Now, suppose that, in the new economic conditions, it should be determined by the “independent communes” that wages should in a measure be fixed according to the skill, ability and energy of the workingmen, what sort of allotment would fall to the great body of workers? Edward Atkinson, an accurate statistician of world-wide reputation, has furnished the public with a compilation showing what each would receive if the aggregate production in the United States were divided among its inhabitants. The annual production, he calculates, of all the industries of our country, does not exceed $200 per head of population. This would give a total of $12,000,000. If this were divided equally among families of five persons each, on a basis of a sixty-million population, each family would have $1,000 per annum. But, as I have said, suppose some families secure more than others, on account of greater efficiency, and that one-third of these families secure $2,000 each per annum. The remaining two-thirds would only secure an average of $500. “Suppose,” it has been said, “one-half of this third to be fortunate enough, or skillful enough, to increase their average to $3,000. The remaining half continuing at $2,000, the average share of the two-thirds would fall to $250, or $50 only per head, per annum.” As Prof. Barnard, dwelling upon the facts to be deduced from Atkinson’s showing, says: “Inasmuch as the idea of an average implies that as many are below it as are above it, it is easy to see that the only way of removing the scourge of poverty from the entire human race is to increase the productiveness of labor so that want can only be a consequence of willful idleness, or improvidence, or vice.” In the “wonderful readjustment” of wealth and the products of labor Socialists propose to inaugurate, there would be everywhere more misery, more poverty and more crime than the people are now contending with in the purlieus of London and Paris. That there is room for improvement in the condition of our social state is true, but that changes for the better can be obtained by Socialism and by means of violence is false. These social as well as governmental improvements can only be brought about by peaceable means. Never by force, as the logic of events demonstrated in the Cook County Jail. There is no question that crack-brained theorists will continue to spring up and exist. They have existed in the past. The Babeufs, the Lassalles, the Fouriers and the Karl Marxes may continue to preach their one-sided ideas, but universal education in the United States and the general morality of the masses may be safely counted upon as a guaranty that neither the gospel of violence nor isolated cases of bloodshed will ever succeed in establishing exploded and ruinous theories of politics. [Illustration: A GROUP OF ANARCHISTS.