"Very well. Suppose your pig heaven established and the herd duly penned. The Labour Master of your local pen would naturally be a man after the heart of the herd. He would be a greasy Labour agitator. No other man could be elected. Suppose he should become interested in the extraordinary beauty of your wife. Suppose you were presumptuous enough to resent this, and, in revenge for your insolence, your Master transferred you, the scholar, idealist and orator, to the task of cleaning the spittoons in the City Hall, and ordered your wife to scrub the floor of his office. You both refuse, you who walk with your head among the stars, What then? The dirty-fingered one, your Labour Master, sends you to prison for the first offense. For the second, you would be stripped, placed in the public stocks and flogged, man and woman alike in this kingdom of equality. For, mark you, enforced labour is the only possible foundation of such a society." Gordon listened with dreamy disgust. "You've set up a man of straw. In this new world each would choose his work and labour would be a joy," he answered, with lofty scorn. The banker chuckled. "No doubt they would all choose joyous jobs. But there would be a surplus of joyous labourers hunting for joyful tasks, and a dearth of fools looking for disagreeable work. In your pig paradise everything must be fixed. There could be no uncertainty about the future--no worry, or fret, or anxiety--hence no hopes or fears. Man would be guaranteed food, clothes, shelter and children, just as the chattel slave. There could be no inducement to work unless compelled to, and no man except an idiot would do a disagreeable task unless forced to do it. You must remember there could be no lawyers or bankers, preachers or orators. The chief occupation of your Labour Master would be the assignment of people he didn't like to the hard, dirty jobs, and the granting of favourite tasks to such people as made themselves agreeable to His Majesty. Witness the master of the Russian Commune, who is notoriously the lord of all the wives of the village." Overman was still a moment, and then growled from the depths of his being: "I call this the lowest, the most degrading, the most bestial nightmare the human mind ever dreamed!" Gordon waved him off with an eloquent gesture. "You have assumed that a free commonwealth of godlike men and women would choose their worst units for their leaders." "Nothing of the sort," he snapped. "I've supposed they would do the inevitable--choose the strongest man who looks like the majority and smells like the majority." "A bad man would be removed," the dreamer quickly replied.