The projected reform seemed exceptionally simple. A national workshop was to be set up forthwith in which all branches of production would be represented. The necessary capital was to be obtained from the Government, which was expected to borrow it. Every worker who could give the necessary moral guarantee was allowed to compete for this capital. Wages would be equal for everybody, a thing which is quite impossible under present conditions, largely because of the false anti-social character of a good deal of our education. In the future, when a new system of education will have improved morality and begotten new ideas, the proposal will seem a perfectly natural one. Here we come across a suggestion that seems common to all the associationists, namely, the idea of a new environment effecting a revolution in the ordinary motives of mankind. As to the hierarchy of the workshop, that will be established by election, except during the first year, when the Government will undertake to conduct the organisation, because as yet the members will hardly be sufficiently trained to choose the best representatives. The net revenue will be divided into three portions, of which the first will be distributed between the various members of the association, thus contributing to a rise in their wages; the second portion will go towards the upkeep of the old, the sick, and the infirm, and towards easing the burdens of some other industries; while the third portion will be spent in supplying tools to those who wish to join the association, which will gradually extend its sway over the whole of society. The last suggestion inevitably reminds us of Buchez’s “inalienable and perpetual capital.” Interest will be paid on the capital employed in founding the industry, such interest being guaranteed against taxation. But we must not conclude that Blanc favoured this condition because he believed in the legitimacy of interest, as Fourier did. He was too pronounced a disciple of the Saint-Simonians ever to admit that it was legitimate. The time will come, he thinks, when it will no longer be necessary, but he gives no hint as to how to get rid of it. For the present at any rate it must be paid, were it only to enable the transition to be made. “We need not with savage impatience destroy everything that has been founded upon the abuses which as a whole we are so anxious to remove.” The interest paid, along with the wages, will form a part of the cost of production. The capitalists, however, will have no share in the net profit unless they have directly contributed to it. It seems that the only difference between the social workshop and the present factory is its somewhat more democratic organisation, and the fact that the workers themselves seize all the profit (_i.e._ over and above net interest), instead of leaving it, as was hitherto the case, to the _entrepreneur_.