"Public libraries and reading-rooms in every ward are nearly here already, but we may expect that the library and the public hall will go far to cut out the tavern (at present our only 'public' house) as the poor man's club. As for bands of music in the parks, municipal fetes, and fireworks on 'Labour Day,' and other instances of the communalisation of the means of 'enjoyment,' all this is already common form in France. The parks, indeed, will be tremendous affairs. But when London's gas and water and markets are owned and controlled by its public authorities; when its tramways, and perhaps its local railways, are managed like its roads and parks, not for private profit, but for public use; when the metropolis at length possesses its own river, and its own docks; when its site is secure from individual tyranny, and its artisans' dwellings from the whims of philanthropy; when, in short, London collectively really takes its own life into its own hands, a vast army of London's citizens will be directly enrolled in London's service."[688] The foregoing political and economic programme would be more creditable to an imaginative schoolgirl ten years old than to a man of science and a politician. How are all these wonderful and almost miraculous changes to be financed? Quite simply and very easily--by plunder. Mr. Sidney Webb, like most "scientific" Socialists, is a loose and shallow thinker. He forgets in his calculations that stubborn little item--human nature. He forgets that nobody can become richer by transferring money from the right pocket to the left. If you plunder all capitalists and all middlemen, the workers will certainly not be better off. Owing to the absence of direct self-interest, the management by salaried officials will be inefficient. All experience of management by public bodies through officials shows that public enterprise is far more wasteful and far less efficient than private enterprise; that in official management routine, sloth, waste, irresponsibility, nepotism, favouritism, and often peculation too, become supreme. Besides, far more money than is wasted now by capitalists on themselves will be wasted by politicians hankering after popularity, and after jobs for themselves and their followers and dependents. The greatest wasters in the poorest districts are the irresponsible Socialist authorities. In palatial town halls sumptuously furnished, in magnificent public libraries, in marble baths, and other outlets of civic magnificence, money wrung from the hard-worked wage-earners is wasted in far greater sums than could possibly be spent by the most reckless capitalist on his private amusement. The most magnificent town halls, &c., are to be found in the poorest districts. Besides, "salaries must be liberal enough to attract the best men to the public service."[689] It is a matter of course that the rule of irresponsible Socialist agitators, that a system of local government whereby those who have no money are enabled