"So far as the State is concerned, yes," said the regent, with emphasis. "Under your slipshod administration we spent nearly two hundred thousand dollars during the past year on so-called inventions. Every fool in the colony has invented something. Not one in a hundred has produced an idea that is practicable. We cannot afford to waste the capital of the State in such idiocy." "Give me twenty men and I'll complete the dredge." "Labour is capital in the Socialist State. I can't afford to waste it." "But you are not wasting it," Norman pleaded. "I've spent sixty thousand already on this invention. Unless the machine is completed the capital will be lost to the colony." "It will be lost anyhow," Wolf answered, impatiently. "Your whole conception is a piece of childish folly. You can't make a profit operating a dredge in sand containing only twenty cents' worth of gold to a ton of dirt." "I can do better," Norman urged with enthusiasm. "I can make a hundred per cent. on the investment if the dirt pans out ten cents to the ton. If it pans twenty cents a ton I can make millions." "So every crank has claimed for his particular piece of idiocy. I'll not permit another dollar or another day's labour to be thrown away on any such crazy experiment." Norman's face reddened with a rush of uncontrollable anger. "Look here, Wolf, you can't be serious in this." "I was never more serious in my life," the big jaws snapped. "I am going to issue an order to-day that hereafter any man or woman who conceives an invention can work it out himself without aid from the State. They must do this at odd hours after working the required time each day. They must put their own money into their machine." "As the State only has capital," Norman protested, "this means the practical prohibition of all invention. No man can with his own hands make the machinery needed in the progress of humanity. We have abolished private capital by abolishing rent, interest, and profit. Do you propose thus to stop the progress of the world?" "No," Wolf cried with a wave of his heavy hand. "Let the ambitious inventor work at night and build his own machine. I will grant, in my order on the subject, to each successful inventor the right to operate his own machine for ten years before it becomes the property of the State." "Suppose he succeeds," said Norman, "under such hard conditions with his own hands and without capital in perfecting an invention of enormous value, such as the dredge I have begun, of what use will the results be if he cannot invest them in rent or interest, and all gifts and exchanges are prohibited?"