But to satisfy those who want the dead level objection analyzed to the bone, suppose everybody were to receive equal compensation? Should we not have less injustice in the world than we have now? Should we have any suffering from hunger and cold? Should we have so many crimes due to poverty? Should we have any women forced into prostitution by poverty? Should we have a single human being upon the face of the earth haunted by the constant fear that he could not get work and could not get food? We have all of these evils now. Are they worth thinking about? Are they serious enough to justify us in trying to be rid of them? Granted, for the sake of argument, that we cannot get rid of them without doing an injustice to the railroad manager who would be paid no more than a conductor—is it not better to do injustice to an occasional person who would still be treated as well as any of the others, than to compel all the others to endure present conditions? If not, the “good of the greatest number” is a fallacy, and majority rule is a crime. But would anyone question either the right or the expediency of such action if the situation were reversed? Suppose that the present system under which a few men own almost everything had made almost everybody rich. Suppose the few who were not rich—corresponding in numbers to the present capitalist class—were to demand that the rules of the game be so changed that they could be made rich by making everyone else poor. Let us suppose, even, that the few were to say that the present system, while it worked satisfactorily for everybody else, worked an injustice to them. Let us go farther and say that the mere handful of objectors were right in such contention. Would the 95 per cent. of the people who were prospering under the system nevertheless voluntarily overturn it and impoverish themselves merely that 5 per cent. might become wealthy? But there is still another side to the “dead level” objection. Is not enough enough? Who but a glutton wants more food than he should eat? Who but a fop wants more clothing than he needs to wear? Who but a man who has been pampered with riches, or spoiled by the envy that riches so often produce, wants more than a comfortable, roomy, sanitary house in which to live? Does the possession of more things than these make the few who have them happier? Socialists doubt it. If they did not doubt it, they would still be against conditions that give such advantages to a few who are not socially useful while denying even ordinary comforts to everyone else. And, right here, Socialists again ask these questions: “Even if such luxuries be conceded as advantages, are we not paying too great a price to give them to a few? Is it well that so many should have no home in order that a few should have many homes? And, if there is to be any difference in homes, ought not the difference to be in favor of those who are most useful instead of those who are the most predatory?”