industry, went out West
and put up his shingle as a physician. That same night
he was aroused out of bed by violent raps at the door.
It was a distracted father who called him in for a sick
child. “What ails him?’ asked the self-approved Aescu-
lapius. “He has the small pox.” “I know nothing about
small pox,” replied the medical fraud, pressing a vial
into the father’s hand ; “you give the little cuss this ;
that will throw him into fits ; then call me ; I have grad-
uated on fits.” A large percentage-to state an estimate
would sound incredible-of the raw material that could
be turned to useful purposes, of the human labor that
could be put to better use, is expended by Capitalism in
curing society of the “fits” that Capitalism itself throws
society into. Waste breeds waste. The amount of
labor wasted in wasteful, because harmful, products,
could, if usefully employed, be productive of larger
stores of wealth than the stores of harmful so-called
wealth that it turns out.
And still this is not all. Though the idle Capitalist
Class is relatively small, absolutely it is no inconsider-
able number; add to this number the vast number of
“non-productive” workers, indicated in the answers to
Questions Nos. V. and VIII., a veritable horde, whose
“non-productiveness” verges on “un-productiveness” ;
add, finally to that sum the further mass of Labor whom
the exigencies of Capitalism require to be kept in period-
ical idleness as indicated in the answer to Question No.
ax.; do that, and a conception may be formed of the
huge body of human labor-power that is suffered to go
to waste under Capitalism, and that Capitalism deliber-
ately wastes.
. With Nature teeming, and ready to be tapped, yet
“still waiting the magic of capital and industry to be
converted to the practical uses of mankind”; with
magnificent machinery available, yet curbed in its pro-
ductivity; with still more magnificent machinery in-
vented, yet the invention kept frozen lifeless ; with vast
human forces turned into “unproductive” channels, and
still vaster human forces available, yet left, or con-
demned to idleness; with, in short, production manacled
and trussed ; and, with, to crown it all, competition
squandering the nation’s productive potentialities, and
all due to the exigencies of capitalism ;-with such
chaotic conditions, to speak of “the best organization to
aid us” betrays either fathomless Ignorance or sublime
Effrontery. The estimate of Bellamy is correct-capi-
talist society goes to work like a mob.
Socialists might, like all previous carriers of Prog-
ress at critical epochs in the forward march of mankind,
at times yield to visions that are unwarranted. The
dawn always inspires. It even intoxicates. But the So-
cialist carries the corrective with him. He is the first,
in the line of progressive revolutionary descent, to do so.
Leaving on one side the “philosophy” of the Anarchist,
and on the other side the “philosophy” of the Anarch’s
cousin, the Bourgeois, the Socialist ever endeavors to
sober up his Ideal by adjusting it to the material pos-
sibilities. These he ascertains first. While all the facts
requirable for an exact estimate are not accessible,
nevertheless, sufficient facts are, from which to induce
and deduce the conclusion that-with our population
properly organized; with all the machinery that is avail-
able, or that can be rendered available, in operation;
and with a social system under which production is con-
ducted for use and not for sale and profits ;-then, onIy
four hours a day, male adult work, that is, no more
exertion than the healthy physical exercise that the body
requires, and only for the period of 21 years, will yield
to each an annual social share equal to what today it
would require $ro,ooo to purchase, and enable the work-
ers to be mustered out at the age of 42, veterans in the
War against Want, deserving of the rest and the further
expansion that the dignity of a useful life and advancing
years entitle them to.
QUESTION NO. ,X11.
“How are you Socialists going to get possession of
all the land, railroads, manufacturing plants, business
blocks, banks, church and school property, machinery,
etc.? Will you Socialists confiscate Or purchase all cap-
ital now used in production and exchange?”
ANSWER:-
Had the question simply asked, How are you SO-
cialists going to get possession? we could have pro-
ceeded with the answer without further ado. The ques-
tion is, however, loaded with a number of kinks. These
will first have to be straightened out.
The first kink is imbedded in the word “confiscate.”
A definition of the word in its historic and juridic sense
becomes a necessary preliminary.
What is “confiscation”?
We shall answer the question with two passages
from Socialist Labor Party literature-one furnishing
a sidelight into the concept of “confiscation,” the other
directly defining it-and then clinching the point with
illustrations fresh from the history of our own days.
The first passage is taken from “The Warning of
the Gracchi” in our address, “Two Pages from Roman
History,” delivered in New York City under the auspices
of Section New York, S. L. P., at the Manhattan
Lyceum, April, rgoz:
“When, at the critical stage of the revolution he was
active in, Tiberius Gracchus took a ‘short cut across
84
FIFTEEN QUESTIONS 8s
lots,’ and removed, regardless of ‘legality,’ the colleague
who blocked his way, consciously or unconsciously he
acted obedient to that canon of the Proletarian Re--
volution that it must march by its own light, look to it-
self alone; and that, whatever act it contemplates, it
,judges by the Code of Law, that, although as yet un-
formulated into statute, it is carrying in its own womb..
When, afterwards, Tiberius looked for justification to
the laws of the very class that he was arrayed against,
he slid off the revolutionary plane, and dragged his re-
volution down, along with himself. The revolutionist
who seeks the cloak of ‘legality’ is a revolutionist spent..
He is a boy playing at soldier.
“It was at the Denver convention of the American
Federation of Labor, in 1894, that a scene took place
which throws much light on the bearing of this par-
ticular point in the Movement of our own days. The
A. F. of L. at a previous convention had ordered a gen-
eral vote upon a certain ‘declaration of principles.”
Among these principles there was one, the tenth, which
a certain class of people, who called themselves Social-
ists, were chuckling over with naive delight. They
claimed it was ‘socialistic.’ O,ne of their number had
bravely smuggled it into the said ‘declarations.’ They
were by that manoeuvre to capture the old style Trades
Unions, and thereby ‘tie the hands of the Labor Lead-’
ers.’ For a whole year these revolutionists had been
chuckling gaily and more loudly. The unions actually
polled a majority for all the ‘principles,’ the celebrated
‘Plank 10’ included. At the Denver convention the vote
was to be canvassed; but the Labor Leaders in control
2% FIFTEEN QUESTIONS
threw out the vote on the, to them, good and ,sufScient

