It is no wonder that teaching like this should move the minds of working men to an intolerable sense of despair and wrong. Nor was there any possibility of hope except in a revolution. For the injustice complained of lay in the essence of the existing economic system, and could not be removed, except with the complete abolition of the system. The only solution of the question, therefore, was a socialistic reconstruction which should make the instruments of production collective property, and subordinate capital to labour, but such a solution would of course be the work of generations, and meanwhile, the easiest method of transition from the old order of things to the new, lay in establishing productive associations of working men on State credit. These would form the living seed-corn of the new era. This was just Louis Blanc's scheme, with two differences--viz., that the associations were to be formed gradually, and that they were to be formed voluntarily. The State was not asked to introduce a new organization of labour by force all at once, but merely to lend capital at interest to one sound and likely association after another, as they successively claimed its aid. This loan was not to be gratuitous, as the French socialists used to demand in 1848, and since there would be eventually only one association of the same trade in each town, and since, besides, they would also establish a system of mutual assurance against loss, trade by trade, the State, it was urged, would really incur no risk. Lassalle, speaking of State help, said he did not want a hand from the State, but only a little finger, and he actually sought, in the first instance at least, no more than Mr. Gladstone gave in the Irish Land Act. The scheme was mainly urged, of course, in the interests of a sounder distribution of wealth; but Lassalle contended that it would also increase production; and it is important to remember that he says it would not otherwise be economically justifiable, because "an increase of production is an indispensable condition of every improvement of our social state." This increase would be effected by a saving of cost, in abolishing local competition, doing away with middle-men and private capitalists, and adapting production better to needs. The business books of the association would form the basis of a sound and trustworthy system of commercial statistics, so much required for the purpose of avoiding over-production. The change would, he thought, also introduce favourable alterations in consumption, and in the direction of production; inasmuch as the taste of the working class for the substantial and the beautiful, would more and more supplant the taste of the _bourgeoisie_ for the cheap and nasty.