Edison once pictured to me the world that he already sees dawning. It was a wonderful world, because it was filled with wonderful machinery. Cloth would go into one end of a machine and come out at the other end finished suits of clothes, boxed and ready for the market. Every machine, instead of making a part of a thing, would make the complete thing and put it together. The world would be smothered with wealth. But there was one disquieting feature about his world. There was not much room in it for men. Each machine, attended by but a single man, would do the work of hundreds of men. Moreover, that one man need not be skilled. He need be but the merest automaton. Only the inventor of the machine need have brains. Maybe Edison was dreaming. The easy way is to say he was dreaming. I, who know him, have my doubts. Edison always dreams before he does, but everything that he dreams seems pitifully small beside what he does. He dreamed of the electric light before he made it, but his dream was paltry beside the light he made. And, the dynamo of his dream was a wheelbarrow beside the dynamo that to-day sings its shrill song around the world. This much, however, is not a dream. Some of the automatic machinery that Edison spoke of is already here. One man behind a machine is doing the work of hundreds of men. Men are becoming a drug upon the labor market. More than five millions are often out of work. As invention proceeds, the percentage of the population who cannot find work must increase. What is going to become of these men? Do you expect them to starve quietly? Do you believe they will make no outcry? Do you believe they will raise no hand against a world that raises both hands against them? Moreover, what kind of a world is it in which the greater the machinery, the greater the curse to the men who run machinery? We do not yet live in such a world, it is true, but if Edison be not in error, we shall soon live in it? What shall we do when machinery does everything? This may seem like a far cry, but it isn’t. The germ of the Socialist philosophy is contained in this one word “machinery.” Let us put the spot-light upon that word and show everything that is in it. Suppose there were one machine in this country that was capable of producing every material thing that human beings need or desire. Suppose the machine were so wonderfully automatic that it could be perfectly operated by pushing a button, once a day, in a Wall Street office. Beside this push-button, suppose there were another button that operated all of the railroads in the country; passenger trains automatically starting and stopping at the appointed places; freight trains automatically taking on and discharging their cargoes. Not a human being at work anywhere. Imagine also one man owning this great machine and the railroads.