reason that ‘the rank and file did not know what they
had been voting for.’ That is not yet the point; that is
only the background for the point I am coming to. But
before coming to that let me here state that the rank
and file meekly submitted to such treatment. The point
lies ‘in a droll scene that took place during the debate to
throw out the vote. The scene was this:
“The revolutionist who had surreptitiously intro- -
duced ‘Plank IO’ in the ‘declaration of principles,’ and
thereby schemed to capture the Unions by ambush, a
gentleman of EngIish Social Democratic antecedents,
one Thomas J. Mbrgan, now of Chicago, was storming
in that Denver convention against the Labor Leaders’
design to throw out his ‘Plank IO,’ and incidentally, as
he expressed it himself, was ‘putting in fine licks for
Socialism.’ Suddenly his flow of oratory was checked.
A notorious Labor Leader, to whom the cigar manufac-
turers of .America owe no slight debt of gratitude, Mr.
Adolf Strasser of the International Cigar Makers’ Union,
had risen across the convention hall and put in:
“‘Will the gentleman allow me a question?’
“ ‘Certainly.’
“ ‘Do you favor CONFISCATION ?’
“The answer is still due. Mr. Morgan collapsed like
a punctured toy balloon.
“The scene should have been engraved to preserve
for all time pictorially the emasculating effect of ignor-
ance of this canon of the Proletarian Revolution upon
that venturesome man who presumes to tread, especially
as a leader, the path of Social Revolution, notwithstand-
_.>..,
ing he lacks the mental and physical fiber to absorb in
his system the canon here under consideration.
“As I said, the Proletarian Revolution marches by ir +
own light; its acts are to be judged by the Code of Le-
gality that itself carries in its fold, not by the standar,!
of the existing Law, which is but the reflex of existing
Usurpation. Indeed, in that respect, the Proletarian
Revolution shares a feature of all previous revolutions,
the Capitalist Revolution included. A new Social System
brings along a new Code of Morals. The morality of
the Code that the Proletarian Revolution is impregnated
with reads like a geometric demonstration. Labor alone
produces all wealth, Idleness can produce maggots only ;
the wealth of the land is in the hands of Idleness, the
hands of Labor are empty ; such hard conditions are
due to the private ownership by the Idle or Capitalist
Class of the land of the tools with which to work ; work
has become collective; the things needed to work with
must, therefore, also become collective property; get
from under whosoever stands in the way of the inevitable
deduction, by what name soever he may please to call
it! Accordingly, no militant in the modern Proletarian
Revolution can be knocked all of a heap by ,the howl of
‘Confiscation.’ ”
The second passage is taken from our debate, “In-
dividualism vs. Socialism,” held under the auspices of
the Troy, N. Y., People’s Forum, April 14, Igrz, with
the nominally Democratic, but actually of Ultramon-
tane political persuasion, Attorney-General of the State
of New York, Thomas F. Carmody :
“I am asked: ‘How are you going to cure the situa-
tion ?’ ‘What are you going to do? ‘Are you going to
confiscate ?’
“I want my distinguished adversary to refresh his
mind upon the juridic meaning of the word ‘confiscation’
Confiscation means the appropriation of property con-
trary to the laws of an existing social system. Revolu-
tions, however, bring their own laws with them. Con-
sequently, under the laws of a Social Revolution, that
may be done legitimately, without the brand of ‘con-
fiscation’ which, under the laws of the social system
that the Revolution has supplanted, would be called con-
fiscation. We have a striking illustration of this fact in
the language of one of the early leaders of our country,
one whom, I hope, Mr. Carmody will not repudiate.
When our Revolutionary Fathers were asked: ‘Are you
going to confiscate these colonies’ it was no less a man
than Jefferson who answered the ‘confiscatory’ charge:
Whenever in the history of a people conditions have be-
come such that they have to be changed, changed they
shall be. ‘Confiscation,’ from the British viewpoint was
at the root of this Republic. Like all Revolutionary
Governments, the Government of the United States was
born in revolution. It did not ‘confiscate’ under the
laws of its own existence, whatever the name given to
the act by the social system and government which it
overthrew. The question is, Do the requirements of the
working class demand a different state of society? If
the answer is, Yes, then that appropriation is not con--
fiscation at all. I hope my distinguished adversary
heard and will remember my answer. The breath that
denounces us as ‘confiscators’ curiously enough brands
Thomas Jefferson, on this platform, by a Democrat, a

‘confiscator.’ ”
Finally, as clinchers of the principle, the following
illustrations will be found exceptionally to the point, be-
sides cogent as demonstrations :
In the city of Scranton, Pa., are two congregations of
Roman Catholic religious persuasion. The property-
real and movable and worth considerable-was purchased
with contributions made by the parishioners, or pew-
holders. The Bishop, a gentleman of Roman Catholic
political, or Ultramontane persuasion, took possession of
the property, and assumed the functions of owner in the
name of the church. The congregations brought an ac-
tion at law against the Bishop. After an expensive and
long litigation, the congregations won out. The highest
court decided that the title to the property of each con-
gregation vested in whomever the majority of the con-
tributing members (“pew-holders”) should choose. Upon
the congregations choosing themselves as owners, they
were promptly excommunicated.
Somebody attempted confiscation. Who?
It all turns upon what the social principle is upon
which the nation rests, hence upon the constitution and
laws that are in force.
If the laws of the land should be found to be such
as obtained during the Middle Ages, when Ultramontan-
ism was the organic principle of society; when the local
civil magistracies were but the constabulary of a tem-
poral Papacy; when by law, implied and expressed, all
church property, wherever situated, was vested in the
temporal Vatican via its Bishops and other subordinates ;
-if such should be found to be the law of the land, then

the theory that parishioners have proprietary rights in
the property that their funds brought together, or have
any function other than to contribute funds and obey
their Bishop, is an utterly revolutionary theory. It
would be a revolutionary theory because it would
be a theory that flew in the face of the establis-
ed social theory of Ultramontanism. If, therefore, Ul-
tramontanism should be found to be the law of the land,
then the Scranton congregations attempted to enforce a
code of social principles at war with the social principles
in force ; then they attempted to enforce a revolutionary
principle before their own anti-Ultramontane Revolution
had triumphed and overthrown Ultramontanism ; then
their conduct was Anarchic ; then were they guilty of
the social misconduct named “confiscation.”
If, contrariwise, it should be found that the laws of
the land bear the distinct mark of anti-Ultramontanism,
and are planted upon a social principle that denies and
repudiates the social principle of Ultramontanism ;-if
such should be found to be the laws of the land, then the
theory that parishioners have no proprietary rights in
the property that their own contributions brought to-
gether, and have no function other than to pay and obey
their Bishop, that theory would, in turn, be the revolu-
tionary theory. It would be revolutionary because it
would be a theory that flew in the face of the land’s
established social theory of anti-Ultramontanism. If,
therefore, anti-Ultramontanism should be found to be
the law of the land, then it would be the Bishop who at-
tempted to enforce a code of social principle at war
with social principles that are in force; then it would be

