But these employees are not free. If they were independent of the employer, he could not make them work to gratify his wants. Personal desire does not add to personal power, neither does it add to other people’s power. Desire, want, hunger, may direct action; but it is not a productive force, it is a tendency to segregate and consume, not to produce and distribute. Now see the effect of the position here laid down. Consumption is but a means to production. Production is a natural function of Society—organic, interdependent, instinctive. Production is promoted by increasing social energy and social consciousness, besides the self-evident condition of maintenance. The organic action of Society necessarily involves a common nourishment, as it is even now seen to involve a common defence, and beyond that it requires a progressive increase in social stimulus. Our increased consumption is an accompanying condition of our increased activity, as the hard worker should eat more than the idle; but it is the well-distributed nourishment that promotes the activity, activity does not nourish. Now since the life and progress of Society depend on our best production, it is the natural duty of Society to so distribute nourishment and stimulus as to promote that production. A rich, strong, free, intelligent, thoroughly educated society will produce far more than a poor, weak, foolish, uneducated society. The tremendous productivity of America does not result from our wanting more than other people, as is popularly supposed, but from our having more. Not only the great natural advantages of the country, not only the independence which left men more free to work, but our public institutions for wide distribution of social advantages, such as free education,—these have combined to make the American not a greedier, but an abler man. Note in small instance the difference between our custom of free service of ice-water in the theatres, of programmes and the like, of toilet conveniences in the great stores, and all such matters, as compared with the twopence or fivepence you have to pay extra for so much as a napkin in an eating house in England. “But,” says the Englishman, “you have to pay in the end.” We are willing to pay in the end. Any decent man is willing to pay for what he has had. It is the difference between the “European plan” and the “American plan.” So soon as a more enlightened society provides more and more fully and freely for the needs of its citizens, so much the more cheerfully will they be willing to pay for it.