The Colonel paused. "Such appeals to passion can only end in riot, bloodshed, and prison bars. You don't write such rot as that yourself, and yet the men you are following preach it." "I'm not following just now, Governor--I'm trying to direct this tremendous impulse, this enthusiasm for humanity, called Socialism, into a practical experiment that will demonstrate the truths of their faith, and from this white city of a glorified human life send out our missionaries to conquer the world. Give me ten thousand earnest men and women on the island of Ventura, isolated from contact with the corruption of the outside, and I'll show you a miracle more wonderful than if they had risen from the dead." "And what are the foundations on which you propose to build this heaven on earth?" "Squarely on these principles: From every man according to his ability; to every man according to his needs; and to every child born the right to laugh and play and grow to a strong manhood and womanhood. We are not civilized so long as there is one child sobbing to be freed from the tomb of the modern workshop, so long as there is one man willing to work and not able to find it, so long as there is one soul striving upward who is crushed to earth, so long as one man lives in idleness and luxury while his neighbour starves, so long as there's one spot of this earth on which a man lives by tearing the bread from the lips of another." "Hasn't your imagination been caught by beautiful phrases, my boy?" asked the father. "In your new State of Ventura you will give to each man according to his needs?" "Yes." "And who will decide how much each one needs--the man who feels the need or the state?" "The state, in the last resort." "Exactly. And who will determine how large the service required of each man? Who will decide the question of ability?" "The state, of course." "Are you not cutting out a pretty big job for the state, remembering that the state is nothing more or less than a lot of ordinary second-rate politicians named Tom, Dick, and Harry, who individually or collectively haven't as much sense as you or I?" "In the new world it will be different." "Then you are going to import a new breed of men and women?" "No, we will simply give the God in man a chance to be." "But how about the beast that's in man--the elemental instinct to fight and kill--to take the woman he desires by the force of his hands and muscle?" "When man is free and strong and happy he can have no motive to kill or play the beast." "That remains to be seen, my boy! Your assertion does not change the nature of man. Another problem in your scheme I can't solve is wages." "We will abolish wage slavery." "Yes, yes, I know; but man must work--all men must work in your new state?" "Certainly." "And the man who refuses to work?" "Will be made to work according to his ability."