the Bishop who attempted to enforce a revolutionary
principle before his own Ultramontane Revolution had
triumphed in the land, and overthrown anti-ultramon-
tanism; then it was the Bishop’s conduct that was An-
archic ; then it would be the Bishop who was guilty of
the social misconduct named “confiscation.”
There can be no doubt upon what the determining
facts are. The migrations that founded this country,
including that which flowed into Maryland, with pos-
sible exceptions that are negligible, left behind them the
Ultramontane social polity. They had cast it off even
in their respective mother countries. The social polity
that they set up was the exact opposite of the Ultramon-
tane. Whereas, the social polity of Ultramontanism is
pivoted upon the theory that “power comes from above”
-another way of saying that “the will of God is con-
veyed to the ruled through the rulers,” the polity that
the founders of this country set up was that “power
comes from below”-another way of saying that “the
or “VOX populi, VOX Dei.” When the country shaped it-
will of God is conveyed to the rulers through the ruled,”
self into an independent Nation the theory, latent thereto-
fore, became vocal in the Declaration of Independence
-“Governments are instituted among men, deriving
their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
The theory may be right, the theory may be wrong-
wrong or right, it became, was and is to-day a “Law of
the Land.” There may be those who at any time hold
a “Law of the Land” to be wrong. It is their privilege
so to hold, It also is their privilege to endeavor “to
‘92 FIFTEEN QUESTIONS
alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new Government,
laying its foundation on such principles and organizing
its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most
likely to effect their safety and happiness”-the field of
speech, press and the ballot being left free. Until so
altered or abolished, and substituted with a different
“Law of the Land,” to practice that different “Law of
the Land” is to slide into Anarchy.
The Bishop was well within his rights when he ex-
communicated the two congregations for insubordina-
tion. The right of the individual to secede-a right con-
quered by civilization -is balanced by the reciprocal
right of the organization to expel. When, however,
obedient to a social polity that is at war with the exist-
ing social polity, or “Law of the Land,” the Bishop took
and sought to hold the property of the pew-holders,
the Bishop was guilty of the Anarchic miscon-
duct named confiscation-a misconduct that the bril-
liant American satirist Artemus Ward summed up pic-
torially with the pictorially new-coined word “confistica-
tion.”
Will the Socialists confiscate?
Socialism is not Anarchy. The Socialist will not
confisticate.
The second kink is imbedded in the stringing to-
gether of “land, railroads, manufacturing plants, school
property, machinery, etc.,” as the things that Socialism
is to take possession of.
The sentence presents a sort of mental hash, that
can only proceed from hashy information and thought.
As to “machinery,” that is included in “manufactur-
ing plants.” The word is surplusage. A manufacturing
plant without machinery belongs to the realm of myths,
disemboweled spooks, and other nightmares. The fate
-good, bad or indifferent, “Godly” or “un-Godly,“-
that strikes the “manufacturing plant” strikes the “ma-
chinery” ; it strikes it “simultaneously and at once” ; and,
cannot choose but strike it in the same manner-on the
same principle that when Elijah ascended to heaven in
his fiery chariot, his kidneys had a ride along with him;
or when Lucifer fell headlong into hell, his liver and
other intestines went down in even swiftness.
As to “railroads” and “manufacturing plants,” while
they do not stand to each in the relation of “machinery”
and “manufacturing plants” ; while, therefore, the coup-
ling of either with the other is not surplusage, the men-
tioning of both is redundant. They are categories of
identical economic nature. The atmosphere that would
suffocate men, will suffocate women, lawyers, seam-
stresses, bachelors, widows, carpenters, and parsons as
well. No need of specifying each. That which affects
life, affects it whatever its envelope may be. “Bail-
roads” and “manufacturing plants” being capital when
they are privately owned and used for profit and exploi-
tation, the decree which smites the “capital” feature of
any necessary of production smites the “capital” feature
of all, without the need of specifying each.
As to “school property,” the term is loosely used.
Much school property is now the property of the Nation.
hence, need not be gotten possession of. But there is
considerable “school property” in the country that is
privately owned, and used for profit and exploitation.
As Marx has it-whether a capitalist invest in a sausage
factory and employ sausage-makers, or he invest in a
school and employ teachers, the economic process is the
same, to wit, exploitation. The asking of questions re-
garding such school property is as redundant as the
question that specifies railroads and manufacturing
giants when the issue is what’s to be done with “cap-
ital.”
As to “church property,” to the extent that the same
is actually devoted to the uses that its name indicates,
that is, to the extent that it is CHURCH property, prop-
erty devoted to religious edification,-to that extent the
property falls, as a matter of course, within the category
of property devoted to private consumption, like clothes,
shoes, hats, etc., with all the consequences of such, as
indicated in the answer to Question No. III.
But a considerable amount of property that would
pass as “church property” is not such at ah.
For instance :-
Within the last year, a plot of ground in Newark, N.
J., was attempted to be kept from taxation. The reason
given was that the plot had been consecrated to divine
service. The fact being established that the alleged con-
secration was purely formal, and no church had been
raised or attempted to be raised upon the plot, the tax
was ordered paid. That “church property” was a real
estate speculation, masked with the womrd“church.”
In August of the year 1913, special Mzter in Chan-
cery, appointed by the Federal District Court at New Or-
leans, in the suit brought by the Societe Anonyme de la
Distillerie de la L.iquere Benedictine de I’Abbaye de Fe-
camp against Yochim Brothers of New Orleans, reported
to the court a recommendation that a perpetual injunc-
tion issue restraining the defendant from using on the
labels the name of “Compound Liquer Benedictus” and
*‘Compound Liquer Superieure Benedictus,” or any imita-
tion. of the trade mark or label of the complainants. The
facts in the case brought out the fact that the Benedictine
monks at the Abbey of Fecamp were in business. That
“church property” is in the nature of a distillery with
the mask of “church.”
Of such nature the instances are innumerable. Prop-
erty, said to be religious and church property, in Bar-
celona, Spain, has been shown to be sweatshops ; simi-
larly in Portugal, hence, the overthrow of Ultramontan-
ism in the land amid the execrations of the working
class, and the establishment of the Portuguese Republic;
similarly in Mexico, where property, labeled “church,”
constitutes vast agricultural slave pens upon which the
peons are exploited. That considerable property, simi-
larly labeled and similarly used, is to be found in this
country, the evidences of are numerous.
All such property falls under designation of “capital.”
Its specification is redundant.
Likewise as to “business blocks” and “banks.”
Finally, as to “land,” the kink regarding huge chunks
of it is straightened out along with the kinks of “rail-
roads,” “manufacturing plants,” “school and church
property,” etc. Moreover, seeing that the last, Question
No. XV, is wholly devoted to “land,” the straightening
out of the kink on the subject shall be left for when we
come to that question.
% FIFTEEN QUESTIONS
The third and last kink is imbedded in the suggestion
of the “purchase” of capital.
What would be the effect of purchasing capital ?
The purchasing idea, advanced in some quarters
yclept Socialist, proceeds from the notion that capital-
ism could be reconciled to its own downfall, and that,
unless it is reconciled, it would give insuperable trouble.
The idea is self-contradictory. If Capitalism could be
reconciled, it will not allow itself to be reconciled. The
downfall of Capitalism means the enthronement of the
Co-operative Commonwealth, that is, the Industrial Re-
public. The enthronement of the Co-operative Com-
monwealth is tantamount to the wiping out of the func-
tion of metallic money, that is, Money: exchange will
no longer need a medium of exchange that is itself the
depository of intrinsic value. The wiping out of the
function of metallic money wipes out the standard of the
value of money. The wiping out of the standard of the
value of money renders coin, or its token, worthless.
The bourgeois may not know much; his instinct
helps him out. That instinct tells him that the purchase
money which he would receive will be a snare and a
delusion; indeed, a mockery. If it be in the power of
the capitalist “to make trouble,” he will exercise the
trouble-making power anyhow, to its extreme limit, well
aware that it is with him “to be, or not to be.”
Socialism does not propose to “purchase all capital,”
or any part thereof: Socialism proposes nothing of the
sort, for four good and sufficient reasons, amply pro-
mulgated by its philosophy and literature:
1st. To buy the capitalist off with money, or its
token, would be to cheat him, as above indicated. So-
cialism is no dealer in green-goods.
2nd. To “pay” the capitalist by pensioning him out
of the National Store would be to bond the Nation, and
bond it indefinitely. Socialism is here to free, not to
bond the workers.
3rd. ‘No Social Revolution ever bought ~8 the
tyrant class against whom it rose. It never did, not out
of revengefulness, but in unconscious obedience to the
principle that “property” is not merely “wealth”; that
property is “wealth held under a certain tenure of owner-
ship” ; thence, that, as Franklin summed up the case,
“property is the creature of society and society is en-
titled to the last farthing thereof whenever society needs
it.” The principle is recognized even in bourgeois
jurisprudence, our highest courts having recognized in
taxation the power to “destroy property,” and in society
the‘unlimited right to tax. That society has reached
the stage of development in which it needs the wealth
which itself produced, but which, under the capitalist
tenure of ownership, is held by the Capitalist Class, is
evident. That wealth being needed by society, society
is entitled to, and will take it.
4th. Socialism being the highest expression of
morality and justice, the taking of the capital, and
thereby the emancipating of property from the shackles
of private ownership, can be accomplished without in-
flicting upon the present ruling class the social penalty
that all previous class revolutions have inflicted upon
the class that they overthrew. With all previous class
revolutions, though the oppressed freed themselves, they
did not establish freedom. The conquering class, in

turn, became an oppressor, the previous oppressor being
placed under the yoke. The Socialist Revolution will
be, must be free of the stain. The law of its being leaves
it no other choice. Seeing that Socialism abolishes, not
simply the class rule of the present ruling class, but
class rule itself, the conquered capitalist will not be
yoked ; he will be raised, along with the rest of the popu-
lation to peership with all others in a Commonweal
where his existence will be safeguarded, the same as the
existence of all others, under the only condition that he
sponge not, but do his share in the co-operative work.
The “right to vote” in the Co-operative Commonwealth
is accompanied with the supplementary right to live a
civilized life, that is, a life of economic freedom.
The kinks that loadecl the question under considera-
tion being straightened out, the question now stands
out in its purity: “How are you Socialists going to get
possession of the capital now used in production and
exchange ?”
With all his iniquities, the bourgeois is entitled to
the merciful treatment that the pending Social Revolu-
tion has in store for him. He is entitled to it because
it is he who cleared the way for the redemptory revolu-
tion of Socialism. He cleared the way by casting the
mold into which the Co-operative Commonwealth is to
be organized. Despite the substantially mob appearance
and disorganized state of the capitalist productive regi-
men, it is under the lash of Capitalism that the outlines
are drawn of the industrial organization of the people.
and the skeleton centers around which the subdivisions
are to be ranked. It matters not that the bourgeois has

dcne this work unconsciously, even unwillingly, and
often seeks to undo it. The law of his own existence
compels him to persevere. WITHOUT this work on
the part or the bourgeois, all Socialist efforts would be
vain. WITH this work on the part of the bourgeois,
Socialist political activity supplements the labors of the
bourgeois, supplements them with the economic agita-
tion that renders the workers conscious militants, con-
sciously filling the ranks of the industrial organization
of the land.
From top to bottom production is today conducted
by the Working Class. As a consequence, all the capital:
that is, all the plants “used in production and exchange,”
are actually in the hand, actually in the possession of
the Working Class. Ownership, however, lingers with
the bourgezis by reason of the ,continued imperfection
of the industrial organization. So long as the incon-
gruity between ownership and possession lasts, the
Political State and its political government will prevail.
The day the industrial organization shall have reached
the minimum of. perfection needed, that day the scales
will tip ; ownership will be coupled with the existing
fact of possession, and the Co-operative Commonwealth
will be master.
That is the “ho,w.”
QUESTION NO. XIII.
“Will the man who invents a machine worth millions
to society be paid a life income (a new form of royalty),
or how will he be rewarded?”
ANSWE33:--
We do not know. What is more, we do not care.
The Socialist, being no dreamer and no idler, finds bet-
ter use for his time than to indulge in inconsequential
speculations. It is-in the matter of inventors and the
treatment of the same-enough for the Socialist to
Iknow that the principle-shaping material conditions in
the Co-operative Commonwealth, being fundamentally
different from the principle-shaping material conditions
in Capitalist Society, will safeguard the inventor, in-
stead of, as happens today, expose him to a life of mental
torture, through apprehensions that generally come
true.
Few, if any, are the inventions that can be turned to
financial profit with little capital. Generally, the capital
needed is large. Very often it is gigantic. The inven-
tor, who owns the requisite capital to experiment, per-
fect, and, finally, turn out the product of his genius, does
not exist, at least not “to any alarming extent,“-and
thereby hangs one of the most distressful pages of capi-
talist history, full as that history is of distressful pages.
The pace of the fate of the inventor of machines
“worth millions to society” was set, in this country, from
an early day of its history by the fate imposed upon Eli
100
Whitney. So valuable to the then Southern society, the

then dominant portion of the country, was the cotton
gin which he invented that it was immediately prized at
its true value ,-and as promptly seized and appropriated
by the dominant class without any returns. The thorny
path of legal procedure that Whitney was forced to en-
ter upon only added to his trials. He himself tells of
an instance when the whir of his machine, in full opera-
tion only a block away, could be heard distinctly in the
very court-house where he was endeavoring to assert his
rights, and w.here defendants, judge, and jury, striking
the ostrich posture, affected total ignorance of the “al-
leged infringement.” Whitney died disappointed, broken-
hearted, in poverty, while his invention, true to the
“millions it was worth to society,” made his despoilers
affluent.
It is a part of the history of inventions which “are
worth millions to society” t.hat the most valuable agri-
cultural inventions accredited to McCormick were not
at all his. The fabulous wealth that the appropriation
of the fruit of another’s genius channeled into his cof-
fers enabled McCormick to silence and elbow the in-
ventor out of court, into impotent poverty and obscur-
ity, while he himself rose to richness and prominence.
His brazen effort to induce his effigy to appear on the
Federal currency issued under McKinley revived the
‘memories of the despoiler’s high-handed antecedents.
Although human conscience asserted itself sufficiently
to thwart the vainglorious attempt at immortality
through the Nation’s currency, the despoiler’s wealth,
seconded by the laws of capitalist society, enabled him
to retain possession of the invention which he had mis-
appropriated.
The more recent Dempsey case is of kindred nature.
The employe of a dyeing firm in Pennsylvania, Dempsey,
who was a chemical genius, had made valuable discover-
ies which he applied to dyeing, and the formulas of
which he preserved in his note-book. The firm desired
to obtain possession of the note-book. To this end it
summarily dismissed Dem,psey, entered his room, took
the notes-and kept them. Dempsey’s legal efforts to
recover the fruit of his genius failed. The court plump
and plain pronounced “intoJerable” the conditions that
would arise were an employer to be “kept under depend-
ence” to his employe by reason of the latter’s discovery.
The Bonsack case was another in point. It is sum-
marized in this passage from our address, “What Means
This Strike?” delivered in New Bedford on February II,
IS@, to the weavers then on strike:
“The Bonsack Machine Company discovered that its
employes made numerous inventions, and it decided to
appropriate them wholesale. To this end it locked out
its men, and then demanded of all applicants for work
that they sign a contract whereby, in ‘consideration of
employment,’ they assign to the Company all their rights
in whatever invention they may make during the term
of their employment. One of the employes, who had
signed such a contract, informed the Company one day
that he thought he could invent a machine by which
cigarettes could be held closed by crimping at the ends,
instead of pasting. This was a valuable idea; and he
was told to go ahead. For six months he worked at
this invention, and perfected it; and, having during al!

that time received not a cent in wages or otherwise
from the Company, he patented his invention himself.
The Company immediately brought suit against him in
the Federal Courts, claiming that the invention was its
property; and-the Federal Court decided in favor of
the Company, thus robbing the inventor of his time, his
money, the fruit of his genius, and his unquestionable
rights !”
Substantially the same was the experience of Merg-
enthaler, the talented and persevering inventor of the
linotype type-setting machine. That dark and fresh
history has been very fully written. The upshot was
that, while the great Mergenthaler was left to linger
and die in want, a set of millionaires became multimii-
lionaires through his invention, and one of these, White-
law Reid, the son-in-law of Darius Q. Mills of Coeur
d’Alene mining iniquities celebrity, could afford to “keep
up the standing” of a United States Ambassador at the
court of St. James’s, and even impart to the standing a
chrysanthemum gardens glamour of Asiatic splendor
that was the delight of Queen Victoria, a frequent visitor
at the gardens.
Long, tedious by repetition, distressful and often
heart-rending is the history of the “men who invented a
machine worth millions to society.” One more instance
-the tragic fate and death, in 1913 in Paris, of Charles
Tellier-brings up-to-date the internationality of the
inventor’s fate under Capitalism.
Released, penniless, from a debtor’s prison-whither
the appropriation by capitalists of his successful inven-
tion of a boat in which ammonia was used as motive
power had caused him to be thrust-Tellier, undiscour-
aged, turned again to inventing. His second effort
matured in 186g in a contrivance of untold benefit to the
human race. qhe invention consisted in a system of
freezing food by compression. The new machine was
able to preserve, not only meat, but all kinds of vege-
tables and fruit. Tellier’s invention may be considered
the rounding up of that great ethnic invention that
:pushed the human race upward from the upper status
of Savagery to the next higher, -or lower status of Bar-
lbarism-the invention of the art of pottery, whereby
man turned down the leaf of that part of his history
when he lived from hand to mouth, thenceforth able to
lay up a store for “the next day.” E;ggs from Australia,
peaches from the Cape of Good Hope, strawberries from
California, salmon from Alaska, meat from Argentina
and New Zealand could be enjoyed in Paris just as fresh
as when they left their distant home countries. It was
an invention that helped to deal a deathblow to famine
by enabling the transportation of food in good condition
to and from regions however distant. The Cold Storage
Associations of capitalists arose, appropriated Tellier’s
invention to themselves, and, while the invention poured
millions and billions into their coffers, Charles Tellier
languished. Okcasionally a bone was thrown at him,
and the genius and human benefactor died in the sum-
mer of 1913 literally of starvation at the age of 86.
And naturally so. For the same reason that the
proletarian is under the necessity to sell himself in wage
slavery, that is, to sign a social contract whereby, in
consideration of a chance to earn his own living, he sur-
FIFTEEN QUESTiO;\;S 10;
renders to the capitalist the lion’s share of his product,

for the identical reason, the overwhelming majority of
inventors face the “Ilobson’s choice” of either selling
their invention to the capitalist for a song, or to be kept
in constant apprehension of their invention’s being
stolen-an apprehension but too often verified.
For the exact opposite of the reason that such is
bound to be the treatment that Capitalism has for the
general run of inventors, a treatment exactly the oppo-
site is bound to prevail in the Co-operative Common-
wealth. The point need but to be indicated. Man,
being emancipated from want and the fear of want, the
goad to man’s iniquity to man is blunted, or broken.
On the one hand, the overpowering motive for wronging
‘the inventor, together with the institutions to match,
cease to be; on the other hand, the inventor himself, no
longer in danger of being “done” by others, can no
longer feel, and succumb to, the demoralizing pressure
to exploit his invention for personal profit. It is in
keeping with the known qualities of man, under favor-
able conditions, to find his actual reward in the bestow-
ing of benefaction upon his kind. In the language of
the great and good, the scientific and practical Benjamin
Franklin, “as we enjoy great advantages from the inven-
tions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to
serve others by any invention of ours; and this we
should do freely and generously.”
Will the inventor be rewarded with the intrinsically
worthless oaken-crown that the economically independ-
ent patriciate of Rome rewarded its members with, and
that these economically independent members gloried
in receiving?
Will he be rewarded with mural tablets, or statues?
Will the superfluity of a “life income,” or a “new
form of royalty” be the style?
The Socialist knows not-and cares less.
In our debate, “Individualism vs. Socialism”-quoted
in the answer to Question No. XII.-our distinguished
opponent having asked a number of specific questions
concerning the Co-operative Commonwealth, the answer
was :
“We are asked for a complete list. of items of the
Socialist Republic. The same demand has been made
before upon great men upon great occasions-and with
as little sense.
‘When Columbus proposed to start on his trip to
discover the eastern shores of Asia, there were people
of my distinguished opponent’s bent of mind who asked
him where the mountains, and the mouths of rivers, and
the harbors would lie. His answer was: ‘I do not
know, and I do not care. What I do know is that the
world being round, if I travel westward I must strike
land.’
“If Columbus is too ancient in history, take Wash-
ington. When he was fighting the battles of independ-
ence there were Tory pamphleteers who pestered him
land the other Revolutionary Fathers with questions
uoon the kind of government they contemplated-was
it to be a Venetian Doge affair, a Dutch Republic of
High Mightinesses, or what? Washington’s answer
was. ‘First lick the British.’
“Impossible for the capitalist system with its politi-
cal state to continue. The Goddess of Liberty cannot
sit upon bayonets. With a logic similar to that of
Columbus’s answer, the Socialist says that the Co-opera-
tive Commonwealth, or the Industrial Government, is
next in the order of social systems. No more than
Washington can we give details in advance, and, like
Washington, we say: First lick the British of today.”
And so we say now to whomsoever is preoccupied,
or affects to be preoccupied, with curiosity regarding
how will the man, “who invents a machine worth mil-
lions to society, be paid,“-first lick our Britishers of
today, the Capitalist Clas,,
QUESTION NO. XIV.
“Is it not true that of the 1,5oo,ooo,ooo people on earth
no two are alike? One man is a success, the other is a
failure ; one industrious, the other a spendthrift. Will
the industrious, sober and thrifty man be willing to
divide and help support the lazy man, the drunkard and
the spendthrift?”
ANSWER:-
It is true that of the people of the earth, whatever
the number of the earth’s population may be, no two
are alike.
It is also true, too true, that one man is a success,
the other a failure; one industrious, the other a spend-
thrift.
Will the industrious, sober and thrifty man be will-
ing to divide with and help support the lazy man, the
drunkard and the spendthrift?
The subject opens two angles of view from which to
consider it.
Taking up the subject from one angle of view, we
find that, whether the industrious, the sober and the
thrifty are willing or not, they do today “help support
the lazy man, the drunkard and the spendthrift” :
It, surely, is not by the lazy man, the drunkard, or
the spendthrift that, for instance, Harry Kendal Thaw
is being supported. The wealth that supports that homi-
cidal paranoiac spendthrift is wealth produced by the
industrious, the sober and the thrifty. It is, accordingly,
108
the sober, the industrious and the thrifty who today
support that worthy . If they did not, the earth would
long, long ago have been relieved of the worthy’s
presence.
It, surely, is not from the lazy man, the drunkard, or
the spendthrift that the funds flow to the support of the
inebriates inside of our asylums, or those who wander
at large. The wealth that supports the habitual splicers
of the main-stay is wealth produced by the sober, the
industrious and the thrifty. It is, accordingly, the sober,
the industrious and the thrifty who today support these
moral, physical and mental cripples. If they did not,
then, neither the inmates of our inebriate asylums, nor
the many more who belong there, could be alive today.
Sloth, sayeth the adage, is the beginning of all crime.
It surely is not through the lazy man, the drunkard, or
the spendthrift that the moneys are raised which go to
the support of the humanity that graduate from the
University of Sloth into the penitentiaries of the land.
The money that goes to the support of these social waifs
represents, and is exchanged for, wealth produced by
the industrious, the sober and the thrifty. It is, accord-
ingly, the thrifty, the sober and the industrious who
today support the convict. If they refused, what would
become of the criminals?
Summing up the subject, as it presents itself from
this first angle of view, even if lazy people, drunkards
and spendthrifts should be found in the Co-operative
Commonwealth, and even if the Co-operative Common-
wealth were to compel the industrious, sober and
thrifty to support such social refuse, it is not for a
FIFTEEN QUESTIONS
supporter of Capitalism to throw the first stone. The
house he lives in is too much of a glass house for him to
start the stone-throwing process,
Taking up the subject from the other angle of view
which it presents, the telescope of political-economic
science, turned upon the capitalist regimen, reveals the
sociologic fact that the capitalist regimen does not give
the industrious, the sober and the thrifty the option
whether they will divide with the lazy man, the drunk-
ard and the spendthrift. The capitalist regimen is so
constructed that it compels the industrious, thrifty and
sober to divide. Indeed, it compels them with such a
compelling power that the division leaves them but a
beggarly pittance, while the lion’s share goes to the
lazy, the drunkard and the spendthrift.
Paul Lafargue condensed the process of “division”
under the capitalist regimen in the terse motto : “Wealth
is the product of Labor, and the reward of Idleness.”
Surely, idleness can produce nothing. The obvious
principle notwithstanding, the bulk of the enormous
wealth of the land is found in the possession, not of the
workers, but of the idlers. To what an extent this is
true has lately been uncovered by the statistics which
the idle, finding it impossible to keep the lid tight upon,
have endeavored, as a last resort, to use as a warning
against the enactment of the income tax. The statistics
indicate that even after lowering the limit of untaxable
incomes to $3,000, barely 5oo,ooo people will “bear the
burden.” Allotting four dependents to each of these,
only two millions of our more than ninety million popu-
lation will be affected.
FIFTEEN QUESTIONS III
This indicates the existence of a “division” with “a

vengeance,” and “with a vengeance” to have the indus-
trious, sober 2nd thrifty support the lazy man and the
,spendthrift.
The fact that the wealth produced under the capital-
ist regimen is found divided into two disproportionate
shares, the overwhelmingly bigger share being in the
possession of the idle, the idle have long sought to justify
with a number of more or less ingenious, more or less
clumsy fictions :
They have given their share the name of “wages of
abstinence”-despite the striking, often shocking exhibi-
tion of the fact that abstinence is with them a non-
existent virtue, the excesses of most of them being re-
pIaced, with others, by the extreme, opposite, corrosive
miserliness.
They have given to their share the name of “wages
of superintendence”-despite the notorious fact that,
from top to bottom, the industries are run by the wage-
earners.
They have given to their share the name of “remune-
ration for risk” -despite the experience, painfully made
by the wage-earners, and brilliantly elaborated by Rus-
kin, that theirs is the risk, the whole risk, the risk of a
living, the risk of limb, the risk even of life.
They have given to their share the name of “wages
of management”-despite the fact that, so far as pro-
duction is concerned, they manage next to nothing, their
managerial activity consisting mainly in managing
political and economic conspiracies against, in order to
overreach one another.
112 FIFTEEN QUESTIOKS
It is the industrious, sober and thrifty Workiug Class
that produces the wealth of the land. Under the capi-
talist regimen the Working Class is forced to divide
with the Capitalist Class, a class the idleness of whose
members in production is illustrated every time one of
them is gathered unto the bosom of Abraham, and not
a single wheel of production ever stopping to turn. An
idle class is a lazy class, with the spendthrift and the
drunkard as no infrequent specimens.
But Socialism would not be the redemptory Move-
ment that it is if, every time a charge is made, or in-
sinuated, against it, all that the Socialist could do were
to play the schoolboy act of “You’re another.” When
the Socialist stops, in this instance, for instance, to
show that that which is insinuated against Socialism is
actually a feature of Capitalism, the Socialist legitimately
places his finger upon a state of things that is inevitable
from capitalist, and, therefore, impossible from Socialist
premises. The very social structure of Capitalism, the
social structure pivoted upon the private ownership of
the means of production, renders natural the existence
of an idle and of an industrious class, with the former
dividing the wealth produced by the latter in such a
manner that, while wealth remains the product of labor,
it becomes the reward of idleness.
Nor is this all.
It cannot be denied, indeed, the psychologic fact
should be emphasized that, apart from the lazy men,
the drunkards and the spendthrifts, whom, due to the
possess&n of excessive wealth, Capitalism breeds within
the Capital& Class itself, laziness and drunkenness
crop up among the proletariat also, and crop up to a
vast extent. The consideration of the subject in hand
from the first view-point which it presented showed
that, under the present regimen, these unfortunates are
supported by the industrious, the sober and the thrifty,
to the extent that they are at all supported. Is inherent
depravity the cause of laziness and drunkenness among
the masses? The convenient theory, that inherent de-
pravity is the cause, is the theory set up by the Capitalist
Class, together with its press, its politicians, its profes-
sors and its pulpiteers. Sociology rejects the theory.
There where, however excessive the toil and abund-
ant its product, the toiler’s income is trifling and insuffi-
cient even to restore the tissue that is expended,-there
incentive is nipped in the bud, hopelessness and help-
jessness follow, and drunkenness, laziness, and a long
train of similar and even worse habits and vices fatedly
crop up. As fatedly as these evils flow from capitalist
conditions is the inevitableness of their eradication in
the Co-operative Commonwealth, where, abundance
being possible for all, and the full product of his toil
being inured to each, incentive is inevitably spurred,
and hopelessness and helplessness as inevitably take
wing, to make room for the exact opposites.
Before closing this answer, this is the place to lock
a certain switch.
Will not the Co-operative Commonwealth build
streets and highways, and keep them up ? Will not the
‘Co-operative Commonwealth lay out parks, establish
libraries and other public buildings? Moreover, apart
from the wealth required for these and similar items,
must not the Co-operative Commonwealth land in bank-
ruptcy, unless it providently make provision to restore
the wear and tear of its plants ? If it make such provi-
:ion, must not the provision come from the wealth pro-
duced by the workers? Does it not, therefore, fo!low
that the promise of “the full return of their toil” is
110110w ?
The promise is not hollow, it is solid.
In the days of Marx and E,ngels, when the Socialist
‘Movement was still entangled with “Communism,”
hence, with “Communist Anarchy,” and, as a further
consequence, was in the toils of Bakouninism,-in those
days an extreme precision of language on this subject
seemed imperative.
Socialism implies co-operation Upon a large scal,e,
the only scale on which wealth is producible with the
abundance that renders involuntary poverty unneces-
sary. Co-operation on a large scale implies organization
to match; and such organization implies a central di-
recting authority. Communist-Anarchy, on the con-
trary, with its small, “directly governed,” “autonomous”
communities is a denial of Collectivism, or Socialism.
It is an aspiration without economic foundation-hence,
a freak aspiration. .As such, Communist-Anarchy light-
ly fell into extravaganzas of economic and sociologic
demands. These were harmful to intelligent and ef-
fective organization. As such, Marx leading, the state-
ment that the worker should receive the full returns of
his toil was pointed out as defective. The function of
the central directing authority-an authority rejected by
Anarchy-to reserve from the collective product the
FIFTEEN QUESTIONS II.5
portions requisite for public institutions, and also for
the replacement of the wear and tear of the existing
plants of production, was pointed out.
The policy of such precise expression, wise at that
time, has now become unnecessary, and, if now insisted
upon, would, in turn, be misleading. Now that Socialist
Science has spread in all directions, and Anarchy in a11
its freak manifestations is no longer a danger, however
frequent its flarings up,-now the statement that the
worker will receive the full product of his toil can lead
to no quagmire. The mission, functions and duties of
the central directing authority in the Co-operative Com-
monwealth once grasped, no thinking man will deny
that the product of the worker which is appropriated for
‘public institutions, for the restoration of his own plants
of production, and so forth, is a product the fruition of
which falls to the workers themselves. Under the capi-
talist regimen the portions of the workers’ product, ap-
propriated for such uses, accrue only in a trifling degree
to the benefit of the workers; in the Co-operative Com-
monwealth those portions accrue wholly to the benefit
of the workers. Tho’ the route by which these portions
of the workers’ product reach the workers be different-
one route directly to the individual, to be disposed of as
he wills, the other indirectly, to be profited by collect-
ively,-in the Co-operative Commonwealth the worker
receives the full product of his toil.
The problem of the lazy man, the drunkard and the
spendthrift, and, we may add, of criminals, generally,
will be a non-existent one in the Co-operative Common-
wealth. In the Co-operative Commonwealth-where
production will be abundant for all and each will be
insured the full product of his toil-the problem will be
known only from-the history of the nightmare that Capi-
talism in its maturity was to man. As well ask how t@
prevent drowning, where n,Q water is to be drowned in.
’
*
.- .-
‘I
.I
,:
_I’
r.
. . . . ,‘LC
.: , I .
’ I:._
,
“W~XX~ will YOU Socialists do with the farming lands,,
and with the five million owners of these lands? Will
you divide the tract into five, ten, or fifty-acre tracts
and parcel it out to each farmer and will each farmer be
compelled to account to the State for what he raises?
Will the intelligent farmer receive the same income as
the ignorant farmer? Will an account be kept of what
each farmer produces and the quality? If so, will it not
require an army of experts and bookkeepers to see that
each farmer receives the full reward of his, toil? Or will
you Socialists farm the lands in large tracts with Social-
ist farm bosses and Socialist farm hands? And which
will you be, a farm boss or a farm hand?”
ANSWE,R:-
If the framer of this question had read Prof. Ely’s
book on the “Weaknesses of SociaIism” the fact wdd
have manifested itself in some degree of system in the
objections to Socialism therein implied. As it is, the
implied objections, or the numerous sub-questions that
constitute the question itself, bump against one another
in such a disordered manner that the suspicion is justi-
fied the “Visitor” is in the mental state of the bewil-
dered, thick-skulled peasants in the German story who
“heard the bell ring, but knew not where it hung.”
That bell is the extensive European Socialist litera-
ture on the Agrarian or Land Question.
The Agrarian or Land Question raises no economic
or even sociologic principle different from the economic
or sociologic principle raised by urban industry. Not a
117
line and not a word is found in all the mass of Socialist
literature to indicate that, so far as economics or socioi-
ogy is concerned, the Socialist faces on the farm a prob-
lem different from that which he faces in manufacturing
towns. The difference in the problem goes, not to the
root of the economic problem: it affects only the top-
most branches. It is a difference that dictates tactics, a
difference due to the historic antecedents of the peasant,
a class that does not exist and never existed in this
country, due to the circumstance of the country’s never
.having passed through a really feudal period, except,
perhaps, in spots.
The string of incoherent questions, strung up under
this XVth question, affects economics. Even in Europe
-where there is a peasantry whom social evolution has
to hurl into the cities before Capitalism can grip them,
hence, before they can be rendered accessible to Socialist
propaganda-these objection-questions to Socialism are
shots with blank cartridges. In this country-where
there is no peasantry, where capitalism itself stalks forth
and reaches out into the fields, and renders the farm the
rural aspect of the factory, and the factory the city as-
pect of the farm-in this country the string of questions
under XVth Question is as downright a bit of idiotic
pertness as if a school boy, who was told that the camel
was an animal used in order to cross sandy deserts, were
to interject: “But, Teacher, how could the camel swim
across the oceans in the desert?’
What will the Socialists do with the farming lands?
-Just what they will do with the urban plants of pro-
duction.
FIFTEEN &STIONS 119
What will the Socialists do with the five million
owners of farming land?-Just what they wili do wit!1
whatever the number may be who own the urban plants
of production.
Will the Socialists divide the tract into five, ten, or
fifty acre tracts and parcel it out to each farmer?-They
will do that no more than they will divide the plants of
production into five, ten, or fifty inch plants, and parcel
them out to each industrial worker.
Will each farmer be compelled to account to the
State for what he raises?-No more than each industrial
worker will be compelled to account to the State for
what he turns out. Like the present plant-of-production
owner, who, if he does not mean to go on a hunger
strike, will have to take hold of the co-operative cable
of production, the farmer will have to step into the Na-
tion’s co-operative army of production.
Will the intelligent farmer receive the same income
as the ignorant farmer?-Yes, or no, the same as the
urban industrial worker, as fully set forth’in the answers
to Questions I. and II.
Will an account be kept of what each farmer pro-
duces and the quality?-No more than an account will,
or could, be kept of what each individual urban worker
turns out, for the reasons fully set forth in the answer
to Question No. IV., which set forth the features of
co-operative labor.
If an account will be kept of what each farmer pro-
Zluces and the quality, will it not require an army of.
experts and bookkeepers to see that each farmer receive
the full reward of his toil?-Seeing that, no more than
an account will, or could, be kept of what each farmer
produces than of what each industrial urban worker
turns out, it will no more require an army of experts and
bookkeepers to see that each farmer receives the full
reward of his toil than it will require such an army of
,experts and bookkeepers to perform the same services
for the industrial workers.
Will the Socialists farm the lands in large tracts?-
Just as industrial production will be carried on upon a
national scale, agricultural production will be conducted
“on large tracts.”
Will Socialists farm the large tracts with Socialist
farm bosses and Socialist farm hands?--;Yes. Just the
same as the Nation-wide industries, and for the same
xeason. There will be no anti-Socialist labor of what-
ever nature and category to be found in the Co-operative
Commonwealth outside of asylums where merciful care
will be taken of the mental cripples who may have been
inherited from the capitalist regimen. ’
Finally, woald we be a farm boss or a ‘farm hand?-
Either indifferently. As to which of the two, will de-
pend upon the circumstances detailed in the answer to
Question No. III.
Some capitalists run large urban iodustries, others
run large agricultural concerns; some run small urban
industries, others run small agricultural enterprises. The
. farmer, accordingly, is nothing but a differentiated capi-
talist. He is a capitalist in agriculture; the same as the
manufacturer is a capitalist in industry, or the railroad
magnate is a capitalist in transportation. To handle the
agricultural capitalist upon a principle entirely different
from his industrial cousin is, in economics, as idiotic a

proposition as, in anatomy, the proposition would be to
handle city residents on the correct theory that their
heart is the organ from which, and to which their blood
pulsates; but to handle country residents on the theory
that their heart is located in their big toe, and that its
function is to keep the body from wabbling.
Socialism will affect the farmer (agricultural capi-
talist) exactly as it will affect the urban o,r industrial
capitalist :-
The large agricultural capitalist will be dethroned
by Socialism from the class throne that enables him to
exploit the workers, the same as it will dethrone the
urban capitalist, compelling the former, as it will the
latter, to take hold of the co-operative cable of produc-
tion and cease sponging-or starve.
The small agricultural capitalist will be freed by
Socialism from the illusion of property that today is a
millstone around his neck, the same as it will free the
small urban capitalist of the identical illusion. TO the
one and the other, Socialism will be a redeemer-re-
deeming them from the peculiar material ills that are
born of the optical delusion which causes both to fill the
disgraceful social role of being duped by the upper capi-
talists, while themselves seeking to dupe the proletariat.
The “Visitor” heard the sonorous sound of the bell
of tactics rung by European Socialist literature with
regard to agriculturalists, but the “Visitor” knows not
where that bell hangs, and it fancies the bell hangs under
the dome of economics.

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FIFTEEN

PRICE TWENTY CENTS

The fifteen questions in this pamphlet were pro-

V. Who Will Support “ Non - Productive

VI. How Tell “True” Value of Worker’s Toil? 36

own gifts. The issue of wages, or the worker’s income,

purpose of production, no such stoppage of production,

social store, to wit, the amount or rate of tissue that he

supply of conductors, which will be indicated by the

2 hours of the motorman’s function are equal to 4 of the

several functions having been set forth, the last portion

of Socialists that the workers will receive the full pro-

are as few as five, all individual differences in the quan-

belongs to all the co-operators, to none but them, to all

ative methods that the Co-operative Commonwealth pro-

What is “productive,” and what “non-productive,”

This economic fact being established, the numerous

The consideration of Yale locks, blackjacks, flaming

the further fact that production-once emancipated from

What can be the meaning of “the value of each

which something determines the proportion of the

methods, whereby 5,000 yards of cloth could be turned

toil will depend upon the amount of labor-power socially

gard to the material facts which determine the possi-

consider the subject as a s#pecial order of business; there

that it can-then the course to pursue is to buckle down

off, and of women there b&g an excess ;-whereupon

the more concentrated ones ;. it is brisker in those that

taiity in its trade had increased appallingly coincident

*In the course of an address, delivered by Ft. W. Babson, the

their wages, or salaries, are in the nature of a tax levied

machinery and organization. We shall first knock out

*The January 20, 1914, Bulletin, issued by the Office of In-

threw out the vote on the, to them, good and ,sufScient

Thomas Jefferson, on this platform, by a Democrat, a

-if such should be found to be the law of the land, then

with social principles that are in force; then it would be

did not establish freedom. The conquering class, in

are to be ranked. It matters not that the bourgeois has

Whitney. So valuable to the then Southern society, the

this invention, and perfected it; and, having during al!

renders to the capitalist the lion’s share of his product,

This indicates the existence of a “division” with “a

from his industrial cousin is, in economics, as idiotic a